InterActive Gut Experiences: Understanding the Design of Play to Support Gut Health Engagement and Reflection

Interactive experiences powered by play are gaining prominence in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as they provide opportunities for users to engage with technology in a fun and meaningful way. Play-based approaches have been used to spark interest in science and to support the exploration of health topics, providing a safe space for individuals to reflect on their learnings, actions, and decisions. Such playful mediation using interactive technologies encourages personal discovery, fostering new relationships between the self and the larger ecosystem through rule-based and personal exploration. This thesis represents one such active investigation into the design of interactive play experiences for gastrointestinal (gut) health engagement. Maintaining a healthy gut is crucial to human wellbeing and it is a complex topic to understand owing to its multi-factorial influences, including mode of birth, age, early microbial exposure, diet, lifestyle, and environment. Current approaches to supporting awareness of gut health factors are primarily passive forms of knowledge sharing, and they lack an interactive play-based approach focused on promoting adult engagement with this topic. This absence motivates this research. The research for this thesis uses two case studies, the design of which draws on knowledge from the topics of gut health, play, and reflection and builds on existing works involving interactive technologies in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Food Interaction (HFI). Following the Research through Design (RtD) methodology, the two case studies individually explore 1) structured play through a board game called Gooey Gut Trail (GGT) and 2) unstructured play through a smartphone game called Go-Go Biome (GGB). GGT uses real-world contexts and scenarios to bring attention to the factors that influence gut health, making the game relatable to players, while GGB is a smartphone game that promotes user engagement in real-world gut-friendly activities through playful exploration. The design learnings from designing the two case studies and the empirical findings from testing the two design prototypes led to the development of a design framework called the HEAR Design Deck, a set of design cards to aid in the design of interactive play-based experiences for health engagement and reflection. The HEAR deck aims to guide interdisciplinary researchers in deconstructing and translating health science topics into play-based experiences. This framework has theoretical and practical implications that extend beyond the design of interactive gut experiences, making it generalisable to design for health engagement and reflection on many public health issues. This research has implications for the interaction design community in HCI, focused on designing for individual and community health initiatives through play.