Balance

This was my Thesis for Master in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Working with the Hasbro Children's Hospital, I developed a set of tools for education on caloric content of different foods. The objective was to help obese and overweight children get a better understanding of caloric content of every day foods.

Common plastic food toys were filled with copper shots to increase their weight. The weight was directly proportional to the amount of calories in that food.

When the children were asked to play with the food toys, there was always a surprise when the toy they picked up didn't correspond to what they were expecting. That surprise moment was the primer to start talking about calories.

This Balance was designed so that activities could be organized around the food toys.

The children would create plates and compare the caloric content of whole dinners by simply checking which was heavier thatn the other.

The balance used one axis to compare plates of food. The other axis was made for comparing a plate of food with a weight that would represent the ammount of exercise needed to burn the calories in the plate.

Some concept sketches of the artwork.

Another aspect of this thesis tried to get the children into a more active experience.

The children would wear shirts representing different food groups.

With the children all representing their food group, games were organized to form the more balanced plate or to change players until the best team was formed.