Supporting healthy behaviour: A stages of change perspective on changing snacking habits of children
Abstract
Many children today face an environment that presents them with an overabundance of high calorie foods. Combined with more sedentary lifestyles, this has led to increasing numbers of overweight children in many parts of the world. To counter this trend, we need new strategies that can positively alter health behaviours of children. In this paper, we demonstrate how taking a stages of change perspective can support designers in creating products and services that could serve as alternatives to more traditional health interventions such as promotional campaigns. Using the case of changing snacking habits of children, two ranges of product concepts were developed using the design for healthy behaviour framework. The two concept ranges were evaluated by parents of young children. From this study we tentatively conclude that using the design for healthy behaviour framework can lead to more innovative, supporting and effective health interventions.
Keywords
design for behaviour change; health; obesity; lifestyle; children
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.303
Citation
Ludden, G., and de Ruijter, L. (2016) Supporting healthy behaviour: A stages of change perspective on changing snacking habits of children, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.303
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Supporting healthy behaviour: A stages of change perspective on changing snacking habits of children
Many children today face an environment that presents them with an overabundance of high calorie foods. Combined with more sedentary lifestyles, this has led to increasing numbers of overweight children in many parts of the world. To counter this trend, we need new strategies that can positively alter health behaviours of children. In this paper, we demonstrate how taking a stages of change perspective can support designers in creating products and services that could serve as alternatives to more traditional health interventions such as promotional campaigns. Using the case of changing snacking habits of children, two ranges of product concepts were developed using the design for healthy behaviour framework. The two concept ranges were evaluated by parents of young children. From this study we tentatively conclude that using the design for healthy behaviour framework can lead to more innovative, supporting and effective health interventions.