Service Design workshop: Piedimonsterz!

Service design is one of the least explored avenues in Interaction design, which is surprising, bearing in mind that around 70% of the economy of many developed countries (service economies) depends on it.

Our faculty lead, Simona Maschi, introduced us to the brief: Design a service that deals with preventing obesity at any scale. Not a long time elapsed when we decided we wanted to develop a service that involved physical activity and play, taking advantage of the power, needs and public image of major stakeholders in the obesity problem, namely fast food mega corporations.

In recent years, fast food chain stores like McDonald's have been in the midst of very heated debates and controversy about the social responsability of large corporations when dealing with public health. Lately, it seems like no PR effort is enough to placate the discontent of many parent's organisations towards the golden arches company and its advertising strategies to ensure the tween and toddler's market penetration.

The solution we envisioned, consisted in make use of the astonishing brand power of McDonald's to promote the use of virtual pet pedometers (Piedimonsterz), which would be acquired in a happy meal; however, far from using the brief as an excuse to promote a new toy, we decided to use the toy as an excuse to motivate kids and parents to lead a more healthy lifestyle

Every kid with a Piedimonster, has the chance to register in the Piedimonsterz website, and participate in local and regional fitness contests and games, using McDonald's stores and the Piedimonster universe as a platform.

Using the Piedimonster device and connecting it to a pc, is the way the service can translate physical exercise into factual data for parents and an emotional account of the life of the Piedimonster for kids, In the Piedimonsterz blog.