Proefmonsters

A hospital food application that incorporates a personally adapted menu, a  personal eating profile and a game.

Cancer treatment has a big impact on the food-intake of children. They suffer all kinds of side effects from the medication that discourages them to eat. Some of these complaints are purely physical. A child that is extremely nauseous simply cannot eat, but some of these complaints also take place in the mind. If you are hospitalized, how can eating ever be any fun?…

Menu
The menu shown in the application is personal, based on the personal eating profile. There is nothing on there the patient cannot order due to their treatment or allergies. There is also an opportunity to order a meal for the caretaker and once a day, to order a Proefmonster.

Game
To play the game, the patient can order a free Proefmonster (taste sample) every day. This Proefmonster is a possible new inhabitant to a personal city that is protected by themselves, or at least their digital hero.  The monster gets served together with their dinner. They taste the sample, open the game and indicate wether or not they liked the flavour. If they liked it they receive a new monster villager, if they do not like it they receive a “monster in sheep clothes” that is placed in the meadow.

These monster villagers can be played with. Their houses can be visited or the user can play with the corresponding augmented reality (AR) card that came with the Proefmonster. In their houses the user will find all sorts of information, recipes, movies and experiments corresponding with the food it represented.

A monster in sheep clothes can be traded in for cool gadgets to improve your hero or they can be saved to be tasted again later.

The sheep can also be played with in AR. Putting two cards together will give surprising interactions between characters.

Nienke Hollenberg

Aprile, W.A., Esser, P.E.
master thesis, June 2012