Enhancing Pupils’ Attitude Towards School Lunch by Designing a User-Friendly Interface

Abstract: A hungry student has challenges absorbing knowledge. So, maintaining good habits regarding food is important for their health and education. The objective of this paper is to provide insights into how the content and the usability of an application have an impact on pupils' attitudes toward school lunches. By redesigning the Mitt Käk mobile application, the aim is to make school lunches a more positive experience. The Design Thinking method was used throughout the study, which consists of five phases, empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. During the emphasize phase, a survey, focus group, and two stakeholder interviews were held. The define and ideate phases consisted of bringing the data and information into insights and turning these into ideas and solutions. These were brought into the next phase, prototype, in which two prototypes were made, one low fidelity and one high fidelity. They were tested as the next phase, test, instructs. The result from the first phase, empathize, shows that the general impression of the current application is good. It was found that the pupils choose their lunches mainly based on the taste of the food. Other important aspects are the look of the food and its climate impact. The pain point that causes the pupils to feel negative feelings is that the pupils do not think that the pictures of the dishes are realistic and that they would like more information about what they are eating. It has been shown that the gamification feature of the application has increased the pupils' presence in the can-teens and that more pupils are eating the lunch that the school provides. It was noted that the pupils found that gamification also creates an engagement between their friends as well as their attitude toward the dishes. The study's final results confirm that including more gamification features creates a more engaging and positive effect on the pupils. As well as improving functions that have been shown to cause aggravation, and had a positive effect on the pupils. These actions have created a more positive and rewarding experience, that could lead to a more positive attitude toward food.