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The user

Alice is 8 years old she’s in year 4 at primary school. There are 24 children in her class according to statistics 7 are overweight of these 4 are obese.

By the time Alice reaches secondary school when she’s 11 this number will have grown to 9 overweight and 5 that are obese.

Although Alice is a healthy child a combination of the media and government has alerted her parents to the dangers of childhood obesity.

At school Alice and her friends spend a lot of their break-times socialising rather than engaging in physical activity and play.

Many trends come and go and nearly all the children in her year group buy the latest playground fad at the moment she’s been using her Nintendo DS a lot and can compete with and against her classmates.

When Alice gets home the first thing she does is check on her pet hamster cleo then turns on the Nintendo Wii to play against her friends online. It is fair to say Alice’s routine revolves around socialising and being up to date with technology despite her young age.

The experience

The Spedz pedometer is designed for children between the ages of 7 to 10. It allows a child to see how active they’ve been in a simple effective way in comparison to existing methods. As a child walks and runs throughout the day their progress towards the recommended 12,000 steps is recorded and displayed visually in the form of a progress meter.

This streamlined UI allows children to see their progress so far whilst comparing against their friends. When a child gets home the product interfaces with a PC or Mac, displaying the cumulative progress of the past days and weeks in an interesting and informative way, making real world comparisons.