Project Ideas & Inspiration
Shao Tan - Tue 3 March 2020, 1:05 am
Modified: Tue 3 March 2020, 1:09 am
No Craving Shoe
The shoe that keeps you away from your unhealthy food cravings.
Problem
Food cravings are powerful things. People are often triggered by environment cues, e.g. seeing an ad with a picture of a juicy burger or walking past an ice cream shop seeing all the different flavors on display. It is hard to stop people from seeing all these cues, so why not stop people from getting near the food instead.
How it Works
The No Craving Shoe is a shoe that senses when the user is walking towards a shop selling unhealthy food. It will then use three different ways to warn and stop them from going closer. It will start with a small warning by vibrating once. This acts as an alert. If the user ignores the warning and goes closer, the shoe will start blinking red and start beeping. This embarrasses the user to try to make them stop. If the user ignores the warning once again, the shoe will start getting heavier and heavier until it is hard for the user to walk towards the shop. This method tries to stop the user physically. Even if the user is strong enough to walk to the shop, at least they got some exercise before eating.
Inspiration
Pavlok the Habit Changing Wristband
Pavlok is a wristband that zaps its user to help them break their bad habit. However, Dr. Greg Cason, a psychologist, said that it is not effective as users will just remove it when it zaps them. So, I wanted to create something that would not punish or hurt the user but would create inconvenience for them. Also, it would be harder for the user to "escape" from the shoe compared to a wristband out in public.
https://jamesclear.com/how-to-break-a-bad-habit
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pavlok-breaks-bad-habits#/