Nutrition Campaign

Design and user testing of a campaign to improve university students’ diets

The eating habits of university students are a serious problem. Entering University most students live on their own for the first time, and with a reduced budget. Students skip meals, eat snacks high in sugar, fat, and salt, and rely on fast food.

Two of our performance specifications were to increase both the students’ nutritional knowledge and their daily consumption of fruits.

Based on the findings from focus groups and interviews with students we designed and evaluated 3 poster prototypes.

Following the students’ comments, we redesigned the 3 posters. We evaluated the students’ nutritional knowledge and habits using questionnaires, and then affixed the new posters. A month later we repeated the questionnaire to a different group of students. Pre-and post-intervention showed an increase of knowledge about the nutritional benefits of some types of food, and awareness about what was missing in their diet and about the importance of healthy nutrition