Sensory Interactive Table

For my bachelor thesis, I worked on a virtual version of the Sensory Interactive Table (SIT) made by researchers at the University of Twente. In this version, I designed an interactive game for children to help them understand how to eat healthier. Eventually, my bachelor thesis was graded with a 7.5 out of 10. In the picture below you see the virtual version of SIT in the engine Unity.

In the lower part, you can read the abstract of my thesis.

My thesis is also referenced in another paper. This paper is called: Multimodal Interactive Dining with the Sensory Interactive Table: Two Use Cases by de Vries et al.. You can read the paper by clicking the button below.

Abstract of Supporting healthy eating in children through the Sensory Interactive Table

Eating behaviour has influence on health. Unfortunately, over the years, people started eating less healthily. Because of this, many individuals have a higher risk of getting obesity and heart failure. If we could teach children to eat healthy starting from a young age, they might eat healthy throughout their whole lives.

This goal can be achieved with interactive technology. This project uses the Sensory Interactive Table. This table is able to display animations and can measure weight. The goal of this report is to create an interactive system that lets children eat healthier with the help of the Sensory Interactive Table.

Based on the state of the art, literature research, and design sessions with children and adults, I designed three different systems. I focused on the realization of two of these systems. These systems are named ‘The battlefield in your belly’ and ‘The colourful growing dot’. ‘The battlefield in your belly’ is mainly focused on findings from state of the art and literature. ‘The colourful growing dot’ is more focused on output from the design session.

For the evaluation of the two systems, two groups completed a survey. One group consisted of adults that participated in the design sessions. The other group was not familiar with this project. Most of the individuals thought ‘The battlefield in your belly’-system would work better than the other system. However, when asked about the effectiveness of this system, there was not a clear majority of individuals that had the same answer. To conclude, according to the respondents ‘The battlefield in your belly’ works better than the other system. Based on literature and state-of-the-art I would say that this system is effective to let children eat healthier. But, to know this for sure, the effectiveness of this system should be tested with children.