HUB VENDING MACHINE STUDY

steering students away from unhealthy vending machinery choices

Overview

A large number of educational buildings in the United States have food vending machines. Though the contents of these machines may vary from institution to institution, their quality does not. A 2014 study found that school vending machinery is commonly stocked with poor nutritional quality items (loaded with added sugar and excessive sodium) [1]. After the study, CDC implemented the Smart Snacks program which requires United States schools to meet food standards set by CDC. Since Smart Snacks solely applies to school levels between elementary and high, its implementation has only improved the nutritional environment of those grades [2]. The program hasn’t affected the quality of college vending machine items [3]. An article from NYU highlights the high consumption of soft drinks by college students and their rising obesity problem [4].

Hence college vending machine designs are an area still ripe for solution space exploration. Being a health enthusiast, I became extremely interested in investigating “how we can steer students away from unhealthy food and beverage vending machine choices?”

The aforementioned design question was explored by utilizing three foundational user research methods in the following order: field research, interviews, and surveys. Field observation method was utilized to understand human needs, skills, and desires as they relate to the chosen design problem and build a foundation for the project. Interviews allowed me to follow-up on those initial observations and findings in more detail. And, surveys gave me an opportunity to “validate” and deepen observations and conclusions derived from field and interview work.

Field Study

Due to time constraints, three 30-minute field work sessions using Structured Observation (a component of Deep Hanging Out) were carried out at separate locations within the Husky Union Building at the University of Washington, Seattle. Students who were interacting with the HUB’s food and beverage vending machines between the ages of 18 and 30 were observed. Given the limited time for each field session, other individuals like UW workers or families interacting with the machines were also briefly observed and taken note of.  However, they were not the primary population focus for the study. Some chief questions I hope to answer with my field research to inform the design space and achieve the study’s goal are:

• How are users currently using the food and beverage vending machines? 

  • Why: to examine and identify patterns of the present vending machine usage by students 

• What are the steps for withdrawing an item from the machine? 

  • Why: to evaluate the amount of effort required for withdrawing an item

• How many items does a user withdraw from the vending machine at a time and what are these items? 

  • Why: to pin down widely drawn out items and identify if they’re healthy/unhealthy

• What is currently built into the system to aid healthy food choices, how does it work, is it visible? 

  • Why: to understand the effectiveness/limitations of the current system for prompting healthy food choices

Field Study Results

By affinity analyzing themes in how students interacted with the built environment, the current environment's tools & technology, information & communication access, this research found issues with the use of healthy choice enablement stickers, lighting inside snack machines, and environment around the machines.

Use of Healthy Choice Enablement Stickers: The time spent by all the students using, interacting or viewing the food and beverage vending machines was less than five minutes. This prevented the buildup of traffic around the machines and allowed students to quickly move through the space. However, during the few minutes spent at the vending machines, students rarely looked in the direction (i.e. lifted their head upward/went closer to the machine) of the machine(s) currently built in system for enabling healthy choices. This system, which was ineffective in impacting students' vending machine purchases in any way, was only available in the zero coke, one regular coke and Dasani vending machines. As shown in Figure 1 below, the sticker is little, oddly placed and blends in with the other stickers glued to the machine’s door.

Lighting inside the Snack Machines: The Figure 2 below clearly shows the significant lighting difference between the milk and snack vending machines. This difference did not exist at only one location but others too, where snack vending machines were present.

Although both the milk and snack vending machines had no health stickers like the coke and Dasani machines, the milk machine had sufficient lighting for reading the product labels. Whereas, the snack machine lighting hindered visibility of the product making it harder to examine the nutritional content of the items sold within the machine under a short period of time. 

The widely drawn out item from the snack machines was a single packet of chips which is conveniently placed at the top rows. While the eye level rows of the machine are occupied by sugar loaded candies and cookies. In session 3 observations, it was found that snacks were placed right next to the vending machine on a standing shelf. In all these cases, students were given easy access to unhealthy foods without any prominent information for guiding them.

Environment Around the Machines: The environments around the vending machines observed in this study had some similarities. They all had seating areas facing the vending machines. These seating areas were occupied by a large number of students. Some of these students were using their laptops/cell phones. Two of the locations had frequently accessed water filling stations and waste systems in close proximity. 

Being in a high traffic area, these machines indicate fast paced interactions from their users. As mentioned earlier, time spent at the machines did not exceed 5 minutes. With the time constraint these machines afford, students might experience a pressure of time to finalize their vending machine choice(s).

Interview

Based on the field research, the design question evolved to “how can we steer students away from unhealthy snack and drinks vending machine choices at the HUB?” To further explore the design question, understand student vending machine usage experience and desires behind their particular product selections, three semi-structured 30-minute interviews were conducted with three participants separately. These participants were University of Washington Seattle students, between the ages of 18-25, who had used the HUB vending machine once this year. Some questions covered during these interviews were:

• How often do you access a vending machine?

  • Why: to understand if the participant is a regular/irregular user 

• What are the general steps for withdrawing an item from the machine?

  • Why: to evaluate the amount of effort required for withdrawing an item

• What do you usually withdraw from the machine? 

  • Why: to evaluate if the item is healthy/unhealthy

• How would you describe the nutritional quality of the item(s) you purchase from the machine?

  • Why: to determine the user’s awareness around their withdrawn item(s) nutrition content

• Do you carry anything with you while using the machine? 

  • Why: to examine if the possession could serve as a potential design solution

Interview Results

By thematically analyzing themes in interviewee responses, firstly students expressed frustrations regarding the lack of effective health features and plethora of unhealthy features available. Secondly, it was noted that the differences in time spent paying for an item may impact how much time a student has to make their item choice. Lastly, convenience mattered to students in scenarios of accessing vending machinery. Since the data collected thus far mapped onto the current design question, there was no need to refine it. Below are snapshots of how the interview data was cleaned, edited, color coded and analyzed:

Survey

Next in the process, I designed and implemented an online questionnaire survey consisting of 10-12 different types of questions, guided by the interviews results and recommendations. A survey would allow me to confirm emerging ideas and elaborate, explore, extend existing ideas. Some sample questions included in the survey asked users to rank their influential factors, rate their payment experience, select their preferred form of payment, describe their ideal health enablement system all with regards to the HUB snack and drink vending machines.

Survey Presentation