Dissertation Preposal!

After much thinking and burning ears, I have finally decided on a topic for my dissertation. The idea came about a few weeks ago while talking to my friend about her wedding plans. She is getting married in 6 weeks time and wants a loose few a few kg before the wedding day so she will fit perfectly into her dress and look her best. As there is so many diets and fitness regimes out there she has no idea which one would be the best for her or weather she will be able to achieve her desired weight loss by the date. I sympathies with her as I have dieted in the past to fit into a dress for a special occasions, with never much luck. Although there are a lot of diet and exercise regimes published every year, very few actually work in obtaining peoples desired weight loss or maintaining a continued exercise and healthy living regime. Because of this, and because it is something that I struggle with from time to time, I decided to undertake in developing a product that would tackle this problem. At this stage in the project, I have just picked the topic and done some brief research, which can be seen below, but over the next few weeks I will be hopefully more clear as to how the project will progress.


Dissertation Proposal

Introduction: Thousands of people each year follow crash diets in the hope of loosing weight, usually for a special occasion, in a very short period of time. This dangerous way of trying to loose weight is generally not effective in reaching the desired weight loss as well as having serious health side effects. During this project, I will aim to develop a successful tool in helping people reach their desired weight by a specified period of time as chosen by the user (or by the system if goals by the user are not feasible or safe). It will be an inclusive design but will be specifically targeted at the female market.
How it will work: The device will calculate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis how many calories the user will have to burn in excess of their consumption to reach the desired weight by a specific date chosen. The user will enter in their height (m), weight (kg), waist circumference, current level of fitness, desired weight loss and the date in which they want this weight loss
achieved by. The system will then calculate the users Body Mass Index (BMI), a measure of a persons body fat based on height and weight, and together with the users waist circumference reading ascertain if the user is underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese and thus tailor the exercise and dietary plan accordingly. It will also be designed to consider the current level of fitness of the user, so that initial exercise intensity level can be tailored to the individual and then increased with time and fitness.
Features: The system will be flexible enough to allow the user choice on what they want to consume, but will inform the user that if their food choice exceeded their recommended daily calorie intake and recommend an exercise they should do. It will be fun to use and will reward the user for achievement. This will be achieved by including an LED interface display that displays an interactive game when using with in conjunction with exercise devices, like Mario Cart on Wii, where the Interface display works like the TV and the exercise device acts like the remote.
Other features that should be incorporated into the device include

• Connect to “Touch Code”, designed by Aladdin Kishk via Bluetooth, allowing the user to choose recipes from the device that are health and with low calorie consumption
• Can be connected to exercise devices including treadmills and exercises bikes and information about calories burned will be collected by the device
• Can be connected to the computer and information upload and downloaded from a custom made weight loss website so the user feels part of a social community, as there is a strong link between social factor of exercising and participation, particularly amongst women