Interactive Project

• My intended audience for this is adults who have relentlessly tried every diet in the books to lose weight. The project is meant for people who have control over their own diet (excluding children) and who have struggled or will one day struggle to maintain or lose weight. It is specific to those in the US who lack education about proper nutrition, whole foods, and the dangers of misguided dieting. The purpose of my interactive project is to prove the ineffectiveness of fad diets and discourage viewers from following fad diets in the future. As misinformation about how to stay slim and maintain proper health becomes more and more prevalent as generations pass, this project shows that the more we follow fad diets and improper guides to health, the more obesity and related problems will arise.

• The singular increasing line in the image makes the point clear that obesity is a growing problem, predicted to get even worse in years to come. By clicking on the different dates and reading about the fad diets of each decade, the audience can understand how misinformation about nutrition can become widespread quickly. With decades of research is it proven that there is no "quick fix" to nutrition, and the graph makes it clear that fad diets are unsustainable and typically worsen health problems in the long run. As time goes on Americas obesity problem will continue to increase so long as people buy into the false promises of the newest diets. The graph urges people to resist believing the newest diet trends they hear about, encouraging them to focus on what we know to be true about whole foods and holistic nutrition as an alternative to extreme diets.

• For this project I created a google sheet with four columns: time (year), data (% of Overweight Americans), title, and text. I inserted all of the information I gathered from research into these columns, published it to the web, and used knightlab to create the storyline.

• Through preparation for this project I learned many of knightlabs features, such as timeline, juxtapose, storymap, etc.. In researching all of the misinformation about nutrition and wellness in the media, I also learned how important it is to check the source and content validity of information before accepting it to be true. It became clear to me in making this project that there is no quick fix to health problems, just like many other problems in life, and to reach the best outcomes takes time and effort. I now know to look out for false promises and "miracle solutions" when trying to solve my own health issues in the future. The projects design component also taught me that boring information can become much more interesting when you alter the format to become more interactive and enticing to the viewer.

• On my next project I will continue to find information from a variety of sources and try to convey it in an interesting and engaging format for my audience. I will continue to try to find relevant and accurate information regarding heath and wellness. Next time I will probably pick a format where I can add images and infographics to make it more interesting and informative.