This paper presents a qualitative study of food-related practices among 16 childcare providers in the Puget Sound, and suggests opportunities for design intervention to promote healthy eating by young children. This paper makes two contributions to interactive systems design. We present childcare as an underexplored site for future research and design. We also describe social ecology systems theory, an approach to qualitative research from the public health field that is relatively uncommon in design research. We believe that the socio-ecological perspective is particularly applicable to design research that addresses human service provisioning, and may also prove useful in describing human cognition and designing interactive systems more generally.
['Tad Hirsch', 'Catherine Lim', 'Jennifer J. Otten']
What's for Lunch?: A Socio-ecological Approach to Childcare Nutrition