One of the factors influencing children’s physical development and growth is the hygienic and healthy nutritional intake of food. To assure the balanced nutrition and good hygiene, many parents pack home-prepared meals in lunch boxes for their children to eat during school’s lunch break. However, not all children always share their parent’s concern. Some children may find that eating their home-prepared lunch at school is less interesting compared to eating snacks bought at school or playing with their friends during breaks. This study focuses on the effort of improving children’s eating behavior by designing a persuasive lunch box. Participatory design was used as an approach in this study. Three design concepts were developed based on the requirements and the pre-concepts generated during the conduct of a participatory design workshop with 6 children and 6 parents. Low-fidelity prototypes (i.e. carton-based prototype, 3D model prototype and video prototype) were built based on the selected concept. The prototype evaluation showed that the user requirements have been successfully met. Moreover, some participants found the lunch box attractive, interactive and may provide a persuasive way towards changing children’s eating behavior.

Keywords: Persuasive, Children, lunch box, Participatory design.