Nandini Pasumarthy

(she/her)

Design researcher, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

I’m an Interaction Designer and User-Experience Researcher with design experience at the intersection of games & play, health, and reflection. I am actively looking for design research opportunities within the health and well-being space, spanning academic and industry settings.

Bio

Hi, I’m Nandini. My research lies at the intersection of human gut health, play, and interactive ​technologies, spanning domains such as science communication, learning design, and the design ​for health engagement and reflection. I use qualitative methods to understand how interactive ​technologies are shaping current understanding of health and their role in engaging people with ​complex health information using playful narratives. Taking a design-led inquiry, I ask how we can ​design interactive experiences/technologies to support user activity engagement for gut health ​and reflection on everyday behaviours that affect it. My research contributes to the fields of ​Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction and User-Experience Design Research (IXD, ​UXD). I’m a PhD candidate at RMIT University, advised by Rohit Ashok Khot and Jessica Danaher ​from the HAFP Research Lab, and Prof. Elise van den Hoven from the Materialising Memories Lab ​at University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

I’m passionate about interdisciplinary collaborations ​that utilise play-based interactions to break down ​complex health topics, with a focus on user experience ​and embodied interaction design.

I draw from my prior educational background in sociological and management studies to interpret ​and conduct my research. Interdisciplinary collaborations spanning health science, psychology, ​nutrition, game design, and embodied cognition sciences excite me, mainly where the focus lies in ​design and its translation to support real-world initiatives.

The future of HCI research and interaction design within the context of play, human health, and ​well-being is promising. With cutting-edge science and technology, we can design engaging and ​impactful play experiences that allow us to interact with and learn about complex bodily ​processes, promoting opportunities for a deeper understanding of our health.

Case Studies

Research Approach: I approached this challenge through the lens of structured play and designed Gooey Gut Trail (GGT), a board game that leverages hands-on tactile play and playful visualisation facilitating a safe space for the exchange of health information between players through social mechanics.

Design Process: The “Research through Design” (RtD) methodology was used to develop the game. The iterative process resulted in three versions over a duration of eight months. The design of GGT was carried out by a multidisciplinary team and the design decisions were informed by scientific literature from the fields of gastrointestinal health, food science, game design, psychology, sociology, product & UX design. My role was that of the lead designer and user-experience design researcher.

Iterative design and testing

The game was designed in the following process:

1. Identification and mapping of scientific literature on gut health and the real-world contexts that influence it.

2. Identifying the current design space for interactive health engagement through play

3. Conceptualisation of key design elements and the design features

4. Crafting game mechanics

5. Prototyping and testing was conducted as a cyclical process.

The GGT game was designed using sustainable materials such as cardboard, air-dry clay, MDF board, linen bags, brown craft paper, magnetic sheets and repurposed cardboard containers to hold game components. The design goals of GGT were in alignment with the design ideals of our team that focused on reducing the impact of our design choices on the environment. The final research product was tested through a field study with 15 participants revealing that the game led to a new-found understanding of the intricacies involved in gut health.

Research Outcomes: A qualitative user study with 15 participants revealed that player experience of the game was positive and engaging with real-world relevance of game insights for player adoption into their daily lives. We further noted that important facets of the design contributed towards an increased awareness in participants, causing some participants to reflect upon personal habits that influence gut health. Key highlights include the material and tactile representation that offered playful visualisation, enabling learning by doing. The use of real-world scenarios led to reflection on everyday habits suggesting the usefulness of health information gathered through the game. Widening player understanding of gut health factors beyond just diet. The balance of fun and scientific insights through game mechanics led to player engagement.

Participant Quotes:

“Frankly, for most of my adult life, I’ve had the ritual of consuming bacon and eggs for breakfast during the weekend. But now I find myself going well; maybe I won’t do that today, maybe I’ll do something different, or I won’t do it as often.”

“Engaging with the game scenarios like community interaction or having a picnic in the botanical garden offered a new understanding of what these activities mean to my gut health.”

“Now at the supermarket, it’s making us rethink our choices, saying ‘we should go with that one instead of this’. It’s got us thinking better about our choices.”

Grounded.

This research is grounded in the literature on gut health, sociology, and game design concepts. Our focus on engaging players with gut health information through play remains at the level of “functional scientific literacy” – which posits that individuals should possess minimum practical skills informed through science to make thoughtful decisions and function effectively in a particular setting. In contrast to the traditional sources of information on gut health, we focus on engaging players through playful experiences that are grounded in scientific literature and game design. This research facilitates learning about the gut and its interrelationship with factors like diet, lifestyle, environment, and emotion, thus preparing players to take this experience and the gathered insights into their real-life practices.

Contextual.

Research suggests embedding complex science topics into the social and societal constructs of their occurrence can offer people a contextual understanding of the topic being communicated. The context in which information is presented directly affects the way it is perceived by an individual. It further decides the validity of the information gathered, as well as its translation into real-world actions. Understanding real-world contexts of the factors affecting gut health can play a vital role in everyday health decision-making. We integrate real-world scenarios like bio-diverse landscapes with rich organic soil, forest air, and public spaces that affect our gut health in the gameplay to provide a contextual understanding of our gut health.

With a reset in the biome population every night, users are encouraged to engage in diverse activities every day to maintain a healthy gut. Player engagement in diverse activities allows them to change the game’s background scene moving from a dull eerie space to a vibrant space filled with friendly biome. Players also unlock new friendly biome the following day based on the diversity of their activities each day.

Activity Decks

Design Process: The game was developed using the “Research through Design” (RtD) methodology. The iterative design process resulted in five versions (V) over a duration of eight months. We incorporated prior frameworks on reflective design to support player reflection on everyday activities that may affect gut health. Specifically, we used temporal, conversational, comparative, and discovery resources put forth by Bentvelzen et al. (2022) to support player reflection. The design of GGB was carried out by a multidisciplinary team and the design decisions were informed by scientific literature from the fields of gastrointestinal health, nutritional science, and directed by experts in the fields of interaction design, game design, and software development. My role was that of the lead designer and user-experience design researcher.

Outcomes and Impact: A qualitative study with 14 participants revealed that participants were reminded of the needs of their biome as separate from their own when interacting with some of the features of GGB. For example, some game reminders caused participants to think beyond themselves and focus instead on the friendly biome’s struggles and needs in the game thus bringing attention to their gut biome and health in the process. This led them to engage spontaneously in an activity to help the friendly biome. Based on these findings we suggest that designers consider the ‘biological self’ and its processes when designing for health reflection. To achieve this we propose four design lenses and a corresponding design strategy under each lens to design for health reflection. The lenses include bio-temporality (body clock- mimicry), visceral conversations (conversations with the self), wellness comparison (personal or normative health goals as reference), and inner discovery (contextualisation, externalisation of bodily events).

Participant Quotes:

“Engaging in the game activities was about holding myself accountable.”

“I found the biome emojis in the flashcards particularly impactful as they shifted my focus from playing for my game character to realising that the game was ultimately for the benefit of my gut biome, making me more self-conscious and aware."

“Whenever I receive a low energy notification, I’d think, ’Oh no, the bacteria! The balance must be off, and the bad biome might have increased. Let me do an activity!”

“I imagined the friendly biome in my gut increasing and taking over, and I feel like I’ve contributed positively towards its improvement.”

Publications

Pasumarthy N, Tai YL, Khot RA, Danaher J. Gut microbes and human factors: engaging with science through board game play. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 2023;82(OCE2):E188. Link to the poster (Impact Factor in 2022: 7)

Nandini Pasumarthy. 2023. Designing Interactive Experiences For Gut Health Engagement and Reflection. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 494, 1–6. Link to the paper (Acceptance rate: 25%)

Yi Ling (Ellie) Tai, Jason Ng, Nandini Pasumarthy, Deepti Aggarwal, and Rohit Ashok Khot. 2023. Rethinking Domestic Food Consumption through a Multi-modal Open Pantry. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 23, 1–15. Link to the paper (Acceptance rate: 25%)

Press

Work with me

@nandinipasumarthy