Making chocolate-covered broccoli

Assessing the amount of carbohydrates in their food is central for people with diabetes mellitus on intensive insulin therapy. This can be a challenging task for adults, but it is particularly so for young people since being a teenager takes attention from disease management. Learning happens in everyday life, but formal diabetes education is also considered an important aspect of diabetes self-management. In a case study we wanted to investigate how, and to which extent, to add motivation (chocolate) to learning (broccoli) by applying participatory design methods in the development of a mobile game about carbohydrate counting. This paper presents the design process and the resulting prototype. It concludes with challenges and opportunities for design of digital learning systems for children and adolescents addressing the carbohydrate counting issue.