In response to the obesity epidemic artist Fabiola Hanna has begun a community based project that will help its members track their eating patterns through a rigorous daily examination of their excrement. Hanna is developing an apparatus that will make it simple for participants to upload photos of their toilet bowl after each visit. These photos will live within a facebook application set up by Hanna that will allow users to evaluate and collect images as they choose. Evaluative software will be incorporated into the application to help answer questions about what the images are saying about diet. What does soft green stool mean? Or why am I peeing all of the time? A radical approach to a devastating problem, the project provides a concrete method to think about what are often rhythmically unconscious habits. It also gives room for play; a sub-application allows contributors to arrange their images in a variety of mosaic patterns.
Some possible names for the project (to be added to as desired by others): A Database of Poop; A Poop Archive; Check Out My Shit; Data Dump; Flush Out The Truth, stool diaries
Note:
This is not my thesis project! My thesis project will try to address the issue of responsibility and how people feel responsible about themselves, their country and its policies that can include but is not limited to green activism, health system, education system, etc...
This following project could be part of it as it relates to how people can be moved to feel responsibility towards their body, to motivate them to eat healthy.
I would like to address the problem of obesity (and other health problems) related to not eating healthy. Although organizations are trying to tackle these health problems with many different types of program, I would like to offer another method. Like quitting smoking, eating healthy is a decision that needs to be taken on an individual level. One needs to fully realize the impact of nutrition on their body to get convinced that they have control over it. I wanted to make people realize that what they eat does in fact affect their health. “You are what you eat.” With this in mind, I propose to create a facebook application (possibly tied to a website for people who do not use facebook), that allows users to upload photographs of their daily stools and urine, every time they used the toilet. The application will allow the user to organize the photos by date and time and healthiness.
If possible, I would also like to allow the software to analyze the images (color will be easy, but consistency will be a challenge) and along with the time (frequency) the application will give advice based on its analyses. The user will have a collection in front of her/him as proof because they will be able to tell the difference as they track when they have eaten healthier and when they have chosen to eat “junk food.” The archive of stools and urine will help users keep track of their digestive problems, will note improvement and regressions. People might look at their stools everyday but not process it all. This will emphasize it and hopefully will engrave that thought in the mind. When someone will see their stools and think “oh, that’s my fatty burger and large soft drink” that’s causing this pain and hopefully make them want to eat healthier, I will have arrived to my goal.
Stools are a big indicator of healthy diet. The color, consistency (or form) and frequency of stools are good ways to check on a diet. I intend to use as much medical research as possible. Here are a few tables that show categories to be considered.
source: 
http://www.mayoclinic.com/print/stool-color/AN00772/METHOD=print
source: http://aboutconstipation.org/site/about-constipation/treatment/stool-form-guide
The idea of examining one’s own daily excrement in relation to what the person ate is important to make users assume responsibility instead of blaming the system or medicine not coming up with a “magic pill” that would solve their problems. The archive could also act as a record for doctors. The software would be able to produce graphs that could be helpful in pointing out specific problems. Users will have the choice of making their archive public or private, and will also be able to share it with specific friends of their choice (and specialist). For some women, this will also allow them to track their menstrual periods.
I chose facebook as the intermediary primarily for the traffic. More than 300 million people access the site around the world. It is also in a setting where people are accustomed to uploading their private photos and are aware of the private/public settings. It has a wide range of age groups: from teens right into senior ages. In fact, the seniors are the fastest growing demographic for users of facebook. The application can reach anyone no matter their age, education, nationality or location.
In addition to the software, I would like to design the hardware device that would capture and upload the images instantaneously. A button will be placed on the top side of the handle so a photo will be taken right after the person is done. The device will be wireless and will upload the images directly into the online database, which facebook will pull its data from.
As an extra feature, I would also like to make this archive available for their respective owners to do whatever they like with their images, in the same manner as the flickr API. One possibility would be to create sub-applications like a mosaic application, where the images would be tiled to form another or a portrait. The application will be designed to be straightforward and not be cumbersome so as not to discourage people from using it. It is enough of a hassle to set up a camera in the bathroom, the application will have to be as easy and painless as possible to keep it sustainable and encouraging for people to use it for long terms.
Challenges:
twitter
flickr
facebook
Equipment