Educational innovation: Design and publication of applications on Google Play to adopt a healthy and sustainable diet to face climate change

Abstract

Current climate change is caused by man's industrial activities and is recognized as a public health threat. And adopt a healthy and sustainable diet because it has a low environmental impact and contributes to reducing diseases such as obesity, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. And the transmission of this evidence is diverse: from the classic lectures, whether academic or for the general public, through the development of infographics and the adoption of digital technology; and from this digital perspective, and especially today, with the current pandemic, it is necessary to reach audiences in the most remote regions; In this way, two applications have been designed that are already published on Google Play. The objective was the design of applications that inform the public of the impact of climate change on public health and that this impact can be reduced by adopting a healthy and sustainable diet. To meet the objective, between January and September 2021, two applications were designed using Unity (https://unity.com/es): one of the most advanced engines for video game development. As a result, the 3 applications were obtained and are already available on Google Play and can be downloaded from the following links: 1) Healthy and sustainable diet (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AlexSalazar.DietaSaludableSostenible);
2) Food Carbon footprint (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AlexanderSalazarCeballos.
FoodCarbonFootprint ); 3) Eat Healthy and Save the Planet (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AlexSalazar.
ComeSanoSalvaElPlaneta&hl=es_CO&gl=US ). The design of applications for science communication is rather recent. Its dissemination is difficult because Colombia is not a “digital ecosystem” territory, although digital social networks are used, but knowledge is not shared. In the design of applications and video games, interactivity and immersion must be taken into account. Limitations, it is necessary to know the skills of the design team to differentiate between applications, which were the ones developed in this work, and which are generally based on clicking, or developing video games but these require a team with more skills, more technology. and time, but video games can reach a large young audience en masse.