Bradford student develops smartphone app to help with understanding of body image

Lisa Pepper, a 2nd year Psychology PhD student is investigating young children's body image dissatisfaction as part of her PhD research. In particular, she is interested in developing more accurate ways of assessing young children's beliefs about muscularity.

Lisa came up with an idea for a mobile app that children could touch to manipulate images of different body shapes. Lisa’s lecturers then worked with the School of Computing to set the task of creating this app to one of its students.

Dan Pod accepted the challenge and has produced a prototype of a mobile app according to Lisa's specifications.

Lisa Pepper says, "The development of a body image assessment mobile app has been the focus of my PhD studies for the last 11 months, so the chance to draw on the expertise at the Department of Computing has been invaluable.

“Dan and our respective supervisors have shown great commitment to the project and it has been exciting to see the two disciplines working together. It has been very rewarding to see my idea come to fruition and with the continuing support of the Division of Psychology and the Department of Computing I’m looking forward to developing the project further".

Dan Pod says, "Working on this year's dissertation has been the most rewarding experience of my university studies. The University's hands on approach allowed me to build a system focusing on elements from both disciplines. I look forward to seeing my system deployed in a live environment and I am confident that the University's bright minds will carry on my research".

The project has been awarded The Best Computing Final Year Project Award this year, with the inputs and possible impacts being highly commended by the Board of Examiners.

The academics involved were Dr Gill Waters and Dr Ellie Bryant from Psychology and Prof Dan Neagu and Dr Yang Lan from Computing.