Pitstop by Amy Steindl

Every year we search our Scottish Art Colleges for projects which relate to behaviours which may impact on cancer risk. This year we were delighted to come across a project by Amy Steindl entitled ‘PitStop’. Amy’s concept was to develop a service to promote worksite wellbeing by encouraging employees to walk to local independent cafes in their break times. The service asks the user how many steps they have walked that day to offer the furthest appropriate café. In addition to cafes the location of park benches is also given if users have brought their own food. Amy researched the need for this service by interviewing office workers to see what they would like and reviewing the literature on physical activity and cancer among other things. She identified that some office blocks are so well equipped with for example on site coffee shops that employees have no need to leave the building and spotted the gap which she hopes PitSpot will fill. Users can monitor their own progress in visiting all the available cafes and motivate themselves to travel further afield.