Increasing Activity using Social Support Through Cell Phones

1. Increasing Activity using Social Support Through Cell Phones Katherine Everitt, Sunny Consolvo, Ian Smith, James Landay UW Affiliates Meeting, Thursday, November 3, 2005

2. Motivation • Overall Goal: Improve health • Over 60 million US adults are obese, which increases the risk of many health conditions (Nat’l Center for Health Stats) • Studies have shown that • Physical activity is critical to maintaining fitness, reducing weight and improving health • Increasing the number of steps taken per day leads to health benefits • Social support can help people become and stay more physically active • How can we integrate fitness support into people’s busy, mobile lives?

3. mobile computing + social influence = increased step count Approach

4. Houston Application Enter step count View and share on Nokia 6600 Cell phone Wear Omron Pedometer

5. Houston Software Harvester Server Email cell phone service provider SMS

6. Three Week In-Situ Study • Three groups of female friends • Groups of 4-5 women age 28-42 • First week: Baseline version • Determine normal patterns • 2nd and 3rd week: • Group 1 & 2: Sharing version • Group 3: Personal Journal version

7. Baseline Version • Baseline: • Enter/ Edit steps for today, yesterday • View final daily counts for last 7 days

8. Personal Journal Version • Baseline: • Enter/ Edit steps for today, yesterday • View final daily counts for last 7 days • + Personal Journal • View daily goal and progress • Receive recognition for meeting the goal (*) • View daily count average for last 7 days • View a list of recent comments

9. Sharing Version • Baseline: • Enter/ Edit steps for today, yesterday • View final daily counts for last 7 days • and • View daily goal and progress • Receive recognition for meeting the goal (*) • View daily count average for last 7 days • View a list of recent comments • + Sharing • Send step count and optional comments • See buddies’ progress wrt goals • See trending info: last 7 days, recent comments, goals, averages • Request a step count

10. Percentage of days goals met Sharing Not Sharing Results • Generally positive feedback • Fitting walk into everyday life • Walks as get-togethers • Walks as family activities • People were motivated by different factors • Goal • Friends’ awareness • Not motivated

11. Design Requirements • Give users proper credit • Provide personal awareness of activity level • Support Social Influence • Consider practical constraints of users’ lifestyles

12. DESIGN REQUIREMENTS Give users proper credit • Give users proper credit • Deceptive Measurements (represent all?) • Sufficient Information (why) “You can take a lot of little steps to get somewhere. And wow, your step count sounds great, you know? Or you can take two normal steps, you know? And so – and it didn’t factor that out.” “It [the pedometer] was good at step count. But like, for example, one day I went bike riding for 10 miles. And I don’t think it registered anything for that entire time. So you’ll look on my step count and say, ‘Oh, you only did 3,000. That’s not an active day.”

13. DESIGN REQUIREMENTS Provide personal awareness of activity level • History of past behaviour • Current Status • Goal Performance “This time I could look back and know exactly which days I’d done what…There’s a certain amount of mental demand on my time that I don’t want to spend energy thinking, did I work out that much yesterday? Did I not?” “I thought it was interesting to see how many steps you really took in a day. And a lot of times you think you’re busy. You think you’re moving around, but you’re really not getting that many steps. “

14. DESIGN REQUIREMENTS Support Social Influence • Support Social Influence • Social Pressure • Social Support • Communication “I wasn’t gonna let them see that I wasn’t gonna meet my goal.” “We were all at a party and we were sharing our goals…Somebody had really high steps that day and I’m like, I’m gonna get high steps tomorrow” (and she did). ” “I got a couple of ‘wows’ and couple of ‘good jobs’ and several custom messages. It’s fun. It’s a – it’s a fun form of communication.”

15. DESIGN REQUIREMENTS Consider practical constraints of users’ lifestyles • Can the sensor be worn? • Is it something that will continue to provide a benefit over time? • How well does it capture real activities? • Can it go in the water? “So it’s like my main source of exercise [climbing] doesn’t register.”

16. Future Work “it [the pedometer] didn’t seem to care whether you went up and down hills or whether you walk on flats, so why kill yourself?” • Better trend reporting • Understanding goal setting • Longitudinal effect on behaviour change • Beyond the pedometer • Measurement of overall physical activity • Use the UW / Intel Multi-Sensor Board to get a more sophisticated measurement of overall physical activity

17. Conclusions • Houston is a cell phone application which supports step count sharing within a group • From our 3 week in situ pilot study we identified the following design requirements • Give users proper credit for activities • Provide personal awareness of activity level • Support social influence • Consider the practical constraints of users’ lifestyles. • Motivation is very dependant on the individual and the context

18. mobile computing + social influence = increased step count Questions? UbiFit Houston: Katherine Everitt, Sunny Consolvo, Ian Smith, James Landay

19. Screenshots a)

20. Related work BodyMedia sensewear armband Pocket Pikachu Breakout for two TAXC Fortius training bike