Julie Maitland

Shakra: tracking and sharing daily activity levels with unaugmented mobile phones

This paper explores the potential for use of an unaugmented commodity technology—the mobile phone—as a health promotion tool. We describe a prototype application that tracks the daily exercise activities of people, using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to analyse GSM cell signal strength and visibility to estimate a user’s movement. In a short-term study of the prototype that shared activity information amongst groups of friends, we found that awareness encouraged reflection on, and increased motivation for, daily activity. The study raised concerns regarding the reliability of ANN-facilitated activity detection in the ‘real world’. We describe some of the details of the pilot study and introduce a promising new approach to activity detection that has been developed in response to some of the issues raised by the pilot study, involving Hidden Markov Models (HMM), task modelling and unsupervised calibration. We conclude with our intended plans to develop the system further in order to carry out a longer-term clinical trial.

Increasing the Awareness of Daily Activity Levels with Pervasive Computing

Public health promotion technology should be accessible to the general public at which it is aimed. This paper explores the potential for use of an unaugmented commodity technology - the mobile phone - as a health promotion tool. We describe a prototype application that tracks the daily exercise activities of people carrying phones, using fluctuation in signal strength to estimate a users movement. In a short-term study of the prototype that shared activity information amongst groups of friends, we found that awareness encouraged reflection on, and increased motivation for, daily activity. We describe some of the details of the pilot study, and conclude with our intended plans to develop the system further in order to carry out a longer-term clinical trial

Designing for peer involvement in weight management

The problems of obesity and overweight are commonly cited as the motivation behind recent efforts to develop technology that promotes physical activity. Prompted by the social nature of many of the emerging applications, this paper presents our investigation of the sociality of weight management as experienced by a broad demographic of individuals. Our findings highlight the broad scope of peer involvement, and provide insight into the context and mechanics of related interaction that may prove valuable in informing the next generation of peer-based weight management technology for use in everyday life.

Self-monitoring, self-awareness, and self-determination in cardiac rehabilitation

The application of self-monitoring technologies to the problem of promoting health-related behavioural change has been an active area of research for many years. This paper reports on our investigations into health-related behavioural change within the context of a cardiac rehabilitation programme, and considers the role that self-monitoring currently plays and may play in the future. We carried out semi-structured interviews with nineteen cardiac rehabilitation participants. Our main findings relate to distinctions between implicit and conscious change, tensions between cardiac rehabilitation and everyday life, the importance of self-awareness and self-determination, and an overall reluctance towards unnecessary self-monitoring. In view of these findings, we then offer suggestions as to how self-monitoring technologies can be designed to suit this particular context of use.

Food and interaction design: designing for food in everyday life

Food and interaction design presents an interesting challenge to the HCI community in attending to the pervasive nature of food, the socio-cultural differences in food practices and a changing global foodscape. To design for meaningful and positive interactions it is essential to identify daily food practices and the opportunities for the design of technology to support such practices. This workshop brings together a community of researchers and practitioners in human-food interaction to attend to the practical and theoretical difficulties in designing for human-food interactions in everyday life. Through a practical field study and workshop we explore themes of food experiences, health and wellbeing, sustainability and alternative food cultures.

Persuasion not required Improving our understanding of the sociotechnical context of dietary behavioural change

In view of the well-acknowledged inequalities in health between the rich and the poor, populations of low socioeconomic status stand to benefit most from advances in technology designed to promote health- related behavioural change. In this paper we investigate attitudes towards diet and the perceived barriers to making positive changes from the perspective of the primary caregivers of seventeen families with low socioeconomic status. Participants were aware of the weaknesses their familys dietary habits and were motivated to make changes, but lacked financial, strategic, and social resources needed to do so. Based on our analysis, the current trend of raising awareness and motivation to change does not appear to address the needs of this population. We call for research to investigate systems that address existing gaps in health-related communication and empower people to take practical steps towards achieving realistic goals; matching any attempt to motivate change with an attempt to facilitate change.

Technological approaches to promoting physical activity

This paper reflects on the HCI communitys current and potential contributions to the problem of promoting physical activity. It does so by first presenting a conceptual overview of existing research, and then draws from the findings of a study of attitudes towards health and health-related behaviour to frame a critical review of the current state of the art. In doing so, we identify an area of outstanding need and opportunity for future research: conveying the value of physical activity to those unconvinced of its importance.

Bridging the information gap: collaborative technology design with low-income at-risk families to engender healthy behaviors

The leading cause of death in the United States is cardiovascular disease. Formative studies have shown that technological interventions may help effect lifestyle changes, however there has been minimal research to ascertain appropriate interventions for at risk, low-income populations. We conducted two participatory-based design workshops with nine caregivers and thirteen children to help determine suitable interventions for an at-risk low socioeconomic population. The major themes that emerged from the workshop for caregivers were their need for assistive systems that would help with everything from parenting to budgeting time and resources. Researchers in human computer interaction would benefit from our findings by developing a holistic sense of barriers encountered by low-income families to improve their health. We conclude the paper with a discussion of design implications.

Towards negotiation as a framework for health promoting technology

In this paper we reflect on the findings of three empirical studies of health-related behavioural change and existing work in the technological and sociomedical domains, to critique emerging technological approaches to promoting health-related behavioural change. The critique challenges what appear to be implicit assumptions about technologys role in promoting health-related behavioural change. It prompts a consideration of whose agenda in being pursued, whose values are being encapsulated, and argues for a rethink and reorientation of technological interventions in this domain. As an alternative to the existing approach we suggest a shift in focus from behavioural change to health promotion, and offer negotiation as a potential framework for future innovations in this area.

Pervasive healthcare: from orange alerts to mindcare

This purpose of this article is to help the reader understand the research area of pervasive healthcare and pervasive healthcare computing. It defines the term, and discusses the 2011 conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, held in Dublin, Ireland. In particular, it examines the workshops proposed for the conference, highlighting the current exploratory research on the fringe of the area of pervasive computing, before discussing the implications for mainstream healthcare.