Me-Go A conceptual captology design by Chika Ando, Andrea Kulkarni, Ken Rafanan, and Lori Takeuchi Design Challenge To design a mobile phone application that effectively motivates young students to achieve their goals. Time limit: 12 hours per person

Persuasive Purpose Persuade middle school aged kids to live a healthy lifestyle. Foster enjoyment of exercise and help youngsters make the connection between exercise and good health. Motivate kids to develop good eating habits and help kids make the connection between diet and good health.

User Description Middle school children working towards healthy lifestyle goals They are: Ages Using a computer at school or home Parents also have access to the Internet

Features on wireless phone Synchronous voice communication Asynchronous text messaging Input what they eat Input exercise they do Pedometer functionality Clock Synchronize with a server GPS

To begin with A user sets his weight, height, ideal sleeping time and “fitness challenge”, his target steps. Daily Eat a meal and input what he eats on the phone. Pedometer counts the number of steps a user walks and inputs other exercise manually. The condition of users is synchronized with avatars on the virtual playground on the server. All kids can look at them and observe the condition of friends. Features/Functionality

Ideation Snapshots Storyboards Brainstorming

Ideation - Character Exploration

A Week with Me-Go Four other kids on Aditya’s Me-Go Team also use Me-Go to record their diet and exercise activity. At any point in the day, Aditya can view who’s walked the most steps so far today. Avatars representing other teammates appear on Aditya’s Me-Go when they are walking and their pedometers are engaged. On Saturday, Aditya logs onto to see how well he met his fitness goals for the week. He also compares his teammates’ performance against his own. On Sunday evening, Aditya visits on his home computer to enter in his weekly diet and exercise goals. This week, Aditya decides to limit his junk food intake to three servings, and walk at least one mile per day. Pizza or turkey sandwich for lunch? Aditya chooses the pizza, which he enters into his Me-Go. Mrs. Johri tracks her son’s entries from work, and calls Aditya to discuss his decision to eat pizza. Before lunch tomorrow, Me-Go will conveniently remind him to think twice about ordering pizza again. A built-in pedometer tracks Aditya’s steps all day long. Aditya also enters the half-hour of soccer practice he had after school and the two extra flights of stairs he climbed between second and third periods into Me-Go. At the end of each week, the team is awarded points for cumulative achievement among members. The goal is to outscore other Me-Go teams around the country. The Web site keeps records of past scores so that Aditya can track progress of both team and individual performances over the long run.

Prototype of Me-go

Features/Functionality Fitness challenge and feedback Once a day, the server sends a health tip of the day and feedback analysis to a kid and his parents. A user sets fitness goals daily and weekly. A teacher provides physical activities or periodical events or competition to the class. Parents work and discuss with kids about their progress, or share the healthy lifestyle through having meals and exercise together.

Features/Functionality Eat Walk/ Exercise Action Input Kids/ Parents Pedometer/ manual input Server Calculate/ Analysis Feedback Kids Teacher Parents

Theoretical Justifications Kairos : Me-Go identifies opportune moments to guide kid to make healthy decisions Convenience : Kids can enter in diet and exercise data on the spot Social Facilitation : Avatars and ability to view teammates’ step counts encourage kids to perform target behaviors Social Comparison : At Web site, kids can compare own performance with peers

Theoretical Justifications Intrinsic Motivators: Competition: Kids compete to see who can walk the most steps Cooperation: As a team, kids work together to beat other Me-Go teams, or to simply outscore their own team records Recognition: Individuals and teams are publicly rewarded before the nationwide Me-Go community for meeting/exceeding goals

User Testing Subjects two seventh grade girls neither owns a mobile phone but have friends who do Primary questions Would a cartoon character avatar be persuasive? Do middle schoolers set nutritional and fitness goals? Secondary Questions What rewards would be motivating? What types of messages would be persuasive?

User Testing Results Message Negative reinforcement especially from authority figure would work even if automated Rewards Subjects preferred rewards of games, music, and money

User Testing Results Message Negative reinforcement especially from authority figure would work even if automated Rewards Subjects preferred rewards of games, music, and money

Shortcomings of Design Many middle schoolers do not have mobile phones. Current design assumes adequate signal coverage. Need for user input of food intake reduces convenience and increases potential for error on exact food intake. Also causes need for user training. Need for user input of exercise information reduces convenience and increases potential for error. Also causes need for user training. Users may be tempted to cheat to succeed.

Expansion - What else is possible? Food intake information input – system automatically accepts meal information from school cafeterias and restaurants. Exercise information input – take physical activity information directly from user's body by constantly measuring the heartrate. This information could be combined with smartscale readings of body weight and body fat to arrive at a fairly accurate reading of daily caloric use.

Expansion - What else is possible? Proactive encouragement of exercise opportunities. System informs user when physical activity of interest is available. For example, “a pick-up basketball game is forming at your local gym” or “the park next to you has a highly rated two mile hike.”

Next Steps in Design Process Ethnographic study of target group to gather better information on habits and behaviors Development of prototypes for more extensive user testing to test hypotheses and guide further product development Testing audio & visual messages for persuasiveness Identify input method for optimal convenience Build out web interface Begin discussions with potential telecom partners to identify salient technical and business requirements Identify appropriate opportunities for cross-marketing (e.g. sport apparel)

Me-Go Summary Goal: Promote a healthy lifestyle for middle school students Medium: mobile phone delivery of persuasive application making links between diet, exercise and good health apparent Methods: Kairos principle, Convenience, Social Facilitation, Social Comparison Room to Grow: Future product iterations increase Me-Go’s effectiveness as both an educational tool and a business platform