1% BETTER EVERY DAY: The power of small wins
Creating emotionally intelligent fitness tech to boost health gains
Smartwatches and fitness apps promise to help us battle obesity and prevent diseases. But those daily targets our technology sets for us can soon start to seem like too much of a slog. That’s because most fitness aids are designed with a focus on technology and data engineering, not on the interventions they deliver. Hourly prompts to move become an annoyance when you naturally do more exercise at a certain time of day. A line that fills with color as you approach your goal doesn’t fill you with a sense of achievement. These messages don’t factor in what drives us to exercise or when we feel most energetic. They don’t make the emotional connections that could help us to achieve more.
But we quickly identified a way to help improve that picture. Around 85% of the country’s citizens had a smartwatch, which would provide valuable data on individuals’ activity levels. To unlock that information, we developed an app that captures smartwatch data and takes it to a cloud-based environment for processing. Next, we needed to find the most effective way to use it. “At Fractal, we believe that a fusion of design, behavioral science and AI can create that emotional connection.“
At Fractal, we believe that a fusion of design, behavioral science and AI can create that emotional connection. We put that into practice during a recent project to help a government health agency encourage healthier habits among its citizens. Comprehending the challenge Countering obesity was the agency’s biggest concern. Health data showed that around 65% of the country’s population is obese or overweight. In addition, abundant, rich food is integral to its culture. As a result, the project focused on encouraging citizens to take more daily steps – which wouldn’t be easy because the hot and humid climate does little to encourage physical activity.
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Volume 10 ai:sight by Fractal
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