Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices and services
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology
Motivating reflection about health within the family: the use of goal setting and tailored feedback
User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction
Behavior wizard: a method for matching target behaviors with solutions
PERSUASIVE'10 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Persuasive Technology
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Goal setting can be a powerful method for persuading individuals to adopt an active lifestyle. In order for this to be the case, it is important to set concrete and challenging goals, and to strongly commit to them. In this study, we explored how people set goals for physical activity and how these goals were reflected in self-regulatory mechanisms to drive goal attainment. Our approach is novel in two ways: first, we used an unobtrusive wearable sensor to accurately measure physical activity throughout the day rather than rely on self-report, and second, we provided individuals with feedback about the contribution of their common daily activities (e.g., household activities) to their physical activity level. Our results showed that on the basis of this feedback, participants were able to indicate to what degree they intended to change their behavior. Nevertheless, they failed to set concrete goals that matched their intentions precisely. In particular, we observed that overall the set goals were in accordance with intentions (i.e., goals were set in the desired direction), but we saw a strong tendency to focus on enhancing vigorous activity at the cost of moderate intensity activity. This suggests that many individuals have intentions to change and goal setting support is needed to compose goals that accurately reflect these intentions. Technology-mediated interventions might be ideal to support individuals along that path.