Title: MeGo
1Me-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
2Me-Go Purpose
- 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 youth to develop good eating habits and
help kids make the connection between diet and
good health.
3Me-Go User Description
Middle school children who should be developing
healthy lifestyle habits
- They are
- Ages 11-14
- Mobile phones users
- Using computers at school and/or home
And... They have parents who have access to the
Internet either at work and/or at home
4Features on wireless phone
- Synchronous voice communication
- Asynchronous text messaging
- Input what users eat
- Input exercise users do
- Pedometer functionality
- Clock
- Synchronize with a server
5- To begin with
- A user sets his weight, height, ideal sleeping
time and fitness challenge, his target number
of steps to walk. - Daily
- User eats a meal and provides information on what
he consumed to Me-Go. - Me-Go's pedometer counts the number of steps a
user walks user 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.
6Ideation
Storyboards
7Ideation - Character Exploration
8A Week in the Life with Me-Go
On Sunday evening, Aditya visits www.mego.com 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 sons 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 Adityas 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.
Four other kids on Adityas Me-Go Team also use
Me-Go to record their diet and exercise activity.
At any point in the day, Aditya can view whos
walked the most steps so far today. Avatars
representing other teammates appear on Adityas
Me-Go when they are walking and their pedometers
are engaged.
On Saturday, Aditya logs onto www.mego.com to see
how well he met his fitness goals for the week.
He also compares his teammates performance
against his own.
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.
9Prototype of Me-Go
10Features/Functionality
- Fitness challenge and feedback
- A user sets fitness goals daily and weekly.
- Once a day, the Me-Go server sends a health tip
of the day and feedback analysis to the user and
his parents. - Parents work and discuss with kids about their
progress, or share the healthy lifestyle through
having meals and exercise together. - Teachers may provide physical activities or
periodical events or competition to the class.
11Features/Functionality
Input
Server
Action
Feedback
Kids Parents Teachers
12Theoretical 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 - 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
13User Testing of Me-Go Concept
- Subjects
- two seventh grade girls
- neither owns a mobile phone buthave 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?
14User Testing Results
- Character
- Rejection of our Me-Go character
- Use of real people either parents or celebrities
would be effective in encouraging and scolding
users into action - Goals
- While these two middle schoolers try to eat
right, they do not set goals centered around
nutrition - Confirmation of our guess that middle schoolers
do form goals around fitness - Message
- Negative reinforcement especially from authority
figure would work even if automated - Rewards
- Subjects preferred rewards of games, music, and
money
15Shortcomings of Me-Go 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.
16Expansion - What else is possible?
- Other form factors or ID possibilities
- Food intake information input system accepts
information directly from school cafeterias as
well as restaurants to automatically feed
information on the specific meals ordered to the
user's database. - Food intake information input Alternatively,
system could incorporate a camera, scale, and
image recognition system to determine what the
user has on her/his plate before and after eating
to calculate the calories consumed. - Exercise information input use GPS capabilities
of mobile handsets to allow automatic calculation
of distance traveled in when user is
self-propelled. User only needs to input fashion
of travel (e.g. bicycle, rollerblades, etc.) for
the system to calculate caloric use. - Exercise information input download 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.
17Expansion - What else is possible?
- Other features and interactions
- Proactive encouragement of immediate 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. - Proactive encouragement of regular scheduled
exercise opportunities. Me-Go reminds users when
to sign up for exercise classes or sports teams.
18Next Steps in Me-Go Design Process
- Ethnographic study of target group to gather
better information on habits and behaviors - Iterative prototyping and user testing to test
hypotheses and guide further product development - Test audio and 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)
19Me-Go Summary
- Goal Promote 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, Competition,
Cooperation, Recognition - Room to Grow future product iterations increase
Me-Gos effectiveness as both an educational tool
and a business platform
20Evaluation of Captology Design Project
How well does the design idea fit into the realm
of captology? 0 1
2 3 4
5 6 7
How well does the design match the design
brief? 0 1
2 3 4
5 6 7
How viable/convincing is the proposed solution?
0 1 2
3 4 5
6 7
21Evaluation continued
How clever/insightful is the proposed solution?
0 1 2
3 4 5
6 7
How effectively did the presentation
communicate? 0 1
2 3 4
5 6 7
How well does the document communicate?
0 1 2
3 4 5
6 7
Bonus Points
22Additional Comments
Overall remarks or additional comments here