Stanford University, Fall 2002

1
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
2
Me-Go

• 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.

3
User Description
Middle school children in general who do not pay
attention to their healthy lifestyle

• They are likely
• Ages 11-14
• Using computer at school or home
• Parents also have an access to the Internet

4
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

5
Features/Functionality

• 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.

6
Ideation

• Brainstorming

Storyboards

• Snapshots

7
Ideation - Character Exploration
8
A 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.
9
Prototype of Me-go
10
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.

11
Features/Functionality
Input
Server
Action
Feedback
Kids/ Parents
Eat
Calculate/ Analysis
Kids Teacher Parents
Walk/ Exercise
Pedometer/ manual input
12
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
• 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

13
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 scholars set nutritional and fitness
  goals?
• Secondary Questions
• What rewards would be motivating?
• What types of messages would be persuasive?

14
User 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 scholars try to eat right,
  they do not set goals centred around nutrition
• Confirmation of our guess that middle scholars 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

15
Shortcomings of Design

• Many middle scholars 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.

16
Expansion - 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 and image
  recognition system to see what the user has on
  her/his plate before and after eating to
  calculate the calories consumed.
• Exercise information input take physical
  activity information directly from user's body by
  constantly measuring the heart rate. This
  information could be combined with smart scale
  readings of body weight and body fat to arrive at
  a fairly accurate reading of daily caloric use.
• Other features and interactions
• 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.

17
Next Steps in Design Process

• Ethnographic study of target group to gather
  better information on habits and behaviours
• Development of prototypes for more extensive user
  testing to test hypotheses and guide further
  product development
• Testing 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)

18
Me-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
• Room to Grow future product iterations increase
  Me-Gos effectiveness as both an educational tool
  and a business platform

19
Evaluation 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
20
Evaluation 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