This blog builds upon the topic of my patent publication.
Publication link: https://priorart.ip.com/IPCOM/000259353
The Problem
Whether it be due to the Monday to Friday work life, being in full time education or perhaps even the prevalent use of technology keeping people indoors, there is a clear demographic that there is a general health issue in today's society. We have trended towards accomplishing things through technology when possible, for example: shopping online as opposed to in-store; video gaming daily with friends instead of meeting up; and more. We have become more sedentary and choose to stay within the comfort of our homes when possible. For others, they simply do not have the time to exercise as their daily schedule does not allow them to.
Whilst wearable health technologies, which easily track steps taken/calories burned amongst other metrics, have created a positive trend by inspiring fitness challenges such as walking 10,000 steps a day [1], it seems that this solution is not enough. Whilst FitBit "sold 13.9 million wearables in 2018", this figure is "a decline of 9 percent" [2] from the previous year, which may show that just the development of fitness tracking technologies is not enough to solve the issue.
It seems that there are two main problems with regard to promoting a healthier society:
- Motivation to carry out exercise.
- The time and energy to do so.
For someone who clocks in early and leaves late from work or school, It is difficult for them to find the time to exercise easily and reach their daily fitness goals that they have set, with "46% of the working UK public say[ing] they do not have enough time for daily exercise" [3]. Whilst the development of these wearable technologies are clearly a step in the right direction, we must find a way for people to easily incorporate exercise into their daily life to help further push a positive health agenda globally.
The market is currently saturated with fitness applications which have similar features:
- Track your run and get live metric calculations (distance, time, calories burned etc)
- Manually map out possible running paths and get estimations on the calories burned/estimated completion time
- Achieve milestone rewards and take part in challenges whilst comparing your data with others to inspire competitiveness
- Performance improvement plans based off of your previous run to help you train and beat your time
Map Applications:
Examples: Google Maps, Apple Maps etc.
- Let you find a route from A to B based off of fastest journey time, and provide alternative journey routes based off of different modes of transports (walking, cycling, public transport etc.)
- Analyses your daily travel data (time you leave/arrive, your destinations, mode of transport etc.) to provide notifications on when to leave to reach your destination on time
The Pros:
- Useful, easy-to-use applications which have a clear goal: helping you track your running times and improve them.
- Motivates users to continue exercising by providing goals for them to achieve
- Provides personalised improvement plans that help you get better and more fit
- Can link these applications with smart watches to more accurately attain performance data
The Cons:
- Requires users to already be going out of their way to exercise, meaning that they cannot use the applications if they do not have time to work out.
- Whilst many provide the base app for free, these applications normally require further purchases to unlock their full features, only providing the most basic of features such as the tracking of their run .
- Map applications simply display the routes based off fastest time for each mode of transport, and are not health-focused.
Map applications, meet a better alternative route feature.
We believe the changes we make should assist users to accomplish their goals, not completely change and do the action for them.
With all the new technological advancements that have been happening within the fitness industry, we dont think a crazy new solution that attempts to revolutionise fitness is needed for the time being.
The way to inspire those who lack the time/motivation to partake in daily exercise isn't to build new technologies, but instead figure out how to incorporate the ones that already exist into their free time/daily schedule.
Rather than have users download a whole seperate application, we believe that adapting existing map apps to encourage exercise is the way forward. This is how we propose to do this:
- Suggest alternative routes of travel using dynamic transport methods (multiple modes of transports in one journey), based off of daily pre-set goals.
- Link existing wearable health technologies with the application to measure fitness metrics as most map applications do not measure speed.
- Incorporate a detour functionality into the routes (manually set or suggested) to allow for more calories to be burned in the journey.
If users can't find the time to workout, why not create that time for them?
Example use case:
Melissa Fanier, 26, Married, London, Software Developer
Melissa works a 9am-6pm software developer job at an investment bank in central London. She normally leaves home to take the underground at 8.20am to arrive 30 minutes later. She wants to be more active and burn 2500 calories a day, and has inserted this goal into google maps, but struggles to find the time to do so as she has to care for her two kids in the evening.
On Sunday night she receives a push notification from Google Maps suggesting that there are alternative routes available for her journey which can help burn an estimated additional 150-350 calories. After opening the notification, Google Maps opens and Melissa is able to see two suggested routes. The first is a route which suggests she walks to the nearest public bike station and cycle half the journey to an underground station, taking the train the rest of the way. The second is similar but suggests a further cycling distance and a walk for the remainder of the journey.
Both of these scenarios arrive at 8.50am, but give slightly earlier start times to ensure being on time to work, and different estimated amounts of burned calories. Melissa chooses the second route, pairs her Apple SmartWatch and cycles/walks to work, burning an estimated 390 calories. Her data from her smart device is transferred to the application, as well as the IOS Health app.
What did this accomplish?
From this use case, we can see that rather than taking up dedicated time out of Melissa's schedule to fit in some form of exercise, we have found a way to adapt her daily routine with multiple options to help achieve her fitness goals.
We attempted to integrate exercise into her daily schedule without affecting her other responsibilities with her children. We suggested alternative routes and methods of transporation, with a visible goal and reasoning behind it to help motivate her whilst giving her the freedom of choice.
Technologies and Ubiquitous Computing Concepts Used
Context Awareness
- The application makes use of contextual information such as location, time of day, previous data in similar scenarios (previous journeys) and the customised daily goals the user has inputted.
- The application itself has the means to gather information from external services as it assimilates traffic information to provide the basic route and deduce feasible alternative routes.
- Uses temperature to evaluate when it is safer to use certain transportation modes (if heavy winds and rain, it will not suggest cycling routes for example). An example how is shown in the GrovePi video below.
Internet of Things
- The feature uses the same IoT devices that map applications, however one key difference is allowing for the use of wearable technologies such as Apple SmartWatches to help accurately track the exercise.
Location
- These map applications use GPS technology and gather anonymous location information from each mobile device that uses it to determine possible traffic and estimate route times, amongst other news reports/sensors. [7]
- As mentioned in context awareness, the location of the user is used in nearly all aspects of the application: determining current location; route from current position to destination; modes of transports in the local area etc.
Expanding on Raspberry Pi Practicals
One practical links closely with this application because it uses Location Awareness, which ties closely with both the context and location UbiComp concepts, as the application determines your location and receives information from external services such as the weather, traffic etc..
References:
[1] 10000 Steps: https://www.10000steps.org.au/articles/counting-steps/
[2] Fitbit: https://www.thurrott.com/wearables/fitbit/200554/fitbit-sold-5-6-million-wearables-in-q4-13-9-million-in-2018
[3] Employee Exercise Survey: https://engageemployee.com/nearly-half-workers-busy-exercise/
[4] NikeRunClub: https://www.nike.com/gb/en_gb/c/running/nike-run-club
[5] RunKeeper: https://runkeeper.com/
[6] MapMyRun: https://www.mapmyrun.com/
[7] Google Maps Location Policies: https://policies.google.com/technologies/location-data
Photos: https://www.pexels.com/