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A central challenge in weight management is the difficulty of overcoming desires for excessive and unhealthy food. Yet, studies show that when people are able to resist their desires for unhealthy choices, they experience pride and satisfaction. In order to alleviate the former and support the latter, we designed, implemented and tested a mobile application for improving snacking behavior. Our application delivers a food craving reduction intervention at the moment of need and allows users to track how often they successfully resisted cravings. Our craving reduction intervention is based on recent research that shows that food cravings can be reduced through imagery techniques. We conducted a week-long evaluation of our application, comparing the effectiveness of our application to a basic tracking application. We found that our imagery application significantly reduced both overall snacking and unhealthy snacking compared to a simple snack-tracking application.

BACKGROUND Employees in the office setting are more likely to remain physically inactive. Physical inactivity has become one of the major barriers to overcoming the risk of anxiety, depression, coronary heart disease, certain cancers, and type 2 diabetes. Currently, there is a gap in mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) for workers to promote physical activity (PA) in the workplace. Studies on behaviour change theories have concluded that health applications generally lack the use of theoretical constructs. OBJECTIVE The objective was to study the feasibility of a persuasive application aimed at encouraging PA among employees and to understand the motivational aspects behind the implementation of mHealth apps among office workers. METHODS A four-week study with a mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative) design was conducted with office-based employees in four countries: (1) Oulu, Finland; (2) Carlow, Ireland; (3) London, United Kingdom; and (4) Dhaka, Bangladesh. Out of 22O invited participants (experimental group N=115, and control group N=105), the original study population of 84 participants (experimental group N=56, and control group N=28) consisted of working-age volunteers working in an office setting. Participants used two different interventions: the experimental group used an mHealth app for PA motivation, and the control group used a paper diary. The purpose was to motivate employees to engage in healthier behaviour regarding the promotion of PA in the workplace. A user-centered design (UCD) process was followed to design, develop, and evaluate the mHealth app, incorporating self-determination theory (SDT) and using game elements. The paper diary had no specific theory-driven approach, design technique, or game elements. RESULTS The compliance for the app usage remained relatively low, 27 participants (N=20 experimental; N=7 control group) completed the study. The results of the participants supported the original hypothesis that the mHealth app helped to increase physical activity in comparison to paper diary (P=0.033), i.e., promoting daily walking in the workplace. The mHealth app supported two of the basic SDT psychological needs – autonomy (P=0.004) and competence (P=0.014) – but not the needs of relatedness (P=0.535). CONCLUSIONS The SDT-based mHealth application resulted in motivating employees to increase their physical activity in the workplace. However, the compliance of the app usage remained low. Future research should further develop the app based on the user feedback and test it in a larger sample.

People spend a lot of time at their workplace, for example in office environment. After consuming breakfast or lunch during the recess periods, one may feel lazy both physically and mentally. Thus, gaining extra calories may lower the working progress. To motivate individuals for healthier behavior, we designed, executed and tested an application for improving physical activity behavior at workplace. Our health and wellbeing application delivers a physical activity promotion intervention that motivates user performing activities, for example by walking after breakfast or lunch. Our physical activity promotion is based on recent research showing that one can be motivated extrinsically through satisfaction of three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence and relatedness) that are influenced by autonomy support. We conducted a one week long usability evaluation on users for the health and wellbeing application. We found that the application works well for physical activity promotion.

Recently, considerable attention has been given to health and wellbeing applications, specifically to persuasive applications. Persuasive applications refer to any interactive computing system designed to transform users' behaviours and attitudes. One of the major challenges of today's world is that health and wellbeing applications are not sustainable and scientifically designed. However, value proposition (VP) as a denominator might enhance the efficacy of the persuasive health and wellbeing applications. Research has shown little evidence on the VPs in health and wellbeing applications. This paper proposes key VPs for the persuasive health and wellbeing applications. A literature review was conducted based on relevant articles on the value within the health domain. Hence, narrative synthesis literature review approach had been used. We proposed and evaluated these VPs into our built persuasive health and wellbeing applications. We found that the VPs works well with our applications which might enhance their efficacy in the long run.