Mobile Diary for Wellness Management—Results on Usage and Usability in Two User Studies

Abstract

The prevalence of lifestyle-related health problems is increasing rapidly. Many of the diseases and health risks could be prevented or alleviated by making changes toward healthier lifestyles. We have developed the Wellness Diary (WD), a concept for personal and mobile wellness management based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Two implementations of the concept were made for the Symbian Series 60 (S60) mobile phone platform, and their usability, usage, and acceptance were studied in two 3-month user studies. Study I was related to weight management and study II to general wellness management. In both the studies, the concept and its implementations were well accepted and considered as easy to use and useful in wellness management. The usage rate of the WD was high and sustained at a high level throughout the study. The average number of entries made per day was 5.32 (SD = 2.59, range = 0-14) in study I, and 5.48 (SD = 2.60, range = 0-17) in study II. The results indicate that the WD is well suited for supporting CBT-based wellness management.

Designing for Healthy Lifestyles: Design Considerations for Mobile Technologies to Encourage Consumer Health and Wellness

“…Wellness applications that use category-based tracking have taken several different approaches. For example, Wellness Diary [64], an application for supporting weight management and healthy lifestyles developed by Nokia Research, focuses its categorization scheme on the amount of eaten food. The intent of the application was for it to be used long-term, so the food tracking was designed to be as lightweight as possible.…”

“…For example, Arsand et al [5] report that in a six-month study of Few Touch, participants averaged 5.1 food and drink entries a day. Similarly, in a three-month study of Wellness Diary [64], participants averaged 3.15 food entries a day. Maintaining a food diary over such periods with traditional, per-food methods has been difficult [6], so these results are encouraging.…”

“…First, qualitative data from studies that have used this type of tracking indicate that category-based tracking can be effective at increasing awareness of and reflection on eating behaviors. Participants in Mattila et al's [64] study of their Wellness Diary expressed that logging their food intake using the application made them more conscious of what they ate and as a result they began to choose less calorie-dense foods. Similar sentiments were expressed by participants in the studies of Few Touch [5] and Mobile Lifestyle Coach [35], and in both of those studies, participants reported an increase in their consumption of fruit and vegetables.…”

GeoHealth: a location-based service for home healthcare workers

“…Pattichis et al 2002). One of the most prevalent mobile healthcare applications reported in the literature is the use of biometrical sensors and mobile phones for monitoring patient data by oneself (Mattila et al 2008) or remotely in real time (Tachakra et al 2003, Figueredo andDias 2004) allowing, for example, non-critical patients to remain at home as much as possible. Other applications involve the use of high-bandwidth mobile data networks for live transmission of video data from, for example, ambulances on dispatch to health professionals at the hospital (e.g.…”

Flow Specification Patterns of End-User Programmers: Lessons Learnt from a Health Mobile Application Authoring Environment Design

“…Clinical applications for mobile phones have been shown to improve a patient's state [5][7] [14][16] [18]. The increasing dissemination and power of smart-phones has further emphasized this possibility [4] [13].…”