Monitoring Physical Activity

Interaction Design | 5 week| Collaborator: MIA Health

I have worked on data visualisation of the Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) score. PAI is a standard scoring system developed by NTNU's researchers that tells through numbers the amount of intensity-based exercise/activity routine an individual needs to perform weekly to achieve or maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Research says that if individuals maintain a consistent 100 PAI regularly (the score could go beyond), they are less likely to get chronic lifestyle diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, dementia, etc. A high heart rate results from a high-intensity workout that makes you reach 100 PAI (weekly metric) faster.

It is a highly personal metric that measures intensity from heart rate data, and the result varies from person to person based on their BMI, age, body weight, height, Resting Heart Rate, etc.

MIA Health's vision is to build an intervention in proactive health care.

I designed for the user group at the beginner level of starting physical activity:

1. visual information of intensity during an activity.
2. analyse the activities impacting intensity to help with their activity choices.
3. Activity recommendations to earn PAI.

Image generated in DALL-E | Screen designed for final outcome by Arindita (me)

The intensity is measured through heart rate. The intensity increases with an increase in heart rate.

Source: MIA health's existing app

Design Brief

How might "Mia Health" best show personalised insight to users so that they feel empowered to take action about their current lifestyle choices related to activity?

Motivation: What would encourage users to do more things that are good for their health?

Design Prototype ->

Design Outcome ->

Design Process ->

Key Insights

#1: The meaning of fitness differs for different people, and everyone has personal goals that vary from health goals for various reasons.

#2: People like references or recommendations to achieve their goals. To do the activity in the right way or just to know about different intensity-based activities that are also fun to do.

#3: When there is a standard fitness metric, not achieving it would be a demotivating factor.

#4: Many users do not clearly understand intensity-based exercise. They could only think of running or jumping-related exercises. And most people in these user groups do not prefer those exercises.

Quick Mapping of MIA health & PAI

Focus

#1: Empower user on how intensity-based activity impact heart

#2: Motivate people to explore intensity-based exercises (other than running and jumping)

#3: Defining how the MIA Health app is different from regular fitness apps

Challenge

During the research, it was challenging to make user empathise with the functionality of MIA Health because of the mindset around the existing fitness app in the market.

Final Design - Prototype

How is it different from other fitness app?

MPA_DesignPrototype

The design approach is individualistic and from a positive design stand point.

The new visualisation of PAI score in the app would not tell you the idealistic standard of fitness.

The user will have their fitness score goal set on their own at the beginning of their fitness journey

The colour of intensity dominant will motivate individuals to push boundaries to achieve the dominant colour in the dial. (Highest temperature of MIA's brand colour blue = Highest intensity)

The app would recommend activities to make physical fitness fun or to reach the score sooner in less time.

The colour dots around the PAI score dial are of MIA Health's brand colour in different temperatures (lower temperature = low intensity; higher temperature = high intensity). It represents intensities(low, moderate, and high intensity, respectively)

The dominant colour dots would reflect the intensity level of an activity a user has put into.

Design Outcome

1. Designed a dial that represent the intensity based on heart-rate data after doing a physical activity based on personal goal.

2. Re-designed interface of the digital app of MIA Health that would be based on the idea of humanising the data. Recommendations for a wider range of activities to help individuals achieve goals.

The dial is the heart rate of an individual using MIA Health. It is placed in the top section of the homepage. And, it would be the first data visualisation an individual would see after opening the app.

It is represented by the accumulation of dots with MIA’s brand colour with different temperatures to represent different intensities.

Every individual will have a personalised coloured dial of heart-rate dots based on their intensity during physical activity.

Intensity

Low

Moderate

High

I have chosen MIA’s brand colour to represent the high intensity and the temperature decreases with the intensity.

It is ideal to get 100 PAI to live risk-free from a chronic lifestyle disease. But an individual(beginner) can set their own goal during their busy schedule.

This animation is a representation of the intensity of physical activity, where each time an individual gets a score you could see your efforts in your physical activity through the dots.

The animation is generated in P5js to give a visualisation of the functionality. The colours are not in accurate form.

“it works better for me if it is customised..it builds trust..if it is generalised then it becomes boring”. - User 4

“Often, in the testing, there has been a talk about the suggestion of activities helps us to explore different activities to get into intensity activity without running or jumping” - User 1

First leve-l Homepage

Second level- description page

Intensity based progress

Daily PAI score

Activity overall status

Activity recommendation to earn PAI score

MPA_DesignOutcome

Design Process

I used my service design skills to do an extensive research, to make sense about the theme, to align MIA Health's identity and their future mission and vision towards proactive healthcare aspect that starts with physical fitness.

MPA_DesignProcess

Desktop Research

MIA hea;th's PAI sets a limit in physical activity by giving each individual a fitness score based on their heart rate and health information. It is different from other fitness application and devices available in the market.

Health & fitness apps, devices, cases...

HUNT's PAI research study

Motivation theories

Stakeholder meetings/interview

Data visualization has a role in motivating people by nudging users in preferred directions

Most fitness apps in the market are designed based on self-determination theory with Hooks model

INSIGHTS

Motivation Indicators

INSIGHTS

Mindset: The user often juggles between an adequate activity mindset and an inadequate activity mindset (the user cannot quantify the required amount of activity) leads to abandonment

Lack of personalised human data: difficulty in building long-term relationship, lack of engagement with user

Quantified-self

Day 1: Dance Routine

earned: 2 PAI

total score: 2 PAI

Day 2: Boxing

earned: 13 PAI

total score: 14 PAI

INSIGHTS

Boxing doesn’t include running or jumping and yet potential to reach high intensity

Running and jumping gives PAI score faster than other activities.

Formative usability study

USERS' EXISTING EXPERIENCE

Apple

Gold Gym

fittr

Healthifyme

Mi Watch

Google

fitbit

Motivation Indicators

Humanizing Data

Quantified self

Research insight: PAI & Clinical trails

INSIGHTS

The meaning of fitness is different for different people and everyone has their personal goals which is different from health goals, for different reasons.

People like references or recommendations to achieve their goals. Just to do the activity in the right way or just to know about different intensity-based activities that are also fun to do.

Metaphor

Health Jar

“Some individuals do not limit their self-tracking efforts to passively collecting and observing gathered data about themselves, but rather develop it into forms of self-research and self-experimentation, also called “personal science”...personal science can be understood as an example of a more participatory and inclusive scientific culture driven by self-reflection, critical thinking and openness.”

- Research paper: Shared motivations, goals and values in the practice of personal science - A community perspective on self-tracking for empirical knowledge

Information visualisation

Activity & their Intensity

Activity Intensity comparison

Behavoural comparision

Physical Activity Intensity ∝ Heart Pumping Blood

= increase in Heart Rate

contribution to PAI (metaphor)

User testing and iterations

First draft - Homepage

INSIGHTS

"With my busy schedule due to work, I may not achieve 100 PAI a week but I would like to have an option to decide my own goal." - User 1

"I don’t prefer running or jumping-based exercises but, I would like to have that as my option if it would help me score quickly." - User 1

"Hard to understand what my goal is and the connection with activities." - User 2

"Interesting to see the heart rate performance and the breaks within activities." - User 3

First iteration - Homepage

INSIGHTS

Confusion with the proportion of the concentric circle and the amount of activity done on each intensity and the differences in the representation of intensity in the main dial vs the overview

would like to know the activities intensity so help me choose activities next time - User 4

prefer the heartrate graphical format

the visualisation of PAI seems very interesting to me. I could understand the intensities translated into colors - User 3