Using Persuasive Recommendations in Wellness Applications based upon User Activities

Recently, a large number of mobile wellness applications have emerged for assisting users in self-monitoring of daily food intake and physical activities. While such applications are in abundance, many research surveys have found that the users soon give them up after giving some initial try. This article presents our application for healthcare self-management that monitors users’ activities but –unlike the existing applications– it focuses on keeping the users engaged for self-management. The distinguishing feature of our application is that it uses persuasive mechanisms to help users adopt healthy behavior. For this purpose, users’ various activities are monitored and then they are persuaded using different persuasion strategies that are adaptive and are according to their behavior. For each user, a behavior model is created that is based on Fogg’s behavior model but, in addition, it also holds within it user preferences, and user health profile. The behavior model is then used to create a persuasion profile of the user that allows us to propose personalized suggestions targeted to overcome his lacking behavior. We also describe a case study that describes the actual application.