Research: mobile | metamodeling

My broad and admittedly ambitious goal is to dramatically improve health and well-being through the use of mobile technology. I am working in two specific areas involving mobile technology, examining the role of technology in the underlying social and psychological mechanisms that could contribute to my goal:

Mobile + Health: Effective mobile persuasion has been demonstrated by many researchers, with a wealth of possible mechanisms for persuasion emerging. Particularly in health-related situations, what roles do the different motivational and persuasive mechanisms play in bringing about positive behavioral change, and how can mobile technologies be used to most effectively employ these mechanisms? Working to answer these questions will inform the development of future generations of mobile health applications.

Mobile + Spatial: Newly available mobile phones equipped with GPS and high resolution digital cameras have paved the way for novel forms of interaction between individuals and the spaces they inhabit, as well as between the numerous individuals sharing these spaces. How can these technologies be used to foster positive social interaction, social connectedness, and place attachment? Each of these outcomes has been shown to have the desired positive influence on physiological and psychological health in a variety of circumstances.

Current mobile projects include:

Mindless Eating Challenge Mobile Game

Mindless Eating Challenge is a mobile phone-based health game based on Dr. Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating Challenge. In the game, players are tasked with caring for a virtual pet or plant, similar to the popular Tamgotchi. Pet care requires the user to follow a variety of health and eating recommendations and verify their actions with photos taken with their phone’s camera. For example, the recommendation “Eat a hot breakfast” would require the player to submit a photo of him/ herself eating a bowl of oatmeal. Photos and compliance are then judged either by judges or peers. Based on compliance to these recommendations, the pet or plant changes its appearance and gains features or accessories--a tree might grow taller or grow more leaves or fruit in response. Alternatively, leaves might fall off if the players performance is poor. A social portion of the game allows the user to see various depictions of their performance in comparison to the performance of others in their group, as well as of their group in comparison to other groups. The game is designed so that various features can be easily enabled and disabled so it can be used as a platform from which to conduct research into the mechanisms of mobile persuasion in the context of improving health and well-being.

This project is in collaboration with the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab. and is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Read about the press release on NPR or Kotaku for you gamers out there.

Supportive Mobile Computing for Cancer Patients

Cancer patients will be provided with administrative, informational, and social support through handheld technologies. Making use of various informational representations in web enabled smart phones, such as interactive texts, multimodal pictures, video, and sounds, patients can learn, schedule, and remember based on the principles of distributed cognition. Communication, social networking, and community building applications will encourage positive, supportive social interactions building upon existing research in the area of supportive group therapy for cancer patients.

Research questions include:

• Can personal mobile technologies help support attitude and behavior change in patients?
• Can personal mobile technologies decrease the volume of interaction with medical staff while increasing the the quality and understanding of such interactions through improved informational support?
• Can greater social connectivity to peers through personal mobile communication technologies improve quality of life and psychological well-being of patients during treatment?
• What are the information needs of cancer patients during treatment, and can these needs be addressed with personal mobile technologies?

Map-Based Social Annotation

Campus Aware utilizes Nokia N95 GPS-enabled camera phones to investigate social annotation and community-building through mobile interaction. The study aims at expanding and strengthening social networks among students on campus through location-aware applications on their mobile phones. The application displays a location-aware map of the Cornell campus, and users can upload pictures and text related to the location. Augmenting traditional navigation, the findings will provide a basis for understanding social applications of location-awareness. Funding provided by Nokia.

The Campus Aware system is currently being modified to move beyond the campus tour settings for use in systems designed for dieters, disabled individuals, and cancer patients. These systems will be used to explore (1) how the delivery of location/ context aware information can influence behavior, and (2) how place attachment and social connectedness can lead to better perceptions of health and well-being in individuals facing difficult circumstances.

Johnson Art Museum Mobile Tour Guide

Patrons in the Johnson Art Museum at Cornell University are provided with iPod Touch devices running a web-based virtual tour guide system, that provides supplemental multimedia for many of the pieces and exhibits along the way. The system serves as a platform for a variety of inquiries, but I'm working on evaluating tour guide credibility as a persuasive precursor. Patrons are under no obligation to follow the recommendations of the device, which are provided by a museum curator (expert), other students (peer), or a computer-based recommender system. Compliance to the tour, as well as measures of patrons' satisfaction and quality of experience are examined in the context of perceived credibility of the tour guide.