Hi-fi
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Refining our idea, again
After our lo-fi prototype and presentation, our team realized again that there were some fundamental problems with our underlying ideas. We knew that the term ’stress’ did not resonate well with our users in this context, and though we tried to change to other scales (like tired-refreshed, frazzled-calm, fit-unfit, good-bad) this did not seem to move us much further in the direction of true user engagement. The other major problem we encountered was one of convenience; we imagined that people would find it hard to remember to manually open the application before they started walking to set their beginning ‘level,’ and then open it again at the end to set their end ‘level.’
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Mibo is born
We gathered feedback and ideas from a few different sources and decided to try to use the robot character’s cuteness to engage users. Our application now requires users to ‘care’ for their robot, which we have named Mibo, by walking; this is very similar to the electronic Tamagochi, which requires users to ‘feed’ and ‘care for’ it. But instead of feeding Mibo food, users feed it exercise.
To keep Mibo healthy, users need to stay on-track with their weekly exercise goal. As they fall behind in their goal, Mibo starts to appear sad and begins to look more squat/husky; as users walk more and stay up with their goals, Mibo gets stronger and happier.
How can users stay up-to-date on Mibo’s health status? We have placed a Mibo widget on the phone’s home screen (or ‘deskop’); the robot sits in the background, and its status changes according to the user’s walking habits. Mibo will also send text messages to the user’s phone to ask the user to take it walking, and it will send supportive and loving text messages after the user has walked it.
Transference of walking’s positive impacts
A fundamental problem with our initial idea was that it seemed artificial for us to forecast users’ stress levels or emotions based on how long or far they had been walking. Mibo’s great benefit is that users can directly and visually see the positive impacts of walking; we believe that users will internalize these benefits as they use the application. In caring for their Mibo and seeing its facial emotions and body shape improve as they walk more, users will be motivated to continue their walking habit.
Goals, Rankings, and History
To foster self-awareness and feelings of challenge and competition, we have incorporated weekly goals, app-wide rankings, and walking history. Here is a screenshot of the homescreen:
Goals: Research (UbiFit) has shown that users prefer a weekly goal to other goal time increments, since it gives them time to catch up if they are lagging behind; we allow users to select a weekly goal, and we also suggest goals based on high, medium and low activity levels.
Users can set a weekly goal (left) and be updated on their goal progress (right).
Rankings: Users can see where their Mibo ranks in health level compared to other Mibos; they can toggle between the top 10 Mibos, and they can also see where they fall in the rankings list.
History: Finally, users can see their walking history on a daily, weekly or monthly level. The history graph shows a Mibo character for each unit of time; for example, in the weekly view, each week is represented by a Mibo. Its height represents the cumulative distance traveled in that week, while its shape and expression reflect its happiness level during the week. Users can also see their goal as a red dotted line across the screen, so the history screen shows whether they met their goal for a given week.
The history screen shows users the distance they traveled and Mibo's relative health.
Animation
An important part of our prototype is a short animation that shows Mibo walking as the user walks; Mibo’s walking speed is dependent on the user’s walking speed. Right now we have two animations, one for ‘regular’ speed and one for ‘fast.’
Hi-fi prototype
To put our hi-fi prototype on the G1 phone, we decided to use App Inventor for Android; once we figured out the App Inventor framework, we were able to move quickly and build a semi-interactive prototype for usability testing. The prototype enables simulated user interactions, but it is limited to complete screen changes (instead of a simple button change, for example) so we had to keep things simple.
The unwieldy app grew and grew, and no longer fit on one screen.
We were able to get the app working on our phones – a big victory for us!
Next step: usability testing
Moving forward, we will test our app on at least five users; we will ask them to go for a walk, set a goal, view and change the history screen, and view rankings. We will also be interested in getting reactions to the walking animation and the changing image of Mibo on the phone’s home screen/desktop.