Project Brief:

Fitness trackers are part of an overall rise in wearables and personal data tracking—a growing area known as personal informatics. Wearables that are often used to track heart rate and physical activity resulted in sales of over 170 million devices in 2018, rising to over 440 million devices in 2020. The user base of both basic and "smart" wearables is projected to continue to rise over the next five years. These devices promise to track a user's activity, converting regular activity into "body data" that can be mined and visualized for insights. These insights can then be used to provide intelligent prompts that empower users to be more active and healthier. At least that's the theory.

Adoption of activity trackers has often been fueled by companies and insurance providers seeking to improve employee health and decrease healthcare costs. Accompanying this increased adoption have been numerous efforts to "fake out" activity monitors, either to manipulate the information a company might have about an employee for healthcare purposes, or to allow the user to feel (inaccurately) that they are meeting their activity goals. In this project, your goal is to create or modify an existing activity tracker application that links to a basic wearable device (steps only), empowering users to be healthier through behavior change. You will do this by describing and systematically altering the user's mental model about what activities are beneficial, rewarding these behaviors rather than common "cheats" to the system.