Developing Persuasive Technologies to Encourage Health-Promoting Behaviors in Everyday Life

Speaker
Sunny Consolvo
Member of the Research Staff, Intel Research Seattle

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)

Description

The high incidence of chronic diseases and conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and coronary heart disease continues to rise. Among the important risk factors for these conditions are behaviors such as physical inactivity, inadequate sleep, stress, excessive food intake, diets heavy on saturated & trans fats, and smoking. A successful change in these behaviors is essential to preventing and effectively managing these conditions, as well as being important to health and wellness in general. Technologies that are integrated into people’s everyday lives—such as mobile phones—are well-suited to support people as they attempt to adopt and sustain health-promoting behaviors. In this talk, I will present some of our work on encouraging health-promoting behaviors in everyday life, including an investigation of people’s barriers to physical activity and persuasive technologies that we have developed to encourage regular participation in physical activity.

Paper available online at: http://dub.washington.edu/pubs/174

Speaker's Bio

Sunny Consolvo joined Intel Labs Seattle in 2001 as a member of the research staff with a focus on human-computer interaction. She is currently developing persuasive technologies to encourage health-promoting behaviors in everyday life such as getting regular exercise and good sleep. She is also investigating how to help individuals be more aware of the privacy implications of sensing and inference systems. Sunny received her Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Washington’s Information School.

Host
Jodi Forlizzi