Design and Preliminary Evaluation of a Mobile Application for Obesity Experts and Children Teams

Full text

The descripve stascs of the rst
eld study are provided in Table 1.
The average age of the paents was
12.8 years. Four usage sessions were
recorded at home on average from
the system protocol of the prototype.
Furthermore, each session lasted ap-
proximately eleven minutes and pa-
ents took 12.3 photos on average
between the rst and second consulta-
on. Some examples are shown below.
DESIGN AND PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF A MOBILE APPLICATION
FOR OBESITY EXPERT AND CHILDREN TEAMS
Tobias Kowatsch1, Dirk Büchter2, Irena Plekosa3, Runhua Xu3, Björn Brogle2, Anneco Dintheer2, Dunja Wiegand2, Dagmar l’Allemand2 & Wolfgang Maass1
1University of St. Gallen, 2Ostschweizer Kinderspital of St. Gallen, 3ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Research Partner Funding
Introducon
Childhood obesity is one
of the major disease pat-
terns of the twenty-rst
century. Due to the need
for mul-professional ther-
apies requiring intensive
personnel and nancial re-
sources, IT-supported in-
tervenons promise help.
Meta analyses, however,
show their limited impact
on health outcomes up ll
now.
Method
The current work aims
therefore to design and
evaluate a mobile appli-
caon that increases the
cooperaon between obe-
sity experts and children.
For that purpose, four IT
experts, ve therapists,
nine obese children 10 to
14 years old and their par-
ents adopted a structured
design-science methodol-
ogy (Janzen et al. 2010).
Perceived characteriscs
of the applicaon and di-
rect eects on cooperaon
of therapists and children
were evaluated.
Results
The resulng applica-
on provides recipe rec-
ommendaons based on
ingredients available at
home and desired by chil-
dren. It further allows to
document groceries and
meals via a photo func-
onality. All interacons
with the applicaon were
recorded to document
screen me and ulizaon
for ecient shopping and
healthy meals.
First feedback from sev-
en therapists, six children
and their parents indicates
that the applicaon is per-
ceived useful, easy and fun
to use. With regard to di-
rect eects on the coop-
eraon between obesity
expert and children teams,
there is evidence that
the applicaon supports
shared understanding and
cross understanding.
Outlook
Future work will incorpo-
rate further components
of therapy programs, such
as physical acvity or re-
laxaon, but will also in-
vesgate in a longitudinal
eld study how the use
of this applicaon within
a therapy program inu-
ences health condion of
obese children.
Overview
7th Fribourg Obesity Research Conference (FORC-2013), Switzerland
Design Evaluaon
“Peter and his parents plan their meals. Based on available and desired ingredi-
ents, recipe recommendaons are provided to him. He chooses three of them and
ingredients of these recipes were transferred to the shopping list of his parents.”
Collaborave Development
Davis, F.D. 1989. “Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, and User Acceptance of Informaon
Technology,” MIS Quarterly (13:3), pp. 319-339.
Huber, G.P., and Lewis, K. 2010. “Cross-Understanding: Implicaons for Group Cognion and
Performance,” The Academy of Management Review (35:1), pp. 6-26.
Janzen, S., Kowatsch, T., and Maass, W. 2010. “A Methodology for Content-Centered Design of
Ambient Environments,” in Global Perspecves on Design Science Research, 5th Internaonal
Conference, Desrist 2010, St. Gallen, Switzerland, June 4-5, 2010 Proceedings, R. Winter, J.L.
Zhao and S. Aier (eds.). Berlin, Germany: Springer, pp. 210-225.
Kamis, A., Koufaris, M., and Stern, T. 2008. “Using an Aribute-Based Decision Support System for
User-Customized Products Online: An Experimental Invesgaon,” MIS Quarterly (32:1), March,
pp. 159-177.
Maass, W., Storey, V.C., and Kowatsch, T. 2011. “Eects of External Conceptual Models and Verbal
Explanaons on Shared Understanding in Small Groups,” in 30th Internaonal Conference
on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2011), Jeusfeld M., L. Delcambre and T.W. Ling (eds.). Brussels,
Belgium: Springer, pp. 92-103.
References
www.pathmate.ch
Screenshots
# Construct Related
Work
Therapist Child Parent
T1 T2 T1 T2 T1 T2
1 Perceived usefulness of the applicaon Davis 1989 – – – 4.00
(.816) –3.50
(1.73)
2 Perceived ease of use of the applicaon Davis 1989 – – – 3.75
(1.26) –5.25
(.96)
3 Perceived enjoyment during applicaon use Kamis et al.
2008
5.17
(.75)
4.75
(.50)
4.50
(.84)
4.00
(.89)
5.67
(.52)
4.00
(.00)
4 Shared understanding between child & therapist Maass et al.
2011
5.17
(.75)
5.25
(.50)
5.50
(.55)
4.50
(.58) – –
5 Cross understanding between child & therapist Huber &
Lewis 2010
4.83
(1.17)
4.75
(.50)
4.83
(.75)
4.50
(.58) – –
Table 1. Mean values and standard deviaon (in brackets). Note: T1/2=rst/second consultaon; N(T1) = 6 and N(T2) = 4
children and parents, one physician; The results are based on 6-point Likert scales ranging from strongly disagree (1) to
strongly agree (6) and were consistent with evaluaons of six further therapists that were not involved in the actual study.