Denk je zèlf! Developing a personalised virtual coach for emotional eaters using personas

Aranka Dol, Olga Kulyk, Hugo Velthuijsen, Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen, Tatjana van Strien

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Abstract

Obesity is a fast growing societal threat, causing chronic conditions, physical and psychological health problems, as well as absenteeism and large healthcare costs. Despite numerous attempts to promote physical activity and healthy diet, existing interventions do not focus on often occurring emotional causes of obesity. There is a need for self-management support of this vulnerable target group: emotional eaters. This paper presents the results of the design case study focusing on a holistic development of a personalised virtual mHealth coach that provides self-management training ‘Denk je zèlf!’ (Dutch for ‘Develop a wise mind and counsel yourself’). Target group are young adults with emotional eating disorder and obesity. The contextual inquiry study was conducted to get insights into the needs and experiences of the target users, including interviews and questionnaires with emotional eaters, obesity treatment patients and healthcare practitioners. Personas and user stories were derived from these results and translated into a new ‘Denk je zèlf!’ virtual coach, based on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and experience sampling measures to capture user experience and emotional state. This paper makes two main contributions: (a) combining holistic design with behaviour therapy in one virtual mHealth coaching application for emotional eaters; (b) applying Personas to guide the design. Preliminary results suggest that an online self-management training might be useful for the target group. Future research will be aimed at iterative evaluation and further development of the dialectical dialogues for the virtual coach and content for the education and instruction modules.
Translated title of the contributionDenk je zelf! Het ontwikkelen van een gepersonaliseerde virtual coach voor emotionele eters gebruikmakend van persona's
Original languageEnglish
Pages42-48
Publication statusPublished - 24 Apr 2016
Event8th International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine 2016 - Venice, Italy
Duration: 24 Apr 201628 Apr 2016
Conference number: 8th

Conference

Conference8th International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine 2016
Abbreviated titleeTELEMED 2016
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityVenice
Period24/04/1628/04/16

Keywords

  • obesity
  • coaching
  • behavioral change

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