Many different smartphone apps to help users to live healthier. A new product they bring their habits and tries slowly introduce them to a healthier life.
A group of researchers has developed an app that will make it easier, more for their own do health and fitness and really stick to it. They registered where and when users are active or resting and what they eat. The app named MyBehavior also provides daily lists of proposals for activities and food as well as information about how many calories burn or would save.
Even before there was plenty of smartphone apps, the physical activity and calories capture; many of them, such as by Fitbit or Jawbone, also use a fitness bracelet or SmartWatch. Nevertheless, it can be very difficult to break with their own habits. According Tanzeem Choudhury, associate professor of computer science at Cornell University and one of the researchers behind MyBehavior, tried the app to propose attainable goals that fit the habits of the user, rather than bombard him with information. They also take care of when to change the habits.
Choudbury and her colleagues at Cornell and Michigan State University have worked more than two years to MyBehavior and tested the software recently with 16 people over 14 weeks , On average, users of the app burned 45 more calories a day and eating 150 calories less. Together makes the 1,365 calories per week, explains Choudbury.
According to her MyBehavior to be published in September. The occasion is the presentation of the study at the conference UbiComp for ubiquitous computing in Japan.
With the help of accelerometer and GPS module in the smartphone app automatically records the activities running, walking and sitting. Based on this data algorithms generate proposals, to which the user is likely to enter. If you several times a week, for example, goes to work on foot, but only once to the gym, the app would try to continue to encourage the footpaths. They would tell how many calories you burn in this way and count how many times one has the last made. At the same time it would give the users suggest, often going to the gym. If someone is sitting six hours a day in the office, the proposal might be to walk every hour for a few minutes, also with information about the calorie consumption.
In order to detect their diet, users can take pictures of their meals and the Server load of MyBehavior. The images then go to human workers at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, which (with the help of a list of the most frequently chosen foods from users of the mobile app MyFitnessPal) determine how many calories they contain about and how they compare to other courts. The app also provides alternative suggestions. If someone eats a lot of burgers at McDonald’s, she might suggest that to refrain dear, and call another option that also comes for the person in question.
MyBehavior each evaluates the activities and meals of the user in the last week of. Choudboury is of the opinion that the data are sufficient to recognize the habits of a person. At the same time by an adaptation to possible changes triggered by the app is possible so that new foods and activities are proposed.
“This adaptive character will help you to climb the ladder at your own pace,” says the . Professor ( Rachel Metz )
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