Location-based activity adviser - a survey study

The objective of the research is to explore the potential of a recommendation system that provides information and suggestions on physical activities based on the environment. We aim at employing location-based and mobile technologies to build an activity-adviser system and motivate users to change their behaviors towards adopting a healthier lifestyle. We conducted a survey with the view to finding out the general exercising behavior and user acceptance of this activity-adviser concept, especially how they would react to different kinds of advice. The results provided us guidelines of the system design. The results showed that daily activities which fit in people’s everyday schedule have more potential to be performed by people who have limited time. More than half of the participants have intention to try this advice system. Results also suggest that the advice with location information is more likely to be accepted than general advice. We are currently carrying out a joint research with Philips Research aiming on testing the concept of the system in a real setting. We plan to send participants environment-based triggers (SMS) to motivate them to become more active. We expect to find out if users will follow the environment triggered advice and change their behavior towards becoming more active, in order to discover the relationship between environment and active living