Everyone knows that motivation for a certain behavior, such as physical activity, changes over time. To encourage someone to do physical activity, such as walk 30 minutes a day, it is useful to find the person's highest motivation during the day and prompt the user at that moment. This is a proposal about a technology that could find this period of highest motivation.

1. Creating a healthy behavior
by predicting the motivation wave

2. What is the motivation wave?
As everyone has experienced, our motivation to
do a certain behavior increases and decrease
over time.
Motivation
Time

3. What is the motivation wave?
As everyone has experienced, our motivation to
do a certain behavior increases and decrease
over time.
At highest
motivation,
you are
most likely
Motivation
to do the
behavior.
Time

4. Finding the highest motivation
How do you find the user's highest motivation
for becoming physically active, such as walking
for 30 minutes?

5. Finding the highest motivation
How do you find the user's highest motivation
for becoming physically active, such as walking
for 30 minutes?
One idea: integrated mobile app that knows
location
sleep duration and quality
physical activity
when the user is free

6. Finding the highest motivation
How do you find the user's highest motivation
for becoming physically active, such as walking
for 30 minutes?
One idea: integrated mobile app that knows
location
sleep duration and quality
physical activity
when the user is free
...the more information, the better!

7. Mobile app for finding highest motivation
Using input data, the app calculates probability
of highest motivation for physical activity.

8. Mobile app for finding highest motivation
Using input data, the app calculates probability
of highest motivation for physical activity.
With high enough probability, the app pushes
notifications. For walking 30 minutes, the app
may suggest a good walking route and offer
two buttons: "Yes, I'll take a walk" or "No, not
now".

9. Mobile app for finding highest motivation
Using input data, the app calculates probability
of highest motivation for physical activity.
With high enough probability, the app pushes
notifications. For walking 30 minutes, the app
may suggest a good walking route and offer
two buttons: "Yes, I'll take a walk" or "No, not
now".
The app learns and tries to find patterns about
the user's motivation wave based on user's
passive and active input data.

10. Mobile app for finding highest motivation
Main features:
- Very little effort for the user
Almost all the data is passively collected
e.g. FitBit/smartphone accelerometer,
Lark/sleep sensor, GPS, calendar
- App constantly learns i.e. is personalized
Results are gotten easily through the
user pushing a button

11. Contact me
Let me know what you think!
Email me: cglu@stanford.edu
I'm currently in my junior year at
Stanford University majoring in
Computer Science. I'm interested
in health technology and how
people create healthy behaviors
for themselves.