You may have seen this new Apple ad promoting different exercise apps for iOs. I was really excited about it because it features an app I contributed to, the Johnson & Johnson Official 7 Minute Workout (see it at 0:31 in the video). It is beyond thrilling to see a little piece of my work on national tv!
Slate has an interesting blog post about the origins of the Chicken Fat song if you’re interested.
If you’re interested, I will be speaking at a cool event on Thursday, August 28th about designing for behavior change. It was organized by Joshua Kotfila of the Boston Organized Self group, so I expect we’ll have a lot of discussion about data tracking and feedback and how those guide changing health behaviors. My co-presenters are amazing:
You can purchase tickets for the event by clicking here. As the event description says,
If you are a designer, technologist, health professional, entrepreneur, journalist, scientist, or user, please join us for an interactive evening of inspiration packed with great speakers, networking and more!
Would you change your behavior if you knew your doctor could keep tabs on you?
Would you pause before putting the chocolate or the chips in your grocery cart? Before forking over your credit card for a pack of cigarettes? What if your doctor could tell how often your gym membership card was swiped for entry? Would you go more often?
And whether you behaved differently or not, how would you feel about your doctor knowing about your consumer habits? Continue reading Marrying Health and Consumer Data: Insightful or Invasive?
So you want to become more active. How do you make it stick? In a workplace context, office artifacts can help motivate and sustain changes in behavior like walking more. Here’s an example of how.
I was recently walking through the halls at a different company location from where I usually work when a bright burst of color caught my eye. One team had hung a blackboard in their office area where they scrawled different ideas for how to reach 10,000 steps that day. I loved this board–it’s doing a lot of things right in helping people commit to movement: Continue reading Cultural Artifacts, Commitment, and Behavior in the Workplace
You’ve undoubtedly heard by now about Facebook’s large scale emotion manipulation study, conducted on their site users. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, found that when Facebook users saw a greater concentration of negative posts in their newsfeed, they were more likely to post negative statuses themselves; the same pattern emerged for positive status updates. [This research probably also partially explains Facebook’s insistence on pushing the Top Stories sort on users regardless of their preference; it’s the manipulation in a massive social science study. Which doesn’t make it any less of a violation of users’ sense of autonomy, and thus a poor motivational experience.]
The study has its problems, which I’ll get into, but the thing that really makes me angry about it is the cavalier attitude it reveals toward informed consent. Informed consent is a requirement of human subjects research. What is means is that if a person is being manipulated in any way, they must give explicit permission to the researcher to be a part of the study. The informed piece is important: Continue reading Facebook’s Informed Consent Problem
For a change of pace, I thought it might be fun to do posts on Fridays about stuff that’s purely recreational, not academic. To kick it off, I have a great summer (fall, winter, and spring) beer recommendation: Tröegs Hopback Amber Ale!
In my own words: I love this beer because it hits this great middle ground between different beer styles. It’s a little hoppy, but doesn’t get anywhere near IPA territory. It’s got a robust taste without being super-heavy. I think Hopback goes well with food or on its own. If I see it on a beer menu, the only reason I might not order it is in order to try something new. It’s definitely one of my most favorite beers, and I find when I recommend it to other beer drinkers, they usually enjoy it, no matter their usual favorite style of beer.
In the words of people who know stuff about beer:
This Is Why I’m Drunk: “a buttered bread smell”; “plenty of balance”
Beer Advocate: 90, Outstanding
Philly Magazine: Best Local Beer 2006
The Tröegs Brewery is in Pennsylvania, and their beers are fairly easy to find on draft throughout Boston and the Northeast. If you’re near a Yard House, they often carry several Tröegs beers on draft.
It shouldn’t shock you to hear that health literacy is a problem. According to Pfizer, around 90 million Americans struggle with health literacy, which is commonly defined as being able to use health information effectively to obtain appropriate care and make health decisions. Skills under the overarching category of health literacy include reading, numeracy, analytical skills, and decision-making skills. Together, these skills allow a person to use health information appropriately. Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate that 90% of American adults have difficulty effectively using everyday health information. As you might imagine, poor health literacy is associated with poor health outcomes (Berkman et al., 2004). There are at least four separate issues contributing to the inability of patients to effectively navigate health information:
Continue reading When Health Care Is a Foreign Language: Improving How Patients Navigate the System
![This kid sure noticed the money in the tree! [Has anyone ever wondered how bizarre a stock photo shoot must be?] Image from Thinkstock](https://i0.wp.com/www.amybucherphd.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/158996291.jpg)
Lucas talks about a recent study where researchers pinned dollar bills to low-hanging tree branches in pedestrian areas and observed whether people noticed and took the money. A surprisingly small number of them saw the money–and even that figure plummeted when the person was on a cell phone. Lucas asks, if we miss an opportunity as money literally dangling from a tree at eye level, what opportunities are we overlooking in our careers? Continue reading Listen for Opportunity’s Knocks
“Ugh. I already know what you’re going to tell me. Eat less food and get more exercise, right?”
This is common feedback I’ve heard during user testing for the software products I work on. Our coaching programs address various health and lifestyle concerns, and indeed, much of the advice boils down to eating differently and moving more. After all, that is how you lose weight, improve your heart health, control your blood sugar, etc. There’s no magic pill that will let you avoid dietary and activity changes and still get the same health results.
Unfortunately we can lose our users’ interest when the message we deliver is exactly the one they’re expecting to hear. Worse in the case of health behavior, the message is often one they’ve heard before and that has not helped them. “Eat fewer calories” is a lot easier said than done. Users are bored by the same old advice, and they will tune you out as soon as they perceive that you’re dishing it out. Continue reading Health Coach? Try the Element of Surprise
Without getting into the gory details, let it be understood that bathrooms used by men may at times be less than sanitary. A well-known intervention for improving the cleanliness of the area around and underneath urinals is the addition of a fly sticker. The sticker provides an area for men to aim, which increases the percentage of waste down the drain and decreases how much is on the floor. The fly sticker is estimated to improve men’s aim by as much as 80%. As Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge, memorably said, “Men evidently like to aim at targets.”
The urinal fly made its debut in Amsterdam, and was extended to Terminal 4 at JFK Airport in New York, operated by the Dutch Schiphol Group (although the previously linked article suggests that the flies in those urinals may now be gone after a renovation–can any male travelers confirm?). For people who want to try urinal flies at home (moms of small boys?) can purchase their own stickers. Continue reading Building Competence in the Bathroom