Top Five Tools For Creating Health Habits

Keith McDaniel4/22/10

habits.stanford.edu

Overview: Mobile Professionals

Adults 25-35

Working in offices, 9-5

Living in urban areas

General eat out for two+ meals a day

When not eating out, eat convenience foods

Always has mobile phone with them, always connected

Tool 1: NYC Restaurant Scrutinizer

Description

Shows you health violations and reports on restaurants in the NYC area.

Justification

This tool allows people that eat out frequently in New York City to find restaurants that are diligent about safe food practices.

Tool 2: Food Scanner

Description

Allows you to scan UPC labels on food to log it and get nutritional information.

Justification

Urban professionals eat many convience foods, this allows for them to easily log and get their nutritional information. Since it is mobile, it is always available to them.

Tool 3: GoodGuide

Description

Gives an overview of all of the different health considerations to make on a product by scanning the UPC

Justification

Grocery shopping can be very difficult for someone looking for healthy products, this takes some of the guess work out of it.

Tool 4: Tweet what you eat

Description

You tweet a short description of your food, and the nutrition info is crowdsourced.

Justification

A very simple, easy-to-use way to log food and get a general idea of caloric intake, as well as increasing your awareness of how many calories each type of food has.

Tool 4: DrinkFit

Description

Provides nutrition information for alcohol, helps track consumption.

Justification

The app provides information that is not often easily accessible, and helps to track alcohol consumption, a common source of excess calories.

Wrapup: Mobile Professionals

Just-in-time: These apps provide information at the moment it is useful. – Speaks to TRIGGERS and ABILITY

All mobile apps: These users are rarely in one place for long – Speaks to ABILITY

Easy data entry: These apps concentrated on easy entry to encourage logging, and then displayed results. – Speaks to MOTIVATION