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Here’s my experience using an App. My App is a pencil and a sheet of paper. Low tech app. I have learned with my recent introspection that it is not a motivator for me except in a very minimal way. When graphing, or just documenting how I’m doing in my effort to improve some aspect of my behavior, I do feel like it motivates me a little if I see some success. The App gives me something tangible to see or to show others how well I’m doing. A good old attaboy and a sense of pride. I mostly feel its positive effect, though, after I’ve already succeeded.

Then there’s the other side of the App experience: failure. With failure in my efforts, my graph is a huge, visible, horrifying billboard announcing to anyone in sight of it of what a loser I am! I am so embarrassed! How obvious it is to everyone that I screwed up! The very FIRST thing I always do whenever I give up is to GET RID OF THE EVIDENCE! Rip that #$%# up and throw it away! I feel so ashamed, especially with the chart there for me and everyone to see, that I think it’s harder for me to try again than it would have been if I hadn’t used a chart at all. By not using a chart, if I failed, I could fail privately, and then get up and try again.

To summarize, Carolyn, my experience with apps is this: get rid of them. I am trying again, I am not making a stupid graph, and I am not telling a soul! shhhh

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Thanks for ‘weighing’ in here, Andrew. (*groan*)

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That being said, at certain points of my treatment, I found daily blood pressure and weight checks gave me a sense of being more on top of how things were going, beyond the all important qualitative and other indicators. I have also become enamoured of my Fitbit as it tracks my activity and sleep automatically, and reminds me to keep active through the psychological trick of badges etc. But objectively, I am active so it is more ‘preaching to the converted’ than changing behaviour.

My sense is that more work – or use of existing work – on the psychology of behaviour change and how to ‘nudge’ change (to use Kahneman’s and Thaler’s term), would even be better than talking to users (although that is needed to). I see that Fitbit has done a bit of that and it is disarmingly effective – if I am close to getting a ‘badge’ for 25 sets of stairs climbed, I will go up and down a number of times to get the ‘badge’. Silly but it works!

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Still recommending your site to Aussie audiences.

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