Simon Jonsson

Storyboards and personas

This is Ben. He is in his forties, and overweight. He has tried many times to loose weight in order to be healthier. However, Ben’s friends are also overweight and want to go to the bar instead of the gym. It is the same with his colleges.

When Ben was younger, he used to go running with his friend Steve, and he also used to play football. He misses having people around him that keeps him motivated to stay active, and the friendly competition that comes with it.

One day, Ben wants to make a change and decides to take a walk every day. His gets a fitbit, and wants to get the prescribed 10 000 steps in daily. He downloads Carrot, types in his goal, and finds a group of people who has the same goal as he does. The group has made a race; walking 300 000 steps in 30 days. Ben joins the group and bets the £1 the group has set up. Even if it is just £1, Ben doesn’t want to be one of the ones that looses his money in the end. He’d rather have the satisfaction of sharing the money from the people how didn’t achieve the goal the group had set up.

Every day, Ben picks up his phone and sees what the other group members are doing. The data from his fitbit is uploaded to the group timeline automatically. On days when he feels tired he gets motivated by seeing how the other members are taking their steps, because he doesn’t want to fall behind. He also makes friends with he other members. Him and Allen always gives each other a hard time if either of them doesn’t get their 10 000 per day that they need to achieve the goal.

At the end of the 30 days, Ben has walked 306 358 steps, and Carrot concludes that he has lived up the the goal the group set up. He now gets his £1 back, plus his share of the money from the group members that did not achieve the goal. Ben feels rewarded and he wants to stay in contact with the other group members. Therefore, he sets out a new goal: to go for a 1 mile run, twice a week. he creates a new race and all members of the group joins him. He also invites some of his friends from work to join.

Carrot created the community, accountability and incentive Ben needed to reach his goals.

What does the literature say about Carrot?

Carrot taps into several aspects of human motivation. In this post we will talk about three areas in which the academic literature supports Carrots design: competition, financial incentives, and the importance of community.

Competition

Burguillo (2010) introduced a concepts called Competition-based Learning (CnBL) which was applied to university courses. CnBL was added to courses in computer programming by adding competitive events as part of the course. Surveys given to students afterwards showed that the competitive element increased their motivation.

Carrot’s competitive aspects has the purpose demonstrated by Burguillo: to create motivation to achieve one’s goal. Competition has the ability to make a task which may feel like shore, such as doing coursework in a programming course or going for a run, and make it a more interesting activity. While friendly competition is a cornerstone in Carrot, there are other powerful motivations built into Carrot.

Financial incentive

Carrot’s betting aspect provides not only a framework for competition, but also a financial incentive to reach a goal.

The effects of financial incentive on exercise habits has been studied. Charness and Gneezy (2009) conducted a study where university students were offered incentives to go to the gym. The study had three groups. One group received no incentive to go to the gym. The second and third group was promised $25 one week later if they had attended the gym at least once in the interim. When the participants returned one week later the third group was promised $100 if they attended the gym at least 8 times the next 4 weeks. The results clearly showed that the financial incentives served to signifiantly increase gym attendance. Interestingly, this effect remained after the 5 weeks of the intervention. For Carrot this suggests that the chance of winning the race will help users to acheive their goal. It also means that winning encourages users to sign up for another race.

These results has been replicated by Aceland and Levy (2010) and Babcock and Hartman (2010). Babcock and Hartman also showed the effect of another important part of Carrot: the effect of having a community.

Community

Babcock and Hartman’s study started with documenting all participants’ social connections. Hence, they noted what participants knew other participants of the study. The participants were then randomly assigned to be offered an incentive or not. Their findings show that the participants who had friends that were also incentivised went to the gym significantly more often than the those who didn’t.

Similar results have been found in other studies. Resnick et al (2002) investigated the effects of social support on exercise habits in older adults. They found that social support affected exercise habits through self efficacy and outcome expectations.

For Carrot, these results suggest that the social aspect of a race is important. Carrot encourages people with similar goals to interact and create a community. These studies lets us think that even without the competative element, Carrot would still tap into the benefits of a social network when attempting to acheive fitness goals.

Privacy

Privacy will be a concern in any social network. The idea behind Carrot is that users share information about themselves in order to compete, motivate each other, and create a community. While the sharing of information is essential to the function of the network, we must carefully consider privacy concerns.

Blocking other members

It is important that the users have the ability to block other members. If the two people are in the same race, this means that the blocked user will not be able to see the data or posts of the blocking user.

Keeping precise location secret

Users will be able to give basic location information, such as country and city. However, data such as route when running or home address will be kept secret on the platform.

Informing users how their data will be used

The terms and conditions will make sure users understand that their data will be visible to other members of the race they are in. They will also have to give explicit consent when the app access their fitness tracker data.

Keeping data within the group

The user data regarding workouts and similar will only be accessible by other members of the group. It will not be freely available for anyone who is on the platform.

Not sharing data will third party

Carrot will not sell user data to third parties. This will be detailed in terms and conditions.

The technology behind the scenes

The idea behind Carrot is great, but is it technically feasible? This post will explain how Carrot will work behind the scenes.

iOS and Android

Carrot will come as both an Android and iOS app so that the most amount of people will be able to use it. Statistics show that over 99% of devices sold run either iOS or Android. The majority of devices world wide (85% in early 2017) run Android. However, in countries such as the UK and USA, the proportion of iOS users is higher; about half in the UK (ref).

Android and iOS apps require separate development, but because of the distribution of users of the two platforms, we consider it worth the effort to develop for both.

Importing data from health tracking devices

A central function for Carrot is that uploading data from health tracking devices is automatic. To make Carrot useful for as many users as possible, we will implement support for all the major fitness tracking devices.

Many fitness trackers offer web based APIs, or libraries, to help developers access data from the devices. However, both Apple and Google have made single tools which gathers data from a multitude of devices.

Apple offers HealthKit and Google offers Goolge Fit. Both support the majority of popular fitness trackers with the exception of Fitbit, which is supported for Google Fit, but not HealthKit. However, Fitbit offers a web based API, which we can use to download data on the iOS devices. Hence, in the Carrot Android app, we will use Google Fit, and in the iOS app we will use HealthKit and the Fitbit API.

Both Google Fit and HealthKit not only supports fitness devices, but also a number of fitness apps. Both also generate their own data, such as step counting. For Carrot, this means that users who does not own a separate fitness tracking device can use their smartphone for goals that are measured with steps, runs, etc.

Payments and betting

The element of financial risk and reward makes Carrot a light betting app.

Not Android, nor iOS, allow betting apps which handles payments and payouts in the app itself. However, both platforms allow apps that facilitate betting. This means that betting is allowed, as long as the app is free, and no money is transacted in the app.

For Carrot, this means that we will have to make a website where users can purchase Carrot credits, which are used to enter a race. Winning a race is rewarded in credits that can be redeemed on the website.

The website will use the Paypal API to handle the payments and payouts. The website will also be integrated with the app as much as possible. When the user wants to enter a race, the app will start the device web browser with the website. The user login with the same details on the website as the app, make their purchase, and when they return to the app their account has been credited and they can enter the race. When a user win, the app again starts the web browser with the website, and they can have their winnings payed out.

Backend

Carrot will have a backend server where all the data will be synced. The data gathered by the app will be uploaded to the server and distributed to the other users of the app. Hence, the timeline for a given race will contain the same data for all the members in the race.

The backend will also store all the necessary information about users, how many Carrot credits they possess, etc.

Carrot and literacy

The ambition to improve oneself and to achieve a goal is for everyone, regardless of age, interests, and how much a person usually uses a smartphone. Therefor, the Kanton team is dedicated to build Carrot in a way that make it useful for users of all levels of web literacy.

We will use Eshet-Alkalai’s article about the five skills of web literacy as a framework. We will not engage in the debate of what age groups or generation may have more or less of certain literacy skills; We will simply consider all the skills in the design of Carrot.

The five skills are:

1. Photo/Visual

Esher-Alkalai writes “People with photo-visual literacy have good visual memory and strong intuitive-associative thinking, which helps them decode and understand visual messages easily and fluently.”

What we take away from this is that Carrot should not require good visual memory or strong intuitive-associative thinking to accommodate the people who does not have good photo-visual literacy. We will therefore make the pages in Carrot very easy to distinguish from each other, and hence easy to understand. We will also be mindful of what message on a given page is the most important, and try to make this visually prominent. For example, when the user is supposed to write down their goal, the textbox with button will be in the middle of the page and we will endeavour to reduce distracting options as far as possible.

2. Reproduction

“Digital reproduction literacy is the ability to create a meaningful, authentic, and creative work or interpretation, by integrating existing independent pieces of information.”

Eshet-Alkalai, 2004

Since Carrot is not about content creation, this does not really apply. The data will be uploaded automatically, and comments and messages will be voluntary.

3. Branching/Hypermedia

“People with good branching literacy are characterized by a good sense of multidimensional spatial orientation, that is, the ability to avoid loosing orientation when surfing through the labyrinth of lanes that characterizes the hyperspace.”

Eshet-Alkalai, 2004

A telephone conversation I’ve had many times:

Me: “Click the OK button”

Grandpa: “What OK button?”

Me: “The one in the lower right corner of the Properties window”

Grandpa: “I don’t see a Properties window”

Me: “But you just had it up, where did it go?”

Grandpa: “It just disappeared”

Me: “Ok, so click File, and then Properties.”

Grandpa: “I don’t see a file, it only says Google.”

Me: “But we were just in Word, how did you end up in the internet browser”

Grandpa: “I don’t know”

…

I had many similar conversations with my grandpa in the early noughts. However, since my grandpa, who is now 90 years old, got an iPhone, these phone calls has been on a steady decline. He can perfectly manage it, because the navigation is very clear. There is a home screen which is clearly recognisable, and whenever he wants to go back to it, he just presses the home button. The simplicity helps him with the multidimensional spatial orientation and he doesn’t get lost like he did in Windows 98.

For my grandpa, and others who struggle with Branching/Hypermedia literacy, Carrot will have very simple navigation. While a race is in progress, the user will always come to the race timeline when they open the app. Whenever the user goes of this page, there will be a “back” which will always lead back to the race timeline in as few steps as possible. Any other pages will also be visually easily distinguishable from the race timeline.

4. Information

“Information-literate people think critically, and are always ready to doubt the quality of information. They are not tempted to take information for granted, even when it seems ‘authoritative’ and valid.”

Eshet-Alkalai, 2004

This is a warning that some people might question whether Tom really did his 5 mile run like it says on the timeline. For these people, more detail will be helpful. Therefore, every event on the timeline will be clickable and details will be displayed. Seeing the route, how long it took, max speed, etc will help to give legitimacy to Tom’s run.

5. Socia-Emotional

“socio- emotionally-literate users can be described as those who are willing to share data and knowledge with others, capable of information evaluation and abstract thinking, and able to collaboratively construct knowledge”

Eshet-Alkalai, 2004

Some people want to share more, some less. The ability to comment and post pictures on the race timeline will provide an outlet for those who want to share more. However, the Carrot concept will work even for the people who want to share less.

Conclusion

Uncluttered design, clearly distinguishable pages, clear navigation, and the ability to post to the timeline will make Carrot an app for everyone. Finally my grandfather will have a peer group to help him achieve his fitness goals.

The first wireframes

First page you get to when starting the app for the first time.

This page gives the user a general idea of what steps are involved in using the app. The start button will start them off. Other than this button, there is nothing else to do.

Setting goal

The four steps have now moved to the top, with one emphasised. This is to make it easy for the user to understand the navigation. All the user have to do on this page is to write down what their goal is.

Find peers / race

Based on what the user wrote on the previous page, Carrot have produced a list of races that seem to have similar goals as the user has. The user can now browse the different races and find one that fits them. If they can’t find one, they can create their own race.

Waiting for the race to begin

Each race will have a starting point and an end point in time. During the time before the race starts, people can join the race, check out the other members of the group, and start messaging and commenting.

Race time

Once the race starts, the race timeline page is what the user will be visiting. Here their workouts (or other activities) are posted automatically, and they can also post on this timeline.

It’s here: Carrot!

Most of us has at one time or another decided to make a change that we know would benefit us. There is not shortage of people who want to loose weight, be more active, get the sleep we need, be stronger, or just be able to go for a 5 mile run without being sick. Yet when it comes to putting in the work to reach our goals, the initial enthusiasm quickly vanes.

Conversely, most of us have also had the experience of effortlessly pushing ourselves to perform with one powerful incentive: to win. On the football field, in the boxing ring, or on the tennis court, we push ourselves to be better then others and are motivated by the thought of winning the price as much as we are deterred by the thought of loosing.

Improving our health by walking more, going for runs, or eating better are prone to failure because they are often lonely endeavours without a clear, short term carrot or stick. That’s how the idea for Carrot was born: What if you would have a peer group with similar goals to yours with whom you could engage in friendly competition!

Carrot will enable users to find a group of people with similar goals, and then compete to reach that goal. The Carrot app will show the user what the other group members are doing to reach the goal, which gives you incentive to also take action. It’s one thing to sit in the sofa and think that you “should” go for a run. It’s another to see that Tom just came back from one and he’s going to beat you unless you go too.

but it gets better…

Carrot will also make it very easy to track your own and other’s progress. Carrot will be able to collect data from most popular health tracking devices, such as Fitbits, the iPhone step counter data, smart scales, etc. For example, if you go for a run and use your Fitbit to track the session, the workout you just did will automatically be uploaded to Carrot and your peers will be able to see that you are working towards the goal.

Carrot helps users utilise the natural human motivation to compete and to have a peer group to achieve goals that are normally lonely and difficult to achieve. Seeing what other competitors are doing and the ability to interact and be part of a community will provide the motivation needed to make those new years resolutions more than just beautiful plans.

So stay tuned as Carrot grows!

The beginning of a new era in social media

The industrial revolution, the invention of aviation, the transistor, and sliced bread; these are some of the great steps for mankind. Today, we remember the genius of Leornado Da Vinci, Niels Bohr and Isaac Newton.

We can only speculate what humanity will remember in year 3000, but they will most likely have but one name in their minds: Kanton.

During the 18th hundreds ships defied the treacherous oceans between Sweden and China to trade goods. This trade marked the coming together of cultures and the meeting of minds. Three hundred years later, project Kanton was created in the same spirit of development of greatness through working together. This time, it is not the development of network of trade routes which is the task of the day. In the 21st century, it is the development of a social network.