Literature review

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.

How is “Carrot and Stick” model different from gamble and online finance?

Why is it not gamble?

According to Gambling Act 2005 in the United Kindom, sports for reward is not gamble.

Gaming & game of chance

(1)In this Act “gaming” means playing a game of chance for a prize.

(2)In this Act “game of chance”—

(a)includes—

(i)a game that involves both an element of chance and an element of skill,

(ii)a game that involves an element of chance that can be eliminated by superlative skill, and

(iii)a game that is presented as involving an element of chance, but

(b)does not include a sport.

(3)For the purposes of this Act a person plays a game of chance if he participates in a game of chance—

(a)whether or not there are other participants in the game, and

(b)whether or not a computer generates images or data taken to represent the actions of other participants in the game.

(4)For the purposes of this Act a person plays a game of chance for a prize—

(a)if he plays a game of chance and thereby acquires a chance of winning a prize, and

(b)whether or not he risks losing anything at the game.

(5)In this Act “prize” in relation to gaming (except in the context of a gaming machine)—

(a)means money or money’s worth, and

(b)includes both a prize provided by a person organising gaming and winnings of money staked.

Why is it not online finance?

According to Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act the

finance provider means that a body corporate that:

(a) lends money or provides credit in the course of a business; or

(b) arranges or facilitates the provision of debt or equity finance in the course of a business; or

(c) provides, arranges or facilitates invoice discounting or factoring in the course of a business;

but, in accordance with regulation 2(2) of the Small and Medium Sized Business (Credit Information) Regulations, for the purposes of those Regulations it does not include a body corporate that provides credit only by providing goods or services before payment of part, or all of, the amount to be paid for such goods or services.

Although the platform will charge a little transaction fee in “Carrot and Stick” model, it is just service to cover platform maintain cost. There are no financial services(credit, loan, etc.) on this platform. As a result, it is not a platform involving financial activities.

To conclude, it Carrot is just a fitness application to motivate individuals to keep fitness and enjoy a healthy lifestyle.

Reference

Gambling Act 2005 2005 CHAPTER 19 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2005/19

Small Business, Enterprise and employment ACT 2015, FCA https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/glossary/?starts-with=F

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.