Promoting Physical Activity in Children through Smartphone Service Intervention

Background Against the problem of declining physical activity among youth after COVID-19, this study has developed a design-led intervention that promotes physical activity using a smartphone service for families with children in upper grades of elementary school. The objective of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of design elements constituting the intervention program via testing the service against a family with children in upper grades of elementary school. Methods Through forming a multidisciplinary team between the Department of Design and the Department of Children and Families, the study developed a strategy to instigate a constructive behavioral change to help family members become more physically active at home. The strategy used information, empowerment, and motivation as a driver of stimuli. A 13-day home user test was conducted to examine its effectiveness and to identify its limitations for future enhancements. Results Through the home user test, it was achievable to confirm an increase in actual physical activity as well as beneficial improvements in the perception of regulating physiological activity into habits. It was observed that motivation was internalized through family-level behavior intervention, parental role modeling through feed-forward information, reinforcing the importance of physical activity in children and adolescents, and experiencing a sense of accomplishment and self-efficacy from achieving their daily goals. Conclusions Based on theoretical considerations for motivation and the maintenance of changed behavior, a service that combines various intervention elements, is presented in this paper. This resulted in an understanding of the theoretical background and anticipated impacts on the future development of such smartphone-based services for tackling social issues such as sedentary behavior. Through this study, both children and their parents would be better equipped to make positive contributions to building a healthy community. © 2023, Archives of Design Research. All rights reserved.

AuxeticBreath: Changing Perception of Respiration

AuxeticBreath is an interactive new-media installation that visualizes the rhythmic respiratory rate, as well as tidal volume-the amount of air displaced or exchanged in a single breath-of collective human breaths using soft robotics covered with auxetic structures (i.e. structures with a negative Poisson's ratio, exhibiting the property of becoming thicker when stretched and narrower when compressed) [1]. The goals of this artwork are 1) to encourage audience interaction with collective breaths and user contemplation of the changing perception of respiration during the COVID-19 pandemic;and 2) to explore a new artistic approach using a combination of auxetic structures and soft robotics. The metaphors and artistic expressions of continuous inflation and deflation of elastomers, and the emission of light from the expansion of auxetic structures invite an individual's presence to become part of the larger collective installation, and to take a moment to consider underlying changing perceptions of breath during the pandemic. By employing an emerging technology, we want to encourage other artists to explore and modify techniques and methods generally only used among engineers, and to embrace them as new artistic approaches for realizing their own ideas. © 2021 Owner/Author.