Physical Activity Support Community TogetherActive
Architecture, Implementation and Evaluation
Lamia Elloumi
1
, Bert-Jan van Beijnum
1
and Hermie Hermens
1,2
1
University of Twente, Twente, The Netherlands
2
Roessingh Research and Development, Enschede, The Netherlands
Keywords:
Physical Activity, Virtual Support Community, Design, Usability Evaluation.
Abstract:
Reducing sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity is getting an increased attention of researchers and health
organizations due to its significant benefits on health. In the same direction we are proposing a virtual com-
munity system, TogetherActive, which supports people in their daily physical activity. The community is
connected to physical activity sensors and provide social support (informational, emotional, instrumental and
appraisal supports). In order to increase motivation, individual and group goals, comparison, competition and
cooperation are the key concepts considered in the system. This paper presents the design, implementation
and usability evaluation of the TogetherActive system.
1 INTRODUCTION
Physical Inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor
for global mortality causing an estimated 3.2 mil-
lion deaths globally (WHO, 2014). Moderate regular
physical activity has significant benefits on health and
can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, dia-
betes, colon and breast cancer, and depression (WHO,
2014). Physical activity should not be mistaken with
physical exercise. Physical activity is defined as any
bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that
requires energy expenditure (WHO, 2014). Physi-
cal activity includes physical exercises, but also can
be active transportation, working or house chores, or
more generally activities of daily living.
Physical activity is important for all age groups
and health conditions. Only the recommendations
change depending on the group ages (5-17 years old,
18-64 years old and 65 years and above) and on the
health condition (healthy, acute diseases and chronic
diseases)(WHO, 2014). Despite all recommendations
and well-known health benefits of regular and suffi-
cient physical activity, physical inactivity remains a
global health problem (WHO, 2014).
The actual focus of many researches and organi-
zations is to reduce the physical inactivity, such as the
WHO Member States have agreed to reduce physical
inactivity by 10% in 2025 (WHO, 2014).
In order to reduce physical inactivity and pro-
mote this behavioural change, researchers from sev-
eral fields are involved: social sciences and computer
science.
On one hand, in social sciences, researchers base
interventions for behavioural change like this on a
number of theories and models from social sciences
such as(HHS, 1995; HHS, 1996):
• Classic learning theories (where the main con-
cepts are reinforcement, cues, and shaping)
• Transtheoretical model (where the main concepts
are pre-contemplation, contemplation, prepara-
tion, action, and maintenance)
• Social support (where the main concepts are in-
strumental support, informational support, emo-
tional support, and appraisal support)
These interventions are based on face-to-face
meetings and recently implemented in e-coaching
systems (Kamphorst et al., 2014).
On the other hand, in computer sciences, sev-
eral investigations and researches have been using In-
formation and Communications Technology (ICT) to
provide, extend, and enhance interventions to pro-
mote the level of physical activity among healthy peo-
ple and chronic patients (van den Berg et al., 2007;
Cotter et al., 2013). They address motivation and
monitor physical activity in order to change behaviour
regarding physical activity. The assessment of phys-
ical activity is important in those interventions and it
is either self-reported (for examples with the use of
200
Elloumi L., Beijnum B. and Hermens H..
Physical Activity Support Community TogetherActive - Architecture, Implementation and Evaluation.
DOI: 10.5220/0005289102000211
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF-2015), pages 200-211
ISBN: 978-989-758-068-0
Copyright
c
2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
e-diaries and questionnaires) or measured automati-
cally and more objectively (for example with the use
of pedometers, actometers, accelerometers and gyro-
scopes).
Telehealth and Telemonitoring systems couple
ICT-based systems with for instance physical activ-
ity assessment tools in order to monitor the physical
activity and give appropriate feedback taking into ac-
count the heath situation of the person(op den Akker
et al., 2012; Tabak, 2014; van Weering, 2011). But
some of these ICT-based interventions showed a de-
crease of physical activity after a period of time com-
pared to the first period of use and assessment (around
2 months in (Tabak, 2014)). This decrease may be ex-
plained by drop of motivation.
Persuasive technology is also targeting at be-
havioural changes through persuasion and social in-
fluence. PersonA (Ayubi and Parmanto, 2012), UbiFit
(Consolvo et al., 2008) and (Silveira et al., 2012) are
examples of systems using persuasive technology in
order to change physical activity behaviours. These
systems are however limited in terms of social sup-
port, they are only focusing on the appraisal support.
From another perspective social networks and vir-
tual communities are also used in healthcare in gen-
eral and in physical activity in particular. These com-
munities mainly provide the needed emotional and in-
formational support. Some examples are: WebMD
(WebMD, 2005), PatientsLikeMe (PatientsLikeMe,
2004) and MedHelp (MedHelp, 1994).
Our current work focuses on reducing physical
inactivity and we are targeting healthy people in or-
der to improve their health and well-being. In order
to overcome drawbacks of previous systems and so-
lutions provided by different research fields, we fo-
cus on improving their motivation to be physically
active through the use of a virtual community. The
virtual community uses physical activity monitoring
to assess physical activity. The community aims
to provide different forms of social support (infor-
mational, emotional, instrumental and appraisal sup-
port).The community supports groupings of people
using the system. We introduce physical activity
goals for groups and individuals. We support compe-
tition between groups and cooperation between mem-
bers within group. Comparison of achievement by
members belonging to the same group is also sup-
ported. All these functionalities are included in order
to increase the awareness and the motivation of users.
The ultimate goal of the virtual community is to
motivate people to be physically active and maintain
their physical activity level in long term use. It can be
used as supporting tool for achieving lifestyle changes
in the health prevention and in the management for
chronic patients. Lifestyle changes includes physical
activity as important facet, but also other facets such
as diet and medication.
In this paper we present the design and first steps
towards the implementation and evaluation of the To-
getherActive community system. We designed To-
getherActive and implemented part of the function-
alities in order to do a technically evaluation and per-
form a usability study in order to improve it for the
next design iteration.
First we present the architecture and design of To-
getherActive system, then we present the implemen-
tation and the evaluation of the first prototype. And
we finish with discussion and conclusions.
2 TogetherActive OVERVIEW AND
CONCEPTS
TogetherActive is a virtual community to support peo-
ple in their daily physical activities. It supports them
in order to get physically active and to maintain an
appropriate level of physical activity. The appropriate
level of activity is captured by the activity goal that
can be set on an individual basis and depending on
the personal context.
Physical Activity
Monitoring System
User
Internet
Physical Activity
Monitoring System
User
Physical Activity
Monitoring System
User
Moderator
Physical Activity
Monitoring System
User
TogetherActive Portal
Figure 1: TogetherActive Architecture Overview.
The TogetherActive architecture consists of a
number of subsystems as shown in Figure 1. First
of all there is a physical activity monitoring system,
composed by a physical activity sensor and a gateway
(which can be a smartphone). The data collected by
the physical activity monitoring system is transmitted
from the sensor to the user’s gateway and then syn-
chronized with the portal.
The second component of the system is the portal.
The portal is accessible from an internet-connected
device (laptop, tablet or smartphone). Different views
on activity and community data are shown to people
depending of their roles.
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201
2.1 Concepts used in TogetherActive
In this section we introduce the main concepts used.
2.1.1 Users and Roles
A user is a person who is using the TogetherActive
portal. We distinguish different users based on their
user Role. We defined two different user roles: the
user role and the moderator role. In the user role peo-
ple have a physical activity monitoring system. In the
moderator role people are able to configure some fea-
tures of the system such as setting activity goals for
individuals and groups.
2.1.2 Group and Group Member
A group is composed of two or more users who in-
teract with each other in order to motivate each other
in their daily physical activity. A group is composed
of peers (people sharing similar age range, or simi-
lar health condition, or similar motivation and goals,
or similar physical activity monitoring system) and
can include moderator(s). When a user belongs to a
group, then he/she is called member of that group.
2.1.3 Physical Activity and Physical Activity
Monitoring Systems
Assessing the physical activity level is typically done
using a physical activity monitoring systems such as a
pedometer or accelerometer. Depending on the phys-
ical activity sensor used, different outcome measures
are generated by these sensors. The four main differ-
ent types that can be distinguished are (Chen et al.,
2008):
• Steps: represent the basic measurement unit and
it can be used to calculate other derived metrics
such as energy expenditure and distance.
• Time: modern physical activity monitoring sys-
tems record the duration of activities. In order to
motivate people, some systems provide a count-
down timer.
• Distance: this is calculated using the total number
of steps and take into account the length of users’
steps.
• Energy expenditure: some of the new physi-
cal activity monitoring systems are able to esti-
mate calories consumption during various activ-
ities such as walking, cycling, etc. These algo-
rithms may or may not include an activity recog-
nition algorithm.
2.1.4 Goals
As mentioned in the introduction, the recommended
amount of physical activity depends on many factors,
including age and health condition. Hence, goals are
personal and need to be make known to the system.
The formation of the goal depends on the type of
physical activity monitoring system used. However,
in all cases the target amount of physical activity is
always related to a period of time, for instance per
day or per week.
Next to the personal goal we introduce the notion
of group goal. The group goal is a physical activity
level plan that the members intend to achieve together.
The period of the goal can vary from one day to mul-
tiple days.
2.2 Functional View
As the main objective of the TogetherActive commu-
nity is to provide social support, the functional blocks
(Figure 2) are described and categorised according
to the four types of social support (House, 1981):In-
formational, Emotional, Appraisal and Instrumental
Support.
Patient
Moderator
Self-Measuring of Physical Activity
Self-Monitoring of Physical Activity
Self-Comparison of Physical Activity
Setting Personal Goal
1..*
Monitoring Other's Physical Activity
Setting Group Goal
Collaboration, Competition and Comparison
1..*
1..*
1..*
*
*
*
Communication
Synchronous Communication Asynchronous Communication
*
Feedback
<<include>>
Publishing Discussion/Information Related to Physical Activity
Sharing Physical Activity with Peers
Community Feedback
System Feedback
Figure 2: TogetherActive Functions.
2.2.1 Informational Support
With informational support people can receive and
search information on physical activity, sensors to
measure these, and general information about the pros
and cons of physical activities, new facts published
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about physical activity importance, and recommenda-
tions on physical activity. This information is pub-
lished on a wiki related to TogetherActive community.
2.2.2 Emotional Support
Emotional support involves the provision of empathy,
trust and caring. This is done with publishing discus-
sion on a blog in the TogetherActive community. It is
also supported by a synchronous communication ser-
vice (chat) and an asynchronous communication ser-
vice (private messaging).
2.2.3 Appraisal Support and Feedback
Appraisal support and feedback is about encourage-
ment and giving motivational cues to people based on
their physical activity achievements. In the Togeth-
erActive system the achievement is measured by the
activity sensors in relation to the personal and group
goals that have been set. Appraisal and feedback can
be given in different modalities and have different
origins. For instance, in the TogetherActive system,
the system itself may provide appraisal and feedback,
and peers in the community can provide appraisal and
feedback.
2.2.4 Instrumental Support
Instrumental support involves the provision of tangi-
ble aids and services that directly assist a person in
achieving physically activity goals. It is realised in
the community by the functionalities involving phys-
ical activity monitoring and self-management:
• Self-measuring of the physical activity: A physi-
cal activity monitoring system is provided to users
in order to measure the physical activity level.
• Self-monitoring of the physical activity: Users
are able to monitor their physical activity them-
selves in order to change their physical activity
behaviour.
• Self-comparison of physical activity: Users are
able to compare their current physical activity
level with previous levels; such as the daily level
with the previous day level.
• Setting personal goal: It is about setting physical
activity level goals. These goals should be realis-
tic and measurable. They are time-targeted, such
as daily goals. The users are able to set them-
selves the physical activity goals, otherwise the
moderator has to set the goals.
• Sharing physical activity with peers: Peers of the
same group are able to share their current physical
activity level.
• Monitoring other’s physical activity: Peers of the
same group are able to monitor each other’s phys-
ical activity level in order to support and motivate
them.
• Setting group goal: A group exists in order to
motivate each other, have common goal. Each
group can set its own goal. It is also possible that
the moderator is involved in setting the goal for a
group.
• Collaboration: because a group goal is set for each
group and this goal is shared among the peers of
the group, collaboration is stimulated to reach this
group goal.
• Competition: the TogetherActive community is
composed by multiple groups. The ability to
achieve a common goal in each group creates
the possibility to create a competition between
groups.
• Comparison: within a group, peers can compare
their physical activity achievement with others
and give insight in similarities and differences
amongst group members.
3 TogetherActive FUNCTIONAL
ARCHITECTURE
The architecture of the TogetherActive portal is based
on the concepts of a Service Oriented Architecture.
Adapting such a flexible architecture allows a flexible
integration, developers get accelerated development
cycles, reusable services and composite application
development.
The TogetherActive functional architecture is
shown in (Figure 3). A portal is generally de-
fined as a software platform for building websites
and web applications. Portal provides personaliza-
tion, single sign on and content aggregation [JSR-
168:PLT.2.1]. The TogetherActive portal is composed
by portlets. A portlet is a Java technology based
web component, managed by a portlet container [...]”
[JSR-168:PLT.2.2]. A portlet implements a reusable
independent application component.
In the TogetherActive portal, portlets are divided
into three categories: generic portlets, personal level
portlets and group level portlets. Portlets may use
services. Services are also divided into three cate-
gories: generic services, personal level services and
group level services.
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Portal
Generic
Portlets
Personal
Level Portlets
Group Level
Portlets
Portlets
Generic
Services
Personal
Level Services
Group Level
Services
Services
Users
Backend
Database
Sensing
Physical Activity
Monitoring
System
Figure 3: TogetherActive Functional Architecture.
3.1 Portal
The portal is composed of set of pages hosting the
portlets. These are categorised into a set of main
pages, a set of personal pages and a set of group pages
(Figure 4).
• The main pages contain the profile of the logged-
in users, their groups’ list where they belongs (a
user can belong to one or more groups), the por-
tal wiki and portal blog. The pages of the main
pages are accessible via the menu bar of the other
pages (personal and group pages) for navigation
back and forth.
• The personal pages are user-related pages. Via
these pages, a logged-in user has access to his/her
data such as Daily and History physical activity
monitoring data, and personal goals (current and
past ones).
• The group pages are group-related pages. When-
ever a group is selected from the main pages, the
user is redirected to those pages. It contains data
and information about the group such as details
about the group, the members of the group and
the group goal (current and past ones).
3.2 Portlets
Each portal page contains one or more portlets. As
part of the design we have defined this relationship as
shown in Figure 5, Figure 6 and Figure 7 for each
set of pages respectively.
3.2.1 Generic Portlets
The generic portlets are used in the design of set of the
main pages. The organization of these portlets on the
PAC4SS Main
Page
Group Members
History
My Group 1
All Groups
My Profile
PAC4SS Blog
My Group n
...
Group Members
Management
Current Group
Goal
Group Goal
Management
Group Blog
Members
Goal
Personal Goal History
Personal Goal
Management
Daily PA Monitoring
History PA Monitoring
My Group i
...
Group Goal
History
Current Personal Goal
Current Group
Members
Main Pages Personal Pages
Group Pages
Settings
Group Details
Group Level
Group Level
History
Figure 4: Portal’s Pages.
pages in represented in Figure 5. The portlets used
are:
• User Profile Portlet: It contains the profile of the
logged-in user. The content of the portlet can be
seen by authorised users/peers.
• Group List Portlet: It shows the list of exist-
ing groups. Authorized user can access to some
groups pages or all of them, for example a mem-
ber of the group can access his or her group pages
from this portlet.
• Group Leader Board Portlet: it shows the leader
board of active groups based on the group goal
achievement.
• Group Profile Portlet: It contains a short descrip-
tion about the group.
• Members Activity Timeline Portlet: It shows the
list of group members’ posts, such as their current
physical activity level and their comments on the
physical activity achievement of others.
• Blog Portlet: It is for discussion on the main part
of the portal.
• Wiki Portlet: It is for posting information, article
and news on the main part of the portal.
• Sensor Management Portlet: The user moderator
can manage sensors (add, update or delete sen-
sors) and manage associations between users and
sensors (add, update or delete).
• Group Management Portlet: The moderator can
manage groups (add, update or delete groups).
Management of members and goals of the group
is not done in this portlet.
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• User Management Portlet: The moderator can
manage users (add, update or delete).
• Portal Settings Portlets: for all general settings.
Figure 5: Main Pages’ Portlets.
3.2.2 Personal Level Portlets
The personal level portlets are used to populate the
set of personal pages. The organization of the portlets
on the pages is shown in Figure 6. The following
portlets have been designed:
• Daily Physical Activity (PA) Monitoring Portlet:
It shows to the logged-in user his or her phys-
ical activity level as a graph. The graph shows
the recommended level (goal of the day) and the
achieved level. The physical activity data is as-
sessed by the physical activity monitoring system.
It shows also some system feedback about the
achievement of the user. The content of the portlet
can be seen by authorised peers such as peers be-
longing to the same group or the user moderator
of the portal.
• Comments portlet: Authorised peers can com-
ment and discuss about the current physical ac-
tivity achievements of the concerned user.
• History Physical Activity (PA) Monitoring Port-
let: It shows to the logged-in user his or her phys-
ical activity level history over time. Similar to the
Daily Physical Activity (PA) Monitoring Portlet,
the content of this portlet can be seen by autho-
rised peers.
• Current Personal Goal Portlet: It shows details
about the current personal goal of the logged-in
user.
• Personal Goal Management Portlet: Using this
portlet th, moderator (and potentially the logged-
in user) can manage the goals of the user (create,
update or delete).
• Personal Goal History Portlet: It shows the history
of goals, both in term of goals set and achievement
made.
Personal Goal
History
Personal Goal
Management
Daily PA
Monitoring
History PA
Monitoring
Current Personal
Goal
Personal Pages’ Portlets
Current Personal Goal
Portlet
History PA Monitoring
Portlet
Comments Portlet
Daily PA Monitoring Portlet
Personal Goal Management
Portlet
Personal Goal History
Portlet
Figure 6: Personal Pages’ Portlets.
3.2.3 Group Level Portlets
The group level portlets are used to design the set of
the group pages. The organization of the portlets on
the pages is shown in Figure 7. The following group
level portlets have been designed:
• Group Details Portlet: It is a quick visual
overview about the goal achievement. It shows if
the member is compliant, over active, under active
or if the sensor is not in use for the day.
• Group Snapshot Portlet: It gives an overview of
the social activity of the members of the group.
This overview is based on the number of mes-
sages exchanged such as posted/shared messages,
messages replies (on own messages, or on mes-
sages from others) and the number of messages
received. It measures the interaction between the
members.
• Group Level Portlet: It shows the current level of
the group. Every new group has a beginner level.
Based on the daily group achievement, groups
earn points allowing them to level-up (levels are
expressed from beginner to expert).
• Group Level History Portlet: It shows the history
of the levels earned by the group.
• Current Group Goal Portlet: It shows details about
the current goal of the group.
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• Group Goal History Portlet: It shows the history
of group goals created and achieved (or poten-
tially not achieved).
• Group Goal Management Portlet: The authorised
user can create new goals and update existing
ones.
• Group Members Portlet: It shows the list of cur-
rent members of the group.
• Group Members History Portlet: It shows the list
of users that were members of the groups over
time (date when they joined and date when then
left) and their contributions to the goals achieved
in the group during that period.
• Group Members Management Portlet: The au-
thorised user can add or remove members of the
group.
• Blog Portlet: It is for discussions in the group.
Group Members
History
Group Members
Management
Current Group
Goal
Group Goal
Management
Group Blog
Members
Goal
Group Goal
History
Current Group
Members
Group Pages’ Portlets
Group Details
Group Level
Group Level
History
Group Details Portlet
Group Snapshot
Portlet
Group Level Portlet
Group Level History
Portlet
Current Group Goal
Portlet
Group Goal
Management Portlet
Group Goal History
Portlet
Group Members
Portlet
Group Members
Management Portlet
Group Members
History Portlet
Blog Portlet
Comments Portlet
Figure 7: Group Pages’ Portlets
3.3 Services
Services are responsible of storing and retrieving data.
A portlet asks for data using service, and the service
fetches it. The portal can then display this data to
the user. The user can, depending on the portlet de-
sign, create, read, update or delete the data. If the user
chooses to modify (create, update or delete) the data,
the portlet passes it back to the service and the ser-
vice manage and stores it in the database. The portlet
doesn’t need to know how the services do it. We di-
vided the services into 3 categories depending on the
portlets:
• Generic Services: includes the services responsi-
ble for fetching and modifying the data to the por-
tal in general and generic portlets in particular.
• Personal Level Services: includes the services re-
sponsible for fetching and modifying the data to
the Personal Pages’ portlets.
• Group Level Services: includes the services re-
sponsible for fetching and modifying the data to
the Group Pages’ portlets.
The information model in Figure 8 represents the
conceptual classes that are use to implement the ser-
vices.
User
Physical Activities
<<Abstract>>
TogetherActive Physical Activities
Sensor System
<<Abstract>>
Data
<<Abstract>>
*
1
TogetherActive Portal
<<Abstract>>
1
*
Sensor Assignment
GroupPage
0..* 1
Role
<<Abstract>>
+idRole
+Description
1..*
0..*
Group Goal
Personal Goal
1
0..*
Group Moderator
Group Role
<<Abstract>>
Group Member
Portal Role
<<Abstract>>
Role_User Moderator
Task Role
1..*
0..*
1
0..*
Service Action
Service
<<Abstract>>
1
1
1
*
Figure 8: Informational Model.
4 TogetherActive
IMPLEMENTATION
4.1 Portal and Portlets
The portal was implemented using Liferay (Liferay,
2000). Liferay is a web based platform supporting
features commonly required for the development of
websites and portals. It is an open architecture and
open source system. Liferay offers you a full choice
of application servers, databases, and operating sys-
tems to run on. Liferay provides also out of the box
portlets such as Liferay CMS and Liferay Collabo-
ration offering web publishing, content management,
collaboration and social networking. It offers also
a secure single sign on. Liferay users can be intu-
itively grouped into ”user groups” and ”roles” pro-
viding flexibility and ease of administration.
For implementation we used Liferay Portal 6.1
Community Edition Bundled with Tomcat. We used
some of the platform built-in portlets and we imple-
mented a subset of the portlets described in Chapter
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3. Priorities were set for developing portlets which
would be included in the evaluation (described in
Chapter 5). The portlets that were implemented and
included for the evaluation are:
• Personal Level Portlets: Daily Physical Activ-
ity (PA) Monitoring, History Physical Activity
(PA) monitoring and Liferay Comments Portlets
(known as Page Comment).
• Group Level Portlets: Group Details, Group
Level, Group History, Current Group Goal,
Group Goal History and Group Goal Manage-
ment Portlets. The members’ management portlet
was replaced by the default administration possi-
ble with Liferay.
• Generic Portlets: Sensor Management, Group
List and Group Leaderboard were implemented.
The group and user management portlets were re-
placed by the default administration possible with
Liferay.
As for the services, we used built-in services pro-
vides by Liferay and we built new services that are
needed by the developed portlets using the service
builder feature provided by the Liferay SDK.
4.2 Physical Activity Monitoring
System
The current choice for a physical activity monitoring
system is ProMove sensor (ProMove, 2011) coupled
with a smartphone. The 3D-accelerometer of the sen-
sor assesses the energy expenditure. The resulting ac-
celeration is integrated over time, which is referred by
IMA value (Bouten, 1995):
IMA =
t
0
+T
Z
t=t
0
|a
x
(t)|dt +
t
0
+T
Z
t=t
0
|a
y
(t)|dt +
t
0
+T
Z
t=t
0
|a
z
(t)|dt
(1)
Where x, y and z are the axes of the accelerometer
and a
x
, a
y
and a
z
the associated accelerations.
More details about the sensor and the IMA value
in (Bosch et al., 2009).IMA values allow to capture
the physical activity level. Figure 9 presents an ex-
ample of IMA values recorded and IMA values rec-
ommended over a day. The recommended level is the
level that a person is supposed to follow.
In order to assess the physical activity achieve-
ments, we developed some metrics in (Elloumi et al.,
2012) based on IMA values.
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00
IMA Values
Time
IMA Recommended
IMA Recorded
Figure 9: IMA Values - Recommended versus Recorded.
4.3 Personal and Group Goals
4.3.1 Personal Goals
The personal goal is a physical activity level that a
user plans or needs to achieve during a period of
time. This goal is either set by the user him/her-self,
or by the moderator. The period of the goal can
vary from one day to multiple days depending on the
preferences. When a goal is set, the user needs to be
compliant to this goal within allowed low and high
thresholds. The Figure 10 shows examples of goals
with low and high thresholds. Whenever the physical
activity level of the concerned user is in between the
low and high thresholds then he/she is considered as
compliant to the goal. If the physical activity level
is higher than the high threshold then the user is
considered as over active, and if it is under the low
threshold then he/she is considered as under active.
In the current implementation only Figure 10(a) setup
is considered.
4.3.2 Group Goals
The goal of a group is expressed as a physical activity
level plan that the members intend to achieve together.
The period of the goal can vary from one day to mul-
tiple days depending on the settings.
To be able to compute each member’s participa-
tion to the plan, we take into account the personal
achievement regarding a personal goal of each mem-
ber of the group. We set a rewarding system with
points. Points are given every episode of time (ex-
ample one hour). Table 1 shows how the points are
attributed.
To compute the points earned by a group during
the period of the group goal, we use the following
formula:
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0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
100000
8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00
IMA Values
Time
IMA Recommended
High Threshold
Low Threshold
(a)
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00
IMA Values
Time
IMA Recommended
High Threshold
Low Threshold
(b)
0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
100000
8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00
IMA Values
Time
IMA Recommended
High Threshold
Low Threshold
(c)
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
45000
50000
8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00
IMA Values
Time
IMA Recommended
High Threshold
Low Threshold
(d)
Figure 10: Physical Activity Level over time Recom-
mended level, High Threshold and Low Threshold.
(a) Same percentage of high and low thresholds compared
to the goal.
(b) No goal for periods of the day (for example in case of
office-worker user).
(c) Different percentages of high and low thresholds com-
pared to the goal.
(d) Different goals for different parts of the day (resetting to
0 for each new goal).
Table 1: Points attributing system. The value of the points
varies from group to group but also from a goal to goal.
Member Physical Ac-
tivity Level (Over a
period of time / time
episode)
Points to earn
(Points
member
)
Sensor off Points
sensorO f f
Sensor on Points
sensorOn
Under Active Points
underActivity
Over Active Points
overActivity
Compliant Points
compliance
Points
group
=
N
∑
i=1
(
T
∑
t=1
Points
members
(i, t)) (2)
With T the total number of the time episode, for
example the number of hours for which the goal lasts
and N the total number of members in the group.
Then we define the goal (Goal
group
) as percentage
of the maximum points that a group can reach:
Goal
group
= Percentage ∗ MaxPoints
group
(3)
With:
MaxPoints
group
=
N
∑
i=1
(Points
compliance
∗ T ) (4)
According to the setting of the goal, a bonus can
be attributed. If a member is compliant for the full
duration of a goal, Bonus
member
is attributed.
Then:
MaxPoints
group
=
N
∑
i=1
(Points
compliance
∗ T )
+
N
∑
i=1
(Bonus
member
)
(5)
5 TogetherActive EVALUATION
The implemented system has been tested and evalu-
ated so as it determine the operational correctness and
robustness of the system and its usability, these are
considered in the following technical evaluation and
usability evaluation.
5.1 Technical Evaluation
The purpose of the technical evaluation was to test the
sensor systems and the functional correctness of the
portal. During the implementation phase, individual
portlets were tested using a single sensor. After com-
pletion of the implementation and initial functional
tests, a more elaborated test was done. In this test ten
sensors were used with imaginary users. The test was
carried out continuously for two days.
This way of capturing physical activity data was
tested and the processing and presentation of the data
on the portal was verified.
This technical evaluation identified a number of
minor implementation problems that were fixed.
5.2 Usability Evaluation
5.2.1 Protocol
The goal was to evaluate the usability of the portal in
order to acquire feedback from users and improve the
portal in the next design cycle.
The evaluation was planned for the duration of 1
week and with 10 participants. A first meeting was
planned with the participants. The aim of the meet-
ing was to get an explanation and practice about the
physical activity monitoring system ProMove, and to
learn how to use and navigate through the Together-
Active Portal. Participants received their credentials
to connect the monitoring system and use the com-
munity. They were taught how to use the sensor and
the TogetherActive Portal. They were asked to sign
an informed consent form and a borrowing form of
the physical activity monitoring system.
Then, participants were divided into groups so
as to test the group-based functionalities. During
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this week of evaluation, participants were asked to
wear the physical activity sensor system from 8:00 to
22:00, and to use the portal.
By the end of the week, a second meeting was
organised. The participants returned the physical
activity monitoring systems and got a discharge
document for borrowing the monitoring system.
They received a link for an online questionnaire. The
questionnaire was composed by 3 parts:
• General information:
This part of the questionnaire is to get background
information about the participants and their use
of social networks and/or apps in general, and for
health and well-being purposes.
• Portal usability (based on the Computer System
Usability Questionnaire (Lewis, 1995)):
In this part the usability of the portal (computer
system in general) was investigated using this
standardized questionnaire. This part of the ques-
tionnaire has 19 items. The responses to those
items would help us understand what aspects of
the portal participants are particularly concerned
about and the aspects that satisfy them. Items
are based on a 7-point scale, where participants
can express their opinion from strongly agree to
strongly disagree.
• Sensor System:
It is for measuring the satisfaction with the use of
the sensor system and see if there were troubles in
its use. This part of the questionnaire is composed
by 4 items (with 3 mandatory items with yes or no
questions, and one optional item to express extra
remarks)
5.2.2 Participants
We recruited 10 participants who had to use the por-
tal and sensor system for a week (5 working day and
weekend). Participants were recruited from the Uni-
versity of Twente. Inclusion criterion to participate
in the experiment was that participants should have
some time for using the physical activity monitoring
system and using the portal.
Participants were 9 PhD students and 1 Post-Doc,
2 of them were female participants. The age of partic-
ipants was between 25 and 35 years old. All partici-
pants had an educational background in either techni-
cal sciences or social sciences.
5.2.3 Results
After getting all the replies to the questionnaire, we
analysed the results. Figures 11(a), 11(b) and 11(c)
0 2 4 6 8 10
Other
MySpace
Twitter
Google+
LinkedIn
Facebook
(a)
More
than 4
Years; 6
1 - 4
Years
; 1
Less than
1 Year; 3
(b)
0 - 5
hours; 6
6 - 10
hours; 3
11 - 20
hours; 0
21 - 30
hours; 1
31+
hours; 0
(c)
Figure 11: Use of Social Networks
(a) Social networking sites.
(b) Subscription to the social networking sites.
(c) Time spent per week on social networking sites.
give an overview about the familiarity of the partici-
pants in using social networking sites. We can con-
clude that participants are familiar with social net-
works (especially the popular ones nowadays), and
using them for 0 to 10 hours a week. So we can as-
sume that using our portal/social network will not be
difficult for them.
Participants are not or did not use social network-
ing site for health or well-being purposes. But 50%
of the participants used apps (on android, iPhone or
other phone operating systems) for health or well-
being purposes. All those 5 participants used those
apps for exercise/training recording, one of them for
exercise/training schedule compliance and 2 of them
for informational purposes. So although participants
are using social networks in their daily life, adopting
these social networks to health or well-being purposes
is not yet fully included in their habits, the same holds
for the apps.
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After getting the replies from all participants we
decided to exclude from the analysis the replies of
2 participants (one replied to all questions with 1
(strongly agree) and one replied to all questions with
7 (strongly disagree)).
Following the guidelines from Lewis (Lewis,
1995), the results from user satisfaction (Table 2)
are summarized into 4 factors reported as mean val-
ues: overall system usability (OVERALL), system
usefulness (SYSUSE), information quality (INFO-
QUAL) and interface quality (INTERQUAL). Based
on the result we can say that the interface quality (IN-
TERQUAL) was better judged comparing to the rest.
We compared those 4 factors’ results (Table 3) with
usability studies done in ICT-based systems in health-
care (van ’t Klooster, 2013; Zarifi Eslami, 2013). We
can conclude that for this first version of our system
the usability is similar to these other two systems.
Table 2: Satisfaction Results.
Score Question
Items
Average
(8 partici-
pants)
Standard
Deviation
OVERALL 1 to 19 3.81 1.09
SYSUSE 1 to 8 3.89 1.03
INFOQUAL 9 to 15 3.83 1.06
INTERQUAL 16 to 18 3.5 1.29
Table 3: Results from other usability studies (van ’t
Klooster, 2013; Zarifi Eslami, 2013).
Score Study done
in (van ’t
Klooster, 2013)
Study done in
(Zarifi Eslami,
2013)
OVERALL 3.7 4.75
SYSUSE 3.2 4.37
INFOQUAL 3.5 4.93
INTERQUAL 4.7 5.32
Regarding the satisfaction with the use of the sys-
tem sensor, 40% of the participants were not satis-
fied and 30% declared having problems with it. This
dissatisfaction is mainly due to (based on their added
remarks) large size of the sensor, uncomfortable to
wear, sometimes loss of connection to the smartphone
and battery charging (battery has to be charged every
day). But as shown with the percentages, some partic-
ipant didn’t have concerns with previous list and 30%
of them declared that if the sensor is aimed for real
use, they would use it.
6 DISCUSSION AND
CONCLUSION
The results of the scores from the Usability Question-
naire were similar to the results of the other studies. In
order to get more insights in the usability, we looked
at the background of participants and in particular to
their use of social networks. We found no correlation
between the use of other social networks and the us-
ability scores of the TogetherActive portal.
he aim of this usability evaluation is to get feed-
back from users and improve the TogetherActive sys-
tem in the next design cycle. From the results of the
questionnaires we induced two major categories of
improvements, these are:
• Suggestions on the improvement on the user in-
terface:
– Critical remarks were received on the used
colour scheme of the portal. So, this is a point
of concern in the redesign.
– Participants expected that the graphs that dis-
play daily and history physical activity levels
are more interactive and has better quality and
more details. So based on this remark, quality
and display of the graphs should be improved
– Some participants experienced difficulties with
navigation, for them it was not clear. Based
on this remark, navigation should be more in-
tuitive.
– Some participants were looking for help on the
portal to understand more some of the function-
alities and options of the portal but they could
not find it. Basically, the help function was
not planned or implemented in this version. So
based on this remark help function should be
provided in the portal.
• Suggestions on the sensor:
Many participants complained about the size of
the sensor and for some of them they had to
change their habitual way of dressing to be able
to use the sensor. They also complained about
the fact of having to charge the sensor every day.
So based on these remarks, we should look for
another option for the sensor, satisfying the con-
straints size, wearability and battery life.
Based on these suggestions we will improve the
TogetherActive system. A second design cycle will
be done along with improvement and extension of the
implementation (including the portlets that were de-
signed in this version and not implemented) and an
evaluation.
To conclude, in this paper we presented the To-
getherActive community system and its design. The
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community uses physical activity monitoring sensors
and aims to provide a full spectrum of social support.
We included the concepts of personal goals and group
goals. Self-monitoring, competition, cooperation and
comparison are included in the system in order to in-
crease the self-awareness and group-awareness, and
motivation in order to improve or maintain the phys-
ical activity level. We presented the first implemen-
tation along with the technical evaluation. Improve-
ments of the current implemented version of the sys-
tem are planned taking the results of the evaluation
into account.
The current design does not yet include physical
activity activation concepts, hence feedback and feed-
back modalities designed to initiate physical activity.
Such approaches have already been investigated in for
instance (op den Akker et al., 2012). A future devel-
opment we would like to explore is such an activation
with involvement of peers. Future evaluations will in-
clude healthy subjects and we will be investigation the
added value of virtual community in improving the
physical activity level. However, the concepts pre-
sented in this paper can well be transferred to other
application domains including lifestyle change sup-
port as needed in many chronic patients and also in
the domain of prevention, especially in identified in-
creased risk groups.
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