=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3100/paper21
|storemode=property
|title=The SToP project app: promoting the creation of habits through explicit learning and self-monitoring
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3100/paper21.pdf
|volume=Vol-3100
|authors=Luca Fusco,Federico Diano,Federica Somma,Raffaele Di Fuccio,Fabrizio Ferrara,Luigia Simona Sica
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/psychobit/FuscoDSFFS21
}}
==The SToP project app: promoting the creation of habits through explicit learning and self-monitoring==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3100/paper21.pdf
The SToP project app: promoting the creation of habits
through explicit learning and self-monitoring
Luca Fusco,a, Federico Dianoa , Federica Sommaa, Raffaele Di Fucciob, Fabrizio Ferraraa,
Luigia Simona Sicaa
a
Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II, Department of Humanities, Naples,, Italy
b
Smarted SRL, Via Riviera di Chiaia 256, 80121, Naples, Italy
Abstract
The explicit goal that the SToP App was to achieve the creation of positive habits which can
help prevent and fight the obesity problem. Two main psychological processes are used in
order to reach this goal: explicit learning and self-monitoring. In this study, it is described how
the SToP App achieves these two objectives through a design and implementation consistent
with the psychological processes involved in self-regulation processes. In this sense, the App
designed within the SToP (Stop Obesity Platform) project represents an example of integration
between technology and psychology.
Keywords
SToP Project, self-regulation, health-behaviour, gamification
1. Introduction
STOP is a multidisciplinary project funded by the European Community in order to support the fight
to obesity through the utilization of smart technologies. The SToP app, which will be freely available
for Android and IOS smartphones, is one of the main components which will be the outcome of the
project. The consortium of academic and private organization is working to the definition of “an
everyday life tool” which can be used by the stakeholders to improve their health condition and avoid
obesity.
Obesity is a medical condition, related to several serious health issues: heart diseases, arthritis, liver
disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. For this reason, it is considered a major public health problem, affecting
most of western countries [1]. European Citizens could benefit from a technological support to their
daily management of self-nutrition.
The SToP App, using gamification for helping individual to get information related to the nutrition-
management process and the constant everyday checking of information will help individuals to set
self-tailored nutrition goals which will support their health and physical well-being.
This technology will be used in order to reach educational goals related to the field of nutrition: the
monitoring of health parameters like personal weight and BMI (body mass index, calculated for the
assessment of obesity). It will involve the use of a “serious game approach”[2], namely the use of
entertainment strategies aimed at educating individuals towards important life processes.
The SToP App contains three major functions which can support the user to take care of his physical
health, coherently embedded in a gamified environment:
• The everyday monitoring of personal parameters related to weight and body shape
• The information providing related to the nutritional properties of food
• Feedback related to the everyday nutrition process, set as “nutrition daily goals”
The explicit goal that the SToP App aims to achieve is the creation of positive habits which can help
prevent and fight the obesity problem.
Two main psychological processes are used in order to reach this goal: explicit learning and self-
monitoring.
2. Stimulating habits creation
Human habits have the power to predict human behavior, regardless of explicit intentions [3].
Therefore, the creation of habits is a strong goal that organization should undertake in order to increase
the likelihood of health-related behaviors for individuals. When behaviors have been performed
repeatedly in the past, individuals can benefit from a lower effort to re-produce it. Finding also report
that explicit intentions to produce a certain behavior are strengthened by the creation of habits in
physical related behaviors [4].
However, the nutrition process presents complex aspects which individuals must explicitly take into
account when planning food-related behavior.
Food-related knowledge is a generic construct, which is conceived as having a main role in the
nutritional process. It involves believes and information about the goodness, the healthiness, the
usefulness of quality and quantity of food and drink which can be absorbed in everyday life.
Explicit self-monitoring is an essential behavioral part of undertaking healthy diet. Literature found
it as having a major role in weight loss intervention programs [5]. According to self-regulation theory
[6] the process of changing habits requires strong skills related to self-regulation in order to develop the
possibility of acknowledging rewards related to the achievement of goals.
For this reason, the Stop app was designed to fulfill a fundamental function: to promote self-
regulation through explicit learning. Let's try to see how these functions are fulfilled and, first, what is
meant by self-regulation. "Self-Regulation refers to the self-directive process through which learners
transform their mental abilities into task related skills" [7]. This is the process that people can use to
manage and organize their thoughts and convert them into skills. Self-regulation is the process of
continuously monitoring progress toward a goal, checking outcomes, and redirecting unsuccessful
efforts [8].
According to this definition, the stop App has been designed to allow and stimulate the following
fundamental functions:
1. F1 monitoring progress toward a goal;
2. F2 checking outcomes;
3. F3 redirecting unsuccessful efforts.
2.1 F1 monitoring progress toward a goal
The process of monitoring one's progress allows people to keep attention focused on the task and
promote individual self-efficacy. Being able to identify a goal and regulate one's behavior according to
the achievement of the set goal is a self-regulation process that gives a sense of direction and meaning
to one's actions. In the context of studies on motivation, a privileged role is reserved for the promotion
of intrinsic motivation, which allows the individual to maintain behavioral persistence, defects to give
continuity to their actions [9]. This behavioral set makes it possible to plan, verify and possibly modify,
through feedback and feed-forward processes, one's own behaviors to make them functional to the
achievement of the purpose - proceeding towards subsequent objectives becomes, therefore, important
for the achievement of the final purpose and represents a process that needs timely monitoring. Based
on these assumptions, the App was designed according to a flow of daily goals that the user can achieve
and constantly monitor (Figure 1);
Daily Goals
Food Goal
Active Lifestyle
Weight*31 Since the contents of the app vary positively
Moderately or negatively according to the daily fulfillment
Active Lifestyle
Weight*38 of the goals, we have aggregated the Step Goal
Sedentary
Lifestyle
and the Exercises Goal. Some people may be
Weight*44 unable to exercise or walk.
Furthermore, four sources of variation would
Water Goal have made the daily change of the painting
Weight*30 confusing.
The app, using a formula, will combine the two
Exercises Goal
500 cal/day is the
goals (and data) into a single goal (and data).
amount needof
calories to burn in
order to lose
weight (by taking a
correct amount of
food)
Figure 1: Function1 Monitoring goals through SToP App
2.2 F2 checking outcomes
In the process of monitoring one's actions, the moment of verifying their effectiveness is crucial for
self-regulation because it allows those adjustments necessary for the progress of one's action. In other
words, verifying one's own work not only fulfills a function of verifying the past, but also of projection
into the future. It is, therefore, using both feedback (my behaviors have been effective and useful in
making me reach the objectives) and feedforward processes (if my behaviors are suitable I can
hypothesize that also in the future they will help me to achieve other objectives) that the individual can
proceed in his own development [10].
In the App design specific attention was given to the design (in both formal aspects and graphical
interface) to the visualization of the outcomes and feedback connected to them.
Therefore, app presents a series of panels that change continuously according to the information entered
by the user. The pictures change in a flourishing way when the user has reached the daily goals, and in
a languishing way when, on the other hand, the goals are not achieved (Figure 2);
Home Page (daily data entered): The Painting
Each painting has three sources of variation associated with
the daily fulfillment of the three goals.
In this painting they are the weather (Water Goal), the
vegetation (Food Goal) and the "life“ (Exercise Goal)
intended as fauna and flow of the river.
The sources of variation have 6 levels.
Fulfilling the daily goal raises the corresponding level, failing
lowers it. The three sources of variation vary independently
of each other.
The starting values of the sources of variation of the 8
paintings change according to the result of the previous
week.
Figure 2: Function2 Checking outcomes through SToP App
2.3 F3 redirecting unsuccessful efforts
The third process involved in self-regulation implies the possibility (and the ability) to modify one's
actions to achieve the objectives. In fact, in individual behaviour, the actions put into practice are not
always consistent with the resolution of the task and the achievement of objectives. In other words, the
possibility of error and therefore of failure is part of the learning process. In our case, therefore, it is
important to offer the game user the opportunity to "correct himself". Actually, the two previous
functions allow to reach the final moment of the self-regulation process which allows not only to correct
one's own behavior in the future (if it has proved unsuitable in the previous phase), but also to "return
to one's own steps”, correcting one's learning path from within [11]. Obviously, this is a typical
possibility of gamification which, unlike the real world, allows you to easily return to your work to
modify your existence according to the achievement of objectives [12].
In our case, the Stop games consist in sorting the presented foods in descending order following a
ratio (food property or and nutrient). Each game consists of three levels of increasing difficulty, with
each mistake it is necessary to start over (Figure 3).
Figure 3: An example of the games in the SToP App
A new game is automatically unlocked every day. Every week the ratio of the game changes: in the
first week it will be calories, in the second cholesterol, in the third the sugars, etc. The Game Menu
reports games that have been successfully completed; however, it is always possible to play the games
unlocked in the previous days or weeks (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Function3 Checking outcomes through SToP App
3. Conclusion
The use of new technologies within projects and courses of training and psycho-social
intervention is now a pervasive phenomenon. Gamification, in this area, is currently a rapidly expanding
phenomenon. It is therefore important to pay specific attention not only to the technological
characteristics of the games implemented, but above all to dwell in a timely and in-depth manner on the
design of the App. This attention should be even more focused when gamification aims to change the
behavior of individuals, thus feeding on complex psychological dimensions and processes.
Elsewhere, too, the importance of a design approach as the first phase of a gamification that wants to
use technology and the advantages associated with its use for psychological purposes has been
emphasized [13] [14]. In the case of the development of the SToP App, an application of integration of
technology and psychology has been proposed since the design phases and with widespread attention
not only in the selection of the contents to be developed in the games, but also in the definition of the
entire game process. In this study, a concise description of the application of this model was proposed
in accordance with the objectives of the project to promote healthy behaviors. It was therefore illustrated
how the App was designed and developed to promote a specific psychological process that underlies
the behavioral changes: self-regulation.
The one illustrated in this study represents only one of the possible applications of psychological
theoretical frameworks to the design of digital tools, usable in formal and informal training contexts.
4. Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and
Innovation programme under the Marie Skaodowska-Curie Grant Agreement 823978.
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