{"id":172105,"date":"2016-07-17T15:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=172105"},"modified":"2016-07-17T09:41:20","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T07:41:20","slug":"the-smartphone-app-that-will-help-you-stop-drinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/172105-the-smartphone-app-that-will-help-you-stop-drinking.html","title":{"rendered":"The smartphone app that will help you stop drinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia is known to be a nation of drinkers with almost 18%<\/a> having a drink on a daily basis at a level that is considered risky.<\/p>\n

But the ill-effects of such behaviour extend to binge drinking<\/a>, impacts on health and well-being<\/a>, assaults<\/a> drink driving<\/a> with resulting car accidents and many others.<\/p>\n

Various governments<\/a> and organisations have launched campaigns and policies to combat problem drinking, such as Danny Green\u2019s Coward Punch Campaign<\/a> and the lock out laws in New South Wales<\/a> and Queensland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lock out laws have met with some success in reducing alcohol-related serious injuries in some regions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But they have also been criticised with claims the laws are harming businesses<\/a> or that the cultural image of a high profile and vibrant urban centre such as Sydney is being distorted<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But there might be another way to tackle the problems related to the over-consumption of alcohol that doesn\u2019t require large-scale government intervention.<\/p>\n

Install an app<\/h3>\n

When it comes to overcoming bad behavioural habits, such as drinking too much, technology can help by providing a subtle and more personalised solution to the problem.<\/p>\n

Smartphone apps can provide real-time intervention on the go. They allow people to get the right information at the right time regarding their drinking habits.<\/p>\n

Popular alcohol control apps include examples such as Stop Drinking with Andrew Johnson (for Apple<\/a> or Android<\/a>) which relies on relaxation and hypnotism and other apps which simply count the intake of alcohol (Sobriety Counter<\/a> is one such app for Android).<\/p>\n

Such mediated, anonymous and indirect interaction can also help people suffering from a drinking problem who are otherwise reluctant to visit rehabilitation and facility centres.<\/p>\n

In this way technology can facilitate a change in behaviour through persuasion but not coercion. This is known as persuasive technology, a term originally coined by Stanford University researcher BJ Fogg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such technologies have already helped with other problems, such as obesity, bullying and racism by motivating people, providing knowledge, supporting decision making and ultimately facilitating behaviour change.<\/p>\n

There is growing realisation of the importance of persuasive technology in mitigating the harmful side effects of alcohol<\/a> and other bad habits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are a number of web<\/a> and mobile<\/a> applications that help people with their alcohol intake.<\/p>\n

But web-based applications usually cannot be accessed at a user\u2019s own discretion as they require some form of synchronisation with the user\u2019s phone.<\/p>\n

Which app is best?<\/h3>\n

While mobile apps may be best suited to tackle drinking problems there isn\u2019t much of an understanding as to which are more suitable or what features people prefer.<\/p>\n

The National Health Service in the UK does provide a list of apps<\/a> that can assist in tackling health related problems.<\/p>\n

But there is no government or other reputable organisation that maintains a similar list in Australia.<\/p>\n

There are some online rankings<\/a> of alcohol control apps, but these are not maintained by official health services.<\/p>\n

This motivated us to analyse<\/a> more than 200 user reviews of apps available on the iTunes store so we could better establish design recommendations for such apps.<\/p>\n

\"Quit<\/a><\/p>\n

We focused on 18 apps, such as Quit That<\/a>, that were meant to reduce alcohol intake through behavioural change strategies.<\/p>\n

We specifically excluded apps that were purely for facilitating alcohol intake, such as alcohol recipe apps.<\/p>\n

We noticed that there were two main types of strategies that were prevalent in such apps. Some used motivation and others self-control to help reduce or monitor alcohol intake.<\/p>\n

The former rely on different persuasive strategies such as praise and reward mechanism, social interaction with avatars, competitions, reminders and notifications, etc.<\/p>\n

\"Quit-drinking\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Self-control apps mostly rely on users to monitor and manage their intake by providing information, such as blood alcohol concentration levels.<\/p>\n

Self-control apps do not explicitly inform the user when their alcohol intake crosses a level of high risk.<\/p>\n

What users want<\/h3>\n

Our results showed that users preferred self-control apps, possibly because they did not want to be controlled by an app that was too insistent or fast in its interaction.<\/p>\n

Users not only preferred gradual notifications from the apps but they also wished to have full control over how the app interacted with them.<\/p>\n

We found that a key design guideline for these apps is the ability to customise the way users interact with them.<\/p>\n

We noticed that a number of users preferred apps that provided incremental targets.<\/p>\n

This allows them to attain positive milestones on each step of the behavioural change process. A number of users also stated the importance of sharing their progress on social media.<\/p>\n

Implementing persuasive applications is a fraught with challenges, particularly for contexts such as alcohol intake, where real-time monitoring can be difficult.<\/p>\n

But there is great potential to use mobile technology to promote positive alcohol behavioural change, particularly if the apps follow certain design features.<\/p>\n

If the appropriate governmental authorities can benchmark and recommend apps based on the proposed guidelines, that will go a long way in assisting many in overcoming their alcohol related problems.<\/p>\n

Omar Mubin<\/a>, Lecturer in human-centred computing & human-computer interaction, Western Sydney University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More on apps<\/h3>\n

Messaging app wars take new turn<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

How to use two WhatsApp accounts on one phone<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There might be a way to tackle the problems related to the over-consumption of alcohol that doesn\u2019t require large-scale government intervention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340972,"featured_media":164458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[29336,35],"class_list":["post-172105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-alcohol","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172109,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172105\/revisions\/172109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}