Human Motivations Research:
(McCloud, 2007) explains how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs research was to understand the motivators of individuals. That one must meet start at basic human biology needs and satisfy this need so the individual is able to progress further to meet the higher and more complex needs. (McCloud, 2007)
The needs are divided into 5 stages and 3 sections. The stages in order from Human biological needs, safety needs, social needs, Esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.
In relation to the maslow hierarchy of needs, our app can meet some of these needs that motivate life.Our app is meeting a human biology need to move your body and by using food as an incentive it is also giving out a basic need. Although it may only be small it is still a small part of the a biological need.
Safety and social needs can are not necessarily meet within our app but can be meet without our app which can move our users further up the scale on needs.
Esteem, a physiological need can be meet within our app by giving our users the feeling of accomplishment in multiple areas. Users will be able to see and feel their accomplishments in fitness and health, in money saving, and into the environment and climate.
Target Audience Research:
The article Health and Fitness App Use in College Students: A Qualitative Study, looks into health and fitness apps. In the United States Obesity is a contributor to other serious health issues like cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. It also stated that “College students are at particularly high risk of weight gain, with estimates between 4 and 9 pounds in the first year of college” (Gowin, Cheney, Gwin & Wann, 2015, p.223). As well as stating that “Young adults are also more likely than any other age group to use their phones to look for health information, and approximately 24% of them use apps for tracking or managing their health” (Gowin, Cheney, Gwin & Wann, 2015, p.224). This helps us to understand that our target audience, university students, are in need and the most likely age group to use an app that tracks your health and fitness. The article also mentioned that most of the people who participated indicated that the most important part of the app would be that it is easy to us, as if it was more complex it could easily be replaced with an existing app. This helped us to realize that we needed our app to be simple and self-explanatory so that more people are drawn into using our app over other options. Overall this article was very helpful to confirm that we are targeting the right demographic for our project. As well as different barriers which would put this demographic off downloading our app.
The article The Millennials- A Generation Invested in Health and the Environment (Glass Packaging Institute, 2014), explains how millennials are more likely to care about the environment that any other generation. They feel that they can make a difference to the environment if they change their own lifestyles. They are willing to pay more for products that a eco-friendly to do so, even if they the products are more expensive. It has been found that millennials are concerned about the chemical exposure to food through packaging and also worried about the threat of climate change. However, they are the generation more concerned about the environment they still have low action when it comes to doing it.
This article was put out by a glass company and we thought it may be a bit biased or unreliable so we followed up with another article, What Triggers Young Millenials to Purchase Eco-Friendly Products? (Heo & Muralidharan, 2019) Although this article is about the purchasing habits of the generation it also had information that was in line with the first article. These articles helped us to understand that environment is important to this age group and that we could include this into our design outcomes.
Environmental Research:
The article Who Cares about the Environmental impact of cars? Those with an Eye Towards the Future, it talks about the impact that cars have on the environment. The impact on the environment causes a range of different problems, global warming, acid rain, resource depletion is just a few of the problems. People who preferred public transport also believed that commuting by car harms the environment and considered the future consequences.
This article helps us to see how cutting out use of the car by walking would impact and improve the environment. We thought we could use some of these facts within this article in our app and posters to show the impact each person would personally have on the environment.
Gaming Theory Research:
One of our main ideas for this assignment is to create a gaming app that students will use along their journey to be walking to university. Along with making this app an experience that promotes and encourages students to walk more, as a group we wanted to create a game that challenges students in a fun and engaging way. We also think it’s important that it’s a game that keeps students minds active and flexible during their walk to university.The app we aim to create is a goal-orientated app. In Raph Koster’s “Theory of Fun for Game Design” book, it talks a lot about the use of patterns in games and how humans are pattern matching machines. This book also talks on how creating a goal-orientated game involves simply recognizing a particular sort of pattern. In the case of our app, the pattern we’d like our users to achieve is one that adds walking to university into their everyday routine. Walking is something humans experience every day, but if it’s represented in the form of a patterned routine in the form of a game, it can become a habit.
Colour Analysis Research:
This text in-depth analyses the influences colour has on humans. It looks into how colour has been of the most significance in survival, in knowing which colours are going to harm, and which colours are conveying safety. Do humans like colours based on preferences built up over time, or did they exist even before we were born? Do the colour biases change depending on where you live in your local neighbourhood, or is there a colour bias between individuals. Determining which colours are more commonly associated and enjoyed by certain parties, and then they show their findings from their tests on people about their colour preferences. With our project we want our colours to be motivating and fun so that our target audience is drawn in and wants to use our app.
Using the well known Maslow Hierarchy of needs theory we were able to understand individual’s motivations and needs. We were able to relate these motivations back to our target audience needs and how we can develop an app that can meet their basic human needs and also reach some more complex personal growth needs.Looking into how our target audience and their attitudes towards environmental awareness by encouraging it to give our users a strong satisfaction feeling. This helped us to shape our app by including a summary of their walk and how they have personally impacted the environment and reduce their own carbon footprint by walking. We also used this research to help promote our app and its environmental benefits through our poster series and social media. Looking into the physical activity of walking allowed us to understand the extensive amount of health benefits for our app users and help to reduce the amount of preventable health issues.Our app gaming research allowed us to the potential of an app that included using gamification, a rewards system, and physical activity. Using proven gaming theories to understand how a gaming rewards system can create a loop repeated neurochemical feeling of joy and gratification. As a research team we were able to give ourselves an extensive understanding of our our project and solutions through academic research. Overall our research has proven to be successful with academic theories shaping some of our design solutions.
Transport and ACCESS 