Crowdsourcing Motivation in Real-Time through Social Media

Abstract In this document, we discuss HeartLink, a tool for crowdsourcing motivation in real-time through social media. HeartLink is a system that autonomously broadcasts personal data such as heart rate and tasks’ completion rate on behalf of the user. This paper describes how the system has been deployed and tested during sport events. As the athletes carry out their tasks, online viewers not only engage with the participants by tracking their progress and monitoring their effort, but can also provide their support and boost their motivation by remotely cheering the participant in real-time via the click of a button.

Author Keywords Bio data, Heart Rate, Motivation, Crowdsourcing, Social Media

ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3. Group and Organization Interfaces: Web-based Interaction

General Terms Human Factors

Introduction In the last decade with the emergence of social media applications, millions of people started sharing personal

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).

CHI 2013 Extended Abstracts, April 27–May 2, 2013, Paris, France.

ACM 978-1-4503-1952-2/13/04. .

Franco Curmi HighWire DTC Lancaster University LA1 4YW United Kingdom f.curmi@lancaster.ac.uk Jon Whittle School of Computing and Communications, InfoLab21 Lancaster University LA1 4WA United Kingdom j.n.whittle@lancaster.ac.uk Maria Angela Ferrario Lancaster University Management School Lancaster University LA1 4YX United Kingdom m.a.ferrario@lancaster.ac.uk

information at a scale that never happened before in human history. In this relatively short time of social media existence, there have been plenty of studies showing the positive effects that sharing personal information can have on the person sharing the information [1]-[4]. For example when using Huston [5], social support through sharing has been a source of motivation for people trying to become more physically active. Similar outcomes are reported in sports [6] and in health [1].

Most of these applications, which source encouragement and motivation in activities through online social media, do not seek instant feedback. The feedback, in most cases, takes hours if not days to arrive. For example in [7] data is shared manually sporadically throughout the day and in [8] data is manually entered in the system daily. This may be useful when the user is involved in long-term challenges such as fighting cancer or increasing long-term physical activity. Such timeframes however are not applicable when conducting challenges of short duration like competing in a marathon. In this case, texting manually during the race is impossible and texting after the marathon would be too late for gaining any impact on the race itself. In addition, incentive theory states that when the positive reinforcing action (like social support) closely follows the action that needs to be reinforced, the motivation is greater then otherwise [9].

HeartLink HeartLink is a system that lets users broadcast personal data in real-time to anyone through a smart phone and allows online viewers to show their engagement and support by sending ‘Cheers’ through Figure 1: Part of the HeartLink interface

the click of a button. The Cheer button was inspired from the Facebook ‘Like’ button and when clicked, the user feels a vibration on the device. To explore the effects of Heartlink on the motivation of both users and viewers, we conducted two studies. The first was conducted with three athletes taking part in a triathlon relay in Windermere and nine online viewers. The second study was conducted in Lancaster during a charity run in aid of Cancer Research UK where an athlete and eight viewers participated.

To minimize interrupting the user, all the data was automatically broadcast with no intervention (like texting,) needed from the user. The data broadcasted in both cases included heart rate, the average heart rate during the event, the percentage of the task completed, the total heart beats, meters covered, pace, speed and a chart with the heart rate data. Figure 1 represents part of the visualization presented to the viewers. With this set of data and with knowing the context of what the event is about, the viewers could gain an understanding on what was happening during the event. The participants interviewed after the events indicated that during the event, they were trying to understand in which time is it best to motivate the athlete (by clicking on the Cheer button). Two participants commented that they were interpreting an increase in heart rate, as an increase in effort thus they used that cue to cheer.

All the athletes reported that they were very motivated in knowing that other people were following their performance (remotely). In interview, one participant said:

“…it feels like a crowd is following you… in all three disciplines [swimming, cycling and running] you are quite on your own but with swimming you are really on your own with the water splashing around you and no one else… so [in this case] though you are on your own there is an environment where there are people around” [Participant 1A – from interview]

Discussion Both studies were conducted over a short timeframe. While HeartLink provided positive results in terms of the motivation received, we do not know if having events of longer duration will change the social dynamics of the system. For example viewers might get frustrated if the events are done repetitively or if they are longer in duration as reported in [10].

Such application of crowdsourcing real-time motivation could be highly useful in situations where the user is conducting challenging tasks that need motivation (e.g. fell running) but it is not possible for the supporters to be physically co-located or present. HeartLink showed that it is now possible to create such tools that are designed to remotely motivate a person. Up until a few years ago, crowd-generated motivation was only possible if the crowd was present at the same location as the user like at a stadium.

There is very little research around this ‘real-time’ motivational approach to social media that is centered around the user. It seems that in the next few years, as the speed and rate of change increases, more and more application will be focusing on getting as close as possible to having real-time reactions.

Figure 2-3: Pictures from the pilot study that was conducted during a triathlon in Windermere, UK. Figure 4: Sealing a smartphone for data transmission during the triathlon.

Conclusion We are looking at how, future social media application will not only prompt us to say what we think (e.g. Twitter and FB status) but will let us communicate how we feel by automatically sharing personal quantifiable information about our physical/mental state.

HeartLink proposes a new scope for using social media in which users find support from crowds in real-time. This is done with the least interruptions for the user so that this approach can be used when the user is conducting physically and/or cognitively challenging tasks.

Future work will look into long-term benefits of such systems as well as other contexts where instant interaction with a remote crowd could be most useful.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank all the volunteers who participated. This research was supported by HighWire. HighWire is a post-disciplinary programme at Lancaster University funded by the UK Digital Economy Programme. This work also received support from The UK Research Council through the Catalyst project, (EPSRC Grant EP/I033017/1).

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