A persuasive television remote control for the promotion of health and well-being

New forms of media technology that enter the home often fundamentally transform the way that people spend their time. In the present day, daily "screen time" with televisions and other entertainment systems continues to rise [1]. Within this climate of escalating media consumption, experts in the medical community have repeatedly voiced concerns about the public health crisis that looms over a largely sedentary U.S. population. Principal among these concerns is the continuing upward trend in lifestyle-related disorders such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Within the last two decades, substantial epidemiological research has linked excessive television viewing with both obesity [2] and Type 2 diabetes [3, 4]. This work describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a ubiquitous computing system intended to simultaneously decrease a user's television viewing while increasing his or her frequency and quantity of non-sedentary activities. This system, called VizTo, employs a residential sensing infrastructure to recognize an individual's television viewing and uses wearable accelerometers to detect physical movement. The primary user interface consists of a handheld computing device that serves as a wireless remote control for a television and home theatre system, as well as an interface for planning and reviewing daily activity.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Nawyn, Jason Paul

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kent Larson.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34185

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34185