Happier Together: Integrating a Wellness Application Into a Social Network Site Sean Munson, Debra Lauterbach, Mark Newman, Paul Resnick School of Information, University of Michigan

UbiFit (Consolvo et al)

Fish’n’Steps (Lin et al)

Shakra (Anderson et al)

(Some  of  the)  bene-its  of  social+web  interventions    

SOCIAL SUPPORT & SOCIAL PRESSURE. PEER HELPER THEORY. Get better by helping others. AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW. 24/7 information and support. SCALABILITY.

Challenges  with  social,  standalone  interventions    

ADHERENCE as low as 1%. Sharing with PEOPLE WHOSE OPINIONS PARTICIPANTS DON’T CARE ABOUT.

PARTICIPANTS ARE ALREADY ON THESE SITES. 50% of Facebook users visit every day. SO ARE THE PEOPLE THEY CARE ABOUT. Friends, family, acquaintances, coworkers.

Daily  mile,  fit  bit  posts  Nancy Smith

Nancy Smith

Nancy Smith

Jane Doeherty

Jane Doeherty

also see Khaled, Barr, Noble, Biddle 2006  

Some questions

Does sharing and interacting with existing friends affect user retention?

Are people comfortable sharing all their wellness

application activity with all their existing social network friends? What features should be offered for controlling the visibility of activity?

Does building structured applications, tailored to a

specific wellness activity, offer benefits over repurposing generic features of the Facebook platform (e.g. groups)?

Study overview

1.  App vs. Groups: Compare use of existing Facebook groups for an intervention with a purpose-built application (inspired by observation of Facebook groups).

2.  App: 1.  Explore preferences and behavior for sharing

through interviews and use logs. 2.  Within case study of app, vary features and

defaults and see effects on retention and use.

The Intervention: Three Good Things

Seligman, M; Steen, T; Park, N; Peterson, C. (2005). “Positive Psychology Progress,”

American Psychologist 60(5), 410-421.

Existing Facebook Groups

The 3GT Application

apps.facebook.com/threegoodthings

Paul has not posted any good things for 3 days. Would you like to nudge him?

Different features and defaults

REMINDERS

48 hours & 72 hours

SHARING DEFAULT

Share on newsfeed by default Private by default

None

5

Use & Results

3GT App participants

Recruited through Facebook ads, Facebook application directory, posts elsewhere online, and invites from other 3GT users. Signups 20 July 2009– 21 February 2010 No compensation to participate; $20 for interview. Demographic questionnaire at signup.

PARTICIPANTS

n Signed up: 190 Active: 55 posted at ≥twice, at least a week

apart Interviewed: 6 people who stopped

participating lost to follow-up.

demographics Age: 36.9 years

Gender: 7 men, 48 women

Use comparisons

GROUPS 3GT APP

Average Good ings / User / Day

Good ings with Reasons

0.38 & 0.47 0.83

<1% 80%

n

nactive 55

190 78 & 144

7 & 10

3GT: Sharing

posted to newsfeed 21% 40% visible to friends in 3GT 23% 45% private 56% 14%

3GT: Sharing

!

Private Default Newsfeed Default

Participants

Private Public in 3GT Public

% o

f pos

ts

100%

80%

60% 40%

20%

0%

NO IMPACT on post frequency or retention.

AUDIENCE ISSUES. More public posts should meet a “higher standard.” Fear of “cluttering” or “spamming” with mundane posts. (An issue of weak+strong ties?)

“Mostly when I make things private, it’s more because I think they’d be boring or insignificant to my friends, not because they’re actually things I wouldn’t want my friends to know about. I just don’t want to clog up their Facebook with it…. A lot of the people I’m friends with wince about having games and other non-status update things all over their pages. And so I don’t want to get winced about.”

3GT: Sharing

PRIVACY ISSUES. Collapsed contexts. Didn’t want to share with all friends. Not all participants felt “Private” was sufficiently private.

AUDIENCE ISSUES. More public posts should meet a “higher standard.” Fear of “cluttering” or “spamming” with mundane posts. (An issue of weak+strong ties?)

“I like the fact that I can choose whether things are private or public. Because if they were all public, some of them I wouldn’t write, because I thought they weren’t significant enough to sort of fill up others’ Facebook pages with.”

3GT: Sharing

PRIVACY ISSUES. Collapsed contexts. Didn’t want to share with all friends. Not all participants felt “Private” was sufficiently private.

AUDIENCE ISSUES. More public posts should meet a “higher standard.” Fear of “cluttering” or “spamming” with mundane posts. (An issue of weak+strong ties?)

“I’m more cognizant of cluttering other peoples’ feeds than some of my friends.”

3GT: Sharing

PRIVACY ISSUES. Collapsed contexts. Didn’t want to share with all friends. Not all participants felt “Private” was sufficiently private.

3GT: Sharing

DESIRE FOR SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

Of the 55 active participants… 24 invited friends 25 looked at friend profiles

Of 4188 pageviews… 403 were of a friend’s 3GT profile

257 were of timeline of all friends’ GTs

“I got a TON of comments…. Lots of people said they liked that, and they responded to that and congratulated me… so yeah, people do definitely comment on them when they are created from Facebook and publicized [in newsfeeds].

“It would have been cool to have somebody reacting to, like you said, the sort of social interaction over the content of the posts that I’ve done… To have some of these things – “oh, I see you posted something”, or just some reaction. Because sometimes it feels like you’re out there, putting stuff out in the world and you’re not getting any feedback, you know?”

3GT: Sharing

DESIRE FOR SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

Of the 55 active participants… 24 invited friends 25 looked at friend profiles

Of 4188 pageviews… 403 were of a friend’s 3GT profile

257 were of timeline of all friends’ GTs

3GT: Reminders

System Generated Reminders

NO IMPACT on post frequency or retention.

TOO SUBTLE? … BUT JUST RIGHT FOR SOME. “I like the part that it sends me a note when I forget. I really like that! Having it remind me when I’ve forgotten is really cool.”

“I haven’t…at least not that I’ve noticed….” [checks history] “Oh - So I did get some. … But I need something like an email.”

User-User Reminders Paul has not posted any good things for 3 days. Would you like to nudge him?

STRONG AVERSION TO SENDING. 14 sent by 7 participants.

“No!... No, it’s not my job.” “[I might send if I know that someone is] seriously combating depression, or it’s something that they’re really serious about and want to be doing, and they want me to help them get that done.”

“I don’t really like Nudge functions because they don’t seem very personal. I’d rather go to their Wall and leave a sentence that was specifically from me.”

Design Implications

Design implications

Integration a wellness intervention into Facebook is viable, but best practices need more work. Including intervention-specific user interface structure (e.g. reasons prompt) is beneficial. Subtle reminders not effective for everyone. We do not know if more assertive reminders would have helped or hurt.

Design implications

Adding social features to an individual exercise can be beneficial, but not as a replacement to private participation. Relying on Facebook’s built-in social interactions and graph is not ideal. People wanted more control & less broadcast. Interventions need to address both privacy and audience issues.

Future Work

Future work

Improve the 3GT experience to improve retention. Ability to make GT public to all users of 3GT app?

Wellness outcomes over time. Compare wellness outcomes for purely private

online app to the 3GT app on Facebook.

thanks!

Sean Munson samunson@umich.edu @smunson Debra Lauterbach dlauterbach@gmail.com @debweb Mark Newman mwnewman@umich.edu @nooom Paul Resnick presnick@umich.edu @presnick

swellness.projects.si.umich.edu is project was supported by a UM-Rackham Research Grant.

10  

Preliminary Wellness Outcomes

Start 1 week

CES-D 0-60, lower better

SHI 20-100, higher better

-7.8

1 Month

4.3 7.0

-6.2

54.2

24.6

n=32, p<0.001   n=11, p<0.05  

n=11, p=0.05  n=32, p<0.001