KickBuddy
Ben Kelly, Computer Science, Department of Computer and Information SciencesProject Aims
Research question:
Can a 5-a-side football app be used to encourage activity to improve physical and mental fitness?
Aims:
• to deliver a working proof-of-concept prototype web app;
• to investigate the impact that inclusion of wellbeing and fitness features can have on both physical and mental health.
Achieved with a user-centred design of a 5-a-side football match management app that allowed wellbeing features to be implemented.
Project Details
q Research into sports, wellbeing, and physical fitness domains.
q Plan to develop cross-platform 5-a-side football match management web app named "KickBuddy"
q Functionalities – to be demonstrated:
o Creating matches (fixtures)
o Joining matches (already arranged)
o Access to wellbeing and fitness hubs
o Tips for wellbeing and fitness
o Tracking of wellbeing and fitness metrics
q Practical work to design an intuitive app requiring minimal prior experience to keep implementation entry barrier low.
q Test with sample of participants behaviour matched against functionalities
q Record interaction for analysis of screen actions and transcripts
q Investigate and analyse results
q Evaluate and conclude
- encouraging answers provided to research question(s)
- opportunities clearly identified for future development potential.
Research and planning
q Literature review
● physical and mental wellbeing - further understanding of field (effectiveness of physical exercise re anxiety and depression, social features, wearables and tracking apps etc.)
● progressive web apps (PWAs)
q Requirements of the app – physical activity, wellbeing, non-functional
q Tools, techniques and approach – coding, database etc.
Practical Work
q Design and construction – documents to support app development, coding process, problems, debugging etc. Questionnaires and test scripts designed for sample of users/participants to test functionalities.
q Testing – unit, integration, functional, usability (think aloud protocol)
q Results – analysis of user testing activities – generally positive.
Demonstration - KickBuddy’s User Interface
Evaluation
q Findings
§ reference to the user testing of functionality – generally very positive
q Product evaluation
§ McCarthy & Wright’s threads – generally positive links on each thread
q Project process
● Much to reflect on and certain aspects of process could have been addressed better (e.g. time management)
Conclusions and Recommendations
q Summary – relevant, success, fun, well received
● research question(s) answered - objectives met as a platform linking mental and physical wellbeing to social activity,
● lessons learned during project would benefit future iterations of the app, including aligning with users' preconceptions and providing wellbeing guidance.
q Proof-of-concept lays groundwork for unrealised ideas (future enhancements), opportunities identified for further backend development, positive results expansion to other sports, more health parameters, improved algorithms, increased user security etc.
Bibliography
• Aggarwal, S. (2018). ‘Modern web-development using ReactJS,’ International Journal of Recent Research Aspects, 5 (1), 195-199.
• Nielsen, J. (2005) Ten Usability Heuristics, Nielsen & Norman Group. Mountain View.
• Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2012) ‘Thematic analysis’. American Psychological Association, 57-69.
• Kim, H. M., Cho, I., and Kim, M. (2022). ‘Gamification aspects of fitness apps: implications of mhealth for physical activities’. Games for Health Journal, 11 (1), 48-56.
• Ali, R., Afzal, M., Hussain, M., Ali, M., Siddiqi, M. H., Lee, S., and Kang, B. H. (2016). ‘Multimodal hybrid reasoning methodology for personalized wellbeing services’, Computers in Human Behaviour, 56, 42-52.