Digital Health Management: Easy going

IoTAssist research project for less sitting at work

IoTAssist: Towards healthier employees with a shared walking desk

The human body is a fascinating machine, but unfortunately it is not designed to remain at a standstill for 8 to 10 hours a day. Back pain and obesity are just two possible consequences of a screen-heavy workday.

Studies show that we should sit for no more than 50% of our working time. Standing is already better than sitting, but walking is ideal. This is exactly what our musculoskeletal system is designed for.

Health is very important to us. Especially the health of our employees, who give their best every day. With the IoTAssist research project in cooperation with DFKI and other innovative partners, we want to give something back to our team by creating real incentives to walk more during work.

IoTAssist

IoTAssist is a research project by DFKI in cooperation with Centigrade, ThingOS, Eyeled, the German University for Prevention and Health, the University of Duisburg-Essen, and the Ingolstadt University of Technology. Its goal is an end-user platform for assistance services that works together with IoT devices and wearable sensor technology.

UX Research

UX Design

UI Design

Gamification

Creating the right incentives

Around the sustainable Walkolution treadmill, we designed a shared desk workspace. This workplace had to offer a good experience so that colleagues would leave their (home office) place. The UX research showed that a basic incentive for this is mainly a question of equipment and the condition of the workplace. Cookie crumbs everywhere, too few connections, a 720p monitor and bad room air would definitely discourage colleagues from using it, no matter how much positive potential the treadmill has for their health.

We want you to go... for a walk.

To motivate our colleagues to walk more during working hours, we did what we do best: talking to users, identifying requirements and developing an interaction concept based on them.

Challenge: GDPR

How do we manage usage data tracking that is GDPR-compliant? The tracking could not reveal who was using the workstation and when. Our solution: an analog booking system. In addition, the tracked days were summarized and visualized exclusively as team statistics so that no conclusions could be drawn about individual subjects.