SPA — SPORT AGAINST ANXIETY

An App that gives students all important tools for a successful study time by including a personalized exercise plan that scientifically decreases anxiety and an SOS Button

This project was a part of “the Digital Shaper Program” hosted by Techlabs Copenhagen in autumn semester 2020/2021.

1. Introduction

The app SPA, Sports Against Anxiety, was developed with the stressed and anxious student in mind. As students begin to approach their exam period high levels of stress and anxiety can occur which can lead a student to feel overwhelmed, stressed or anxious and unable to concentrate and feel like they are spinning out of control. The overwhelming feelings of knowing that they should be studying but are unable to calm their mind can create a vicious cycle of being overwhelmed and unsure of where to start or how to move forwarding. Therefore one of the main focuses will be incorporating stress-relieving exercises. This includes providing both physical exercises and activities as well as more mental stimulating activities into the everyday life of a student. There are already many apps on the market that already tackle the issue of giving exercise plans or study tips, but with our app we have found a unique way to combine both. The app we developed will give each student a personalized exercise plan based on a questionnaire and adapt accordingly to the user’s usage over time. The personalized exercise plan will allow the student to save time and relieve them from the time and effort spending in researching an app to track physical exercise and an app for studying. Furthermore, many people may want to start to exercise, but do not have sufficient information on how to do it the correct way. Our app tackles that by providing guidance, plans, and knowledge through the use of videos and texts. Our goal for our app was to answer the question:

How can we make students feel less stressed or anxious with the use of exercise?

The challenge was to find the sweet spot between having the app be useful, while decreasing anxiety as well. During the planning and development phase the team brainstormed ideas of adding elements of gamification to the app but after researching and discussing the possibility of incorporating different gamification elements such as a leader board or a point system the team felt that different gamification elements could cause some users of the app to feel more anxious or stressed. Therefore, it was decided to not develop a leader board or a points system, even though it could motivate some to use the app more. The team decided instead to incorporate small daily reminders of the useful effect of exercise which could help to motivate the user.

The solutions to these problems are also based on years of research. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, exercises promote mental fitness and reduces stress

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and fatigue, while also increasing concentration. Overall, one’s sense of being becomes better, as the heart rate goes down after regular participation in exercises. [1] The number of exercises and what kind were chosen according to research as well, where it shows that a minimum of 2½ hours of moderate-intensity physical activity each week or 1¼ hours of a vigorous-intensity activity not only reduced stress but also decreased the chance for depression and anxiety disorder by 25 percent.[2]

Together with the research and the answers from the survey that we will elaborate on in the next sections, we could make an app focused on reducing anxiety, while at all times being conscious of what the future users would want.

2. Methodology

In the beginning of the project phase we started with a user research to find out what the user expects from a sport and anxiety app, what matters to them, what other methods or tools they already use to de-stress and which main goals they would want to achieve. By utilizing this user research we were able to discover what problems the different users are facing right now and what desired outcome they are seeking from such an application.

2.1. Research

The next step of the process was to conduct a competitor analysis of sport, meditation and learning apps by researching the apps, reading reviews and watching review videos about these apps. In our research we included the apps: Adidas Running, gymondo, 30, Freeletics, Nike training club, headspace, calm, 10 percent happier, waking up, Eksamenshjælp, Stop-Breath-Think, Sworkit, SAM and Forest flora. Completing the competitor analysis gave us important insights into what were the positive features of the apps as well as the parts of the app where we felt something could be improved or what the users were missing. Parallel to this, Aleksandra conducted an intense research about exercise against stress and anxiety, which types of exercise was most helpful and different sample workout plans. All of this information was then used to provide the necessary background knowledge and the main data for our application exercise plans and motivational tips.

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2.2. Personas and Scenarios

Based on the initial questionnaire and the competitor research we developed two Personas that helped us throughout our project to keep our target groups needs in mind and to develop the main features in our application. During the design process we constantly checked on the personas to see if our product is still fitting to the targeted audience.

The scenarios helped us to bridge our findings about the user needs into the ideas about how the application may support those needs.

The Personas and scenarios can be seen below.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Carla

Demographics

Age: 22

Occupation: Student at CBS

Location: Roskilde, DK

Life Stage: Relationship, living with roommates

Motivators

● Pass exams

● Feel better/ calmer during the study

● Social Contact:​ Carla loves to spend time with friends and is very social

● Very self aware of her feelings and reflective

● Feel supported, organized

● Manage social life, study and exercise (stay healthy)

Constraints

● Has problems organizing and structuring time

● Carla gets distracted easy and has a hard time to focus

● Lack of structuring the workload

● Feels to have not enough time to study

Scenario: ​Carla has an Exam in 4 Weeks. She wants to perform well and knows she gets stressed and anxious even before she starts studying and does not know what to do. Her Goal is to feel structured and confident to manage her time during studying. Normally she tries to exercise but the overwhelming thought of not really knowing what types of exercise to do or planning out a workout becomes too much feels overwhelmed and gives up. She is seeking structure and organization in her daily life.

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_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Johann

Demographics

Age: 22

Occupation: Student and Study job

Location: København, DK

Life Stage: single, living with one roommate

Motivators

● Feeling more confident during studying and being more prepared

● Learning studying techniques

● Wants to be more focused

● Get fit

● Bikes everywhere for the environment and to save money

Constraints

● Pressure from the outside to perform well

● Feels sudden increase of Stress and Anxiety and often does not know what to do

● Lack of structuring work time (Starts studying but not in a good use of the time) -> pomodoro technique

Scenario: ​Johann has his Exam week coming up and a huge deadline at work. Johan is not normally very reflective about how stressed he will feel but often in the last minute suddenly feels overwhelmed with stress and the amount of things he has to do. When he feels stressed he studies long hours and also into the night but does not use the time efficiently and can not remember what he has studied. He struggles in taking breaks and manage the time __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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2.3. Wireframes & User flow

After all this research and work we were finally able to clarify the app structure and user flows, sketch out the wireframes and define main features and clickable elements in the application.

2.4. Visual Design

To give our Project a nice layout, Daniela worked on the visual design, color pallet, design elements and text fonts were created. We chose a cool color that demonstrates calm and nature. The logo icon visualizes the activity, flexibility and how to find balance within it.

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2.5. Data Science

To understand the significance of the data science part in this project, we had to first understand the data that could be gathered from the users and the webapp. This was possible by analyzing the prototype, making the data-tables, class diagram and lastly constructing the functions that would be used in calculating the different user-scores from the inputs. To visualize this process, a number of data tables were made based on a single user. We differentiate between two exercise programs, an active one and a meditative one. Therefore, we as data scientists focused on making a function that could help calculate whether a person is in an active program or meditative program. The score can change based on such inputs as the emotion (mood), step count and average activity score. This will be elaborated on later in this same section. Firstly, it is important to show the data tables for the user Clara:

Furthermore, there are the data tables for activities, fitness goals, emotions and exams, which are tied to the exercise that the users get each day:

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When it comes to emotions, the person can each day choose between the sad, neutral and happy option, and each of these choices has a specific value set to them, namely 100, 200 and 300 in that sequence.

The data table for the recommendation for the exercise of the day is then as follows:

It then becomes possible to make the data table for the user inputs, where clicks are defined as the amount of times the user uses the SOS button,:

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To calculate the activity level, it then also becomes important to make an action level list, which shows the value that each activity has. The higher the score, the more likely it is an activity that is tied to the active exercise plan and not the meditative:

With these visualizations in mind, it was possible to make a class diagram that shows how the recommendations are connected with the inputs, activites, emotions and exams. The reason exams are separated is that in contrast to the activities and emotions, the exams are a separate entity that are fixed.

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2.5.1 Calculation of the Activity Score:

The function used follows this formula, Activity score=q+a-(k)+e/2, more concretely:

Activity score=Questionnaire score + Average activity level-(Step count that day/(100-Average step count)/200) + Emotion level/2

Average activity level: The sum of action level of activities per week/number of completed activities per week

Average step count: The sum of the step count per week/7

The possible scores:

Questionnaire score, also q :0–1000

Average Activity level, also a :0–800

(Step count that day/100-Average step count/200), also k : this can maximum equal 200, and minimum be 0

Emotion level, also e : either 100/2, 200/2 or 300/2

Maximum activity score: 1000+800–200+300=1750

Minimum activity score: 0, as when they start using the app there is no data Example for a calculation:

Activity score: 200+257-(3000/100–4500/200) +200/2= 549.5

With the maximum activity score in mind, we decided that an activity score of over 850 can give the recommendation for the active exercises, which have an action level over 400, while any activity score less will give recommendations for the meditative exercises.

A higher score will be equivalent to more active exercises / high pulse.

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Explanation for the function:

Activity score=Questionnaire score + Average activity level-(Step count that day/100-Average step count/200) + Emotion level/2

The team chose to include the questionnaire score (which is found in the appendix), as in this questionnaire the users are asked what exercise they would prefer to try out and other questions that are relevant in choosing the plan for them. The average activity level will also ensure that the exercises that they prefer to do will continue popping up as one can choose to delete the exercises that one does not see relevant or did not like. This means that even if in the start the user is given exercises that are more meditative, if they do not continue doing them and instead do the more active exercise, this will be reflected in the average activity level. The step count was chosen as the more one walks per day, the more tired one is, as such there is a minus in front of the bracket. This means that the more the score is, the lesser the activity score will be, and more likely one would get a meditative exercise that is not as intense as running for example. The step count that day is divided by 100, which will allow it to be more in line with the other scores. Furthermore, the step count that day is minused by the average step count, as we also need to take in account if on average a person walks a lot or not, so if the user’s average step count is high, it will not affect the activity score as much as if it was low. The average step count is divided by 200 as it is not as important as the step count that day. Lastly, the emotion level count is divided by 2 in order to make it not too much of a deciding factor in choosing what exercise plan one gets, but still having it affect it. The team still wanted to include the emotional level as we assumed that the happier one is, the more rigorous exercise one would like to do, while maybe on days when one is not in high spirits, it could be more beneficial to have more relaxing exercises. This score will mostly affect the people who are more in between the active and meditive types, as the emotion level score is not too high and can maximum be 150.

2.5.2. Recommendations

To recommend the user the matching sports activity we will use a technique obtained from K-nearest neighbor (KNN) called: K-nearest neighbour search, where we use this technique to find the closest sports exercises to the user. At scale such a system would be slow, however, it is similar to the recommendation system which we see at Netflix under the section “more like this”

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(our algorithm is just more simplified!). Given the fact that we have a fast computer, and a small database it was still possible!

We will be able to answer question:

Given the user’s scoring level (calculation described in above sections) which 5 exercises would be nearest to the user’s score level?

There are several ways of calculating distance but we used the Euclidean distance in one dimension, which is defined as the distance between the user score and the nearest respective exercise score.

Our algorithm will first create a feature vector for the user and then it runs our K-N search algorithm and finds the closest exercises to recommend to the user.

2.6. Web Development

To proceed with the Web Development of the app, we established a common platform for the development of it, Github and VSCode. Then we proceeded with coding the basic html without any styling or JavaScript, as our team was still in the process of understanding what the users

wanted for the design. Later on, when the design was finished, we made use of both HTML, CSS, JavaScript and BootStrap frameworks.

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3. Project Results

The project result is a full functioning prototype — developed in Figma — that demonstrates the main features in our application. The most important

features in our project are the personalized exercise plan to reduce anxiety, the questionnaire to develop the personalized plan, and the SOS Button that helps the user to refocus and/or de-stress at that moment is occuring.

3.1 Questionnaire for user profile

After the user has downloaded the app, the user will be presented with a 5-step questionnaire that he/she can fill out .Based on this questionnaire the data science team developed a system that will create an exercise plan which is tailored to the users personal needs, fitness level and preferred sport activities. The questionnaire is not mandorate as we wanted to allow flexibility for the users. The user is presented with the option to skip this part if the user has no interest in doing the questionnaire right now or has no need for an exercise plan at all. The questionnaire can also be completed at a later time under the “profile settings”.

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3.2. Home page and main features

The home page contains all main features on the application. On the top can be found the “Did you know” panel that gives the User a daily motivation and educates him/her why exercise can be beneficial when studying.

In the middle of the screen can be found the user’s daily exercise, which is part of their personalized exercise plan. By clicking on the window the user receives more information about the exercise, the duration, and most importantly the explanation of why exactly this exercise is beneficial to their health and study routine.

For example: Strength Training. Get your heart rate up with this 20 min workout to release energy for deep focus and concentration.

Getting your heart rate up changes brain chemistry, increasing the availability of important anti-anxiety neurochemicals, including serotonin, gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)

The picture in the pop up window is linked to the YouTube video where the user can directly start with the exercise. If the user would like to remember this exercise for later he/she can add the exercise to his/her “favorites” that he/she can find in their “profile” page by clicking on the heart icon.

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Under “show more” the user will find the entire exercise plan and can see which exercises he/she can do on which day. In addition, the user is also able to modify the plan by moving exercises up, down or removing them at all. More exercises can be added under the “Exercise” page by selecting the preferred exercise and select “Add to plan”.

After each exercise the user will be encouraged to add a study session, since the brain is most receptive after exercises.

3.3 SOS Button

The SOS Button is another main feature in the application to help when

the user feels a sudden increase of anxiety or struggles with staying

focused. By pressing the SOS button the user can find a variety of

breathing exercises, tips , and games that will help him/her to calm

down or refocus. Keeping in mind that games can become addictive,

the games have certain time restrictions or level limits to avoid that

the user gets stuck in this function. Most preferred tips, techniques or

games can as well be saved under “favorites” by pressing the heart icon.

After doing one of the exercises the user will be led to the “Focus now”

page, where the user is encouraged to focus on their study for the next 20 minutes. The view on this page can be seen on page 10.

3.4. Exercise page

Under the “exercise” page the user can find more exercise if he/she feels like to do more exercises in one day or to add another exercise to the exercise plan.

The exercises include yoga, workout, outdoor, meditation, Pilates, indoor and cardio. 17

3.5. Studying tips and studying techniques

Under the page “Tips” the user can find some valuable knowledge about learning techniques, learning tips, tips for exam preparation and some hard facts about exercise and anxiety / stress reduction.

For example: Pomodoro technique — Study more efficiently. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and start your task. It doesn’t have to be a tomato timer — I use my phone or this online version. If a distraction pops into your head, write it down on a piece of paper and return to your task. When the buzzer rings, put a checkmark on your paper. You’ve completed one increment, also known as a pomodoro. Take a five minute break. You can check the distractions that popped into your head, stretch, grab a cup of tea etc. After four pomodoros, take a thirty-minute break. Repeat!

Tips can be saved again under “favorites.”

The learning techniques contain different options on how to study efficiently like the pomodoro technique, the SQ3R technique, the retrieval practice, the PQ4R technique and many more.

The study tips contain practical tips on how to get the most out of the study time. Some examples are exercising before studying, studying before bed, identifying one’s own learning style and much more.

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The tips for exam preparation should help the students to be perfectly prepared for the exam and learn something new about what they can do right before an exam.

Under the section “Did you know” the user can find fun and interesting facts about how exercise can be beneficial while studying. This section can also be found on the home page.

In addition, another important feature of the application can be found. The “Focus now” option will lead to a new screen with a clock that is running down from 20 minutes. These 20 minutes should be used to focus again and study without interruption. The preferred study time can be changed in the profile settings.

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3.6. User profile

The last page we are going to present is the “Profile” page.

This page also contains a lot of future features that will be

discussed further down.

Besides the profile settings, where the user can do or redo the initial

questionnaire the user can adjust also the study time and other

settings regarding the user’s profile.

Under the profile picture and the user’s name can we see a progress

bar which shows the users study progress. Every time the user is

using the focus time, it registers the used time and if the user needs

to study 25h for his/her exams, the progress will be shown here.

This is a great way to keep the user motivated and also show him

that even 20 min of study can get him further.

3.7. Web Development

To proceed with the Web Development of the app, we first had to understand what the UX designers wanted for the design. Despite this helping in the making of a more user-friendly app, it also made it harder to fully develop the app within the timeframe given. As these were only finished later on the project and we only had one web developer in our team. Due to this, we do not expect to have a fully developed app and some layouts might differ slightly from the initially planned ones.

3.8. Future Steps

The next steps the team could develop with more time in the app is to implement a study-buddy program and a cooperation page. The study-buddy feature is a system where the user can learn together with friends and follow each other’s progress to enhance motivation and make learning more fun.

The team felt it was important to brainstorm ways to make the application available for free to students without having the annoying features of random advertisements. The team came up with the idea of the cooperation page. Gyms, bookstores, cafes, and coffee places could offer

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different incentives to the users of the app. For example try one class free at igym or free small coffee when using the focus app. This is one way the app could be sustainable.

Another possibility of a future feature could be the development of the app to work on smart watches. This could allow the team to develop and implement a stress alert connected to heart rate to let the user know what exercises he can do to calm down.

And lastly, the team has deliberately specialized only in the target group of students, as this has enabled us to focus deeply on the needs of students and to create a better user experience in the app. The team recognizes that by narrowing down our user group focus we have limited our potential users. This could be an excellent place to expand the app by researching and including other specialized features that could be marketed to other specific target user groups such as healthcare.

4. Conclusion & Learning

In conclusion, we can say that this journey was more than educational. We did not only acquire new skills that are very useful in our future career but also learned to work together as a team on a real life work issue. Working together in a team means also to step out of the frame that we learn in our tacks but explore more around the subject, research and get to know a bit of the other tracks as well!

A big learning for the user experience team was on how much work it actually takes to build an app if you want to do it right. It can take weeks to identify main features in the app by following users needs while keeping competitors in mind. Design is so much more than what the users sees. 90% of the design is the app structure and informational architecture that will never be discovered by the user but is very crucial to the user experience. Design is how it works. Design is about functionality.

At the beginning of the project we would have loved to just start right away, get into designing the pages and start coding. Little did we know that a long way of research, discussion and user surveys were ahead of us. Only later did we realise how important that first steps were to develop

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features that match the very needs of our target group. This system prevented us from programming an application that may look good but not match the users interest. And since the team grew smaller over the time of the project phase — especially on the web development part — we had to work with the resources we had and put extra focus on the user experience and the UI design.

However we strongly believe that our project result — the prototype — is highly presentable and shows how much work we put into it.

In regards to the challenges the data science faced, we can say that it was especially difficult in the start to just fathom where to begin, as we did not have the data. This made us look into similar kinds of data on kaggle, from where we could get inspiration on where to begin. This helped tremendously, as well as making the class diagram made us get a good overview over the structure of the webapp further. Of course, we also understood that it was only through a collaborative effort from the whole group, that the data science people could make anything at all. And perhaps that is one of the most important things we can get from this project: the tremendous joy that results from listening to each other and working together.

5. Details about the project team

Overview of the project members

● Daniela Birgmann (Project Lead) — UX Design

● Aleksandra Mostovaja — Data Science

● Gustav Clausen — Data Science

● Inês Santos — Web Development

● Sarah Jorgensen — UX Design

● Thomas Schörner — SAP (Mentor)

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6. References

[1]

https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/stress/physical -activity-reduces-st

[2] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/12/exercise

Anxiety and Depression association of America

https://adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/managing-anxiety/exercise-stress-and-anxiety Harvard Health Publishing

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-exercise-help-treat-anxiety-2019102418096 Healthline

https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety-exercises#breathe

Mayo Clinic

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/exercise-and-stress/a rt-20044469

7. Appendix

The Scores for the Questionnaire:

a) What is your main fitness goal?

i. Lose weight=75 points

ii. Gain flexibility=50 points

iii. Build muscle/become more fit=100 points

iv. Improve my running game=75 points

v. Get out of my comfort zone=75 points

vi. Stay healthy and active=50 points

b) How much do you like to sweat?

i. A little is fine=50 points

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ii. No sweat for me=50 points

iii. I want to be soaked=100 points

c) How many times a week will you want to exercise?

I. 2=100 points

i. 2–3=75 points

ii. 3=50 points

iii. 4 times per week or more=50 points

d) It is a Friday night, and you want to relax a bit with some music, what could you pick? i. Some energizing salsa=75 points

ii. Something down to earth, like lo-fi or birdsongs=50 points

iii. Something loud, like rock or edm =100 points

iv. Something unusual like a traditional Japanese instrument 50 points e) Which of these exercises do you enjoy doing or are open to trying? (Pick several) i. Running =100 points

ii. Brisk walking =50 points

iii. Strength Training =200 points

iv. Yoga =50 points

v. Meditation =50 points

vi. Fitness centre=150 points

Link to Prototype:

https://tinyurl.com/SportandAnxiety

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