Go Outside Research Comparators

Assessment Criteria

Since the pandemic started, we all realized that we’d like to be going outside more often. We thought about the apps that we’d used or seen others use that encourage them to go outside for our comparative research. We brainstormed a number of apps / services and came up with the following list of existing apps: Couch to 5K, Pokemon GO, Strava, Forest App, and AllTrails. Then, for each app, we thought about what made them unique/distinct in our minds, as well as drawing inspiration for good assessment criteria from class, and settled on the following list to evaluate these comparators:

Clear goal to go outside or not?

• Some apps are more clearly targeted towards getting folks outside. In others, like Pokemon Go, it’s more of a side effect.

Goal structuring

• What behavior is being measured / encouraged?

Motivator

• What’s the value proposition? Desired outcome?

Exploration & Discovery

• Does the app focus on exploring & discovering new places?

Nudge mechanism

• What channel, how often, what message, when?

Social pressure / community

• Does the app use social pressure to motivate its users?

Platform support / UX environment

• Mobile app? Website?

Tracking progress

• How does the app track user progress, if at all?

We feel these criteria will be helpful signposts for us to think about what is / isn’t effective in our initiative to help others (and ourselves!) to go outside more.

Couch to 5K

Couch to 5K is a 9-week running plan for beginners to work up to being able to run a 5K. With a week-by-week progression, the program starts with an alternating walking/running routine, and gradually increases the amount of running per workout. The Couch to 5K app features guided workouts, a virtual coach, and workout tracking.

1. Though the program and app don’t explicitly guide users to workout indoors or outdoors, the progression tracking relies on location information to record the distance and pace of each run.
2. There is a very clear goal for the Couch to 5K program, as the name suggests. The progression is broken down into very specific steps (e.g. Week 6 Run 1 consists of 5 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 8 minutes running, 3 minutes walking, 5 minutes running), each of which are viewable by the user so that they can check what kinds of workouts they have coming up. This reduces the cognitive load on users since they don’t have to figure out their own progression. The program also breaks down a very large goal into more manageable milestones, which increases one’s sense that they have the ability to accomplish the week’s tasks.
3. Users use the app and program with a particular goal in mind, whether that is to specifically be able to run a 5K or just to increase their own fitness.
4. Though there are not many explicit activities related to exploration and discovery, the app does track people’s runs, which could encourage them to explore new routes and save them.
5. The app’s main nudge mechanism are the push notifications for reminding users to run according to the program’s schedule and maintain the progression.
6. Users are able to share their progress on social media, which can serve as a means of soliciting encouragement. This also fosters a sense of accountability since posting the workouts implies that one is working towards running a 5K.
7. The program itself is platform-agnostic, and is simply a plan for people to follow. The app is only available on mobile devices, which makes sense given that this makes communicating specific activities in real-time as well as tracking run information much easier. The user can simply focus on their workout.
8. As users complete runs, the app moves them towards more strenuous workouts. Every workout is tracked in the app, which includes information on the duration, distance, and pace of the run.

Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is an augmented reality (AR) app developed by Niantic and Nintendo as another entry in the Pokémon franchise. It uses mobile devices with GPS in order to locate, capture, train, and battle various Pokémon, which spontaneously appear as if they were in the player’s real-world environment. Additionally, there exist gyms at various physical locations which players can take control of by beating the current champion.

1. Pokémon Go gives its players many goals, such as to catch all of the Pokémon, to level up, to battle other players in gyms, … Most of the goals are like the aforementioned ones: in-game goals. However, to get almost anything done in the game, the player is required to go outside and explore the world. Even more, Pokémon Go gives its players a clear goal to go outside by offering weekly in-game rewards for covering a certain amount of distance. The game also requires players to walk a certain distance to hatch eggs that contain new Pokémon. So, while going outside isn’t the main goal of Pokémon Go’s players, the game cleverly gets people to go outside by integrating it in the design of the game.
2. Although there is no explicit structuring of goals, the game’s egg-hatching mechanic operates as such. As users get and incubate more eggs, they can either take 2km, 5km, or 10km of walking. As the user walks, the distance remaining for each of the eggs decreases until the incubation is completed. Thus, each of the individual eggs act as manageable milestones that keeps the users motivated.
3. One of Pokémon Go’s main motivators is the fun of experiencing the Pokémon universe in a mobile augmented reality experience. Players can envision themselves as real Pokémon trainers capturing Pokémon out in the world. Its fundamental value proposition has been described as “to explore and experience the real world with a layer of fantasy.” At this point, it’s clear that the main motivator of the app is not to go outside. Rather, going outside emerged naturally from the game design (Pokemon Go and Business Model Innovation).
4. Exploration and discovery are core to Pokémon Go. The game gets its players to venture out into the wild. You can only catch some Pokémon in specific regions around the world and in your local region there is also a lot of diversity of activities depending on where you travel. When playing the game, there’s a lot of drive to explore new areas after you’ve been in the same environment for a while to avoid repetitiveness.
5. One of the main nudge mechanisms in Pokémon Go is the push notification you get when there are nearby Pokémon (or the vibration when you have the app opened). For players who are serious about trying to catch as many Pokémon as possible, this is a highly successful way of getting them to go outside. Another nudge happens when you are notified that there is an event nearby, such as a multiplayer raid. That way, you are encouraged to meet up with others outside to complete the raid.

1. In the game, you can see your friend list. There, you can see who is active and which Pokémon they have recently caught. There is not much social pressure to go outside. Any social pressure that might be felt is to catch as many Pokémon and be the same level as your friends.

1. The game is supported on any smartphone and gives you the choice to enable AR (for which you need a front camera.

1. In the app you can see both in-game statistics (like how many Pokémon you’ve caught) and real-life statistics (like how much you’ve walked).

Summary

We see that Couch to 5k and Pokémon Go are very similar in regard to some of our comparators. Both apps rely on small, manageable goal structuring, apply their nudge mechanism mainly through push notifications, implement social media functionality in order to take advantage of social pressures, and display detailed statistics about distances travelled and past performance.

There are also several differences in design. For Couch to 5k, the goal is clearly to go outside — the app tracks distances through location information (meaning indoor treadmill would not be supported). On the other hand, Pokémon Go incorporates going outside as more of a side effect of the main goals of the game. Additionally, Couch to 5k uses the user’s increasing fitness over time as a motivator; Pokémon Go’s main motivator is simply the fun of experiencing the Pokémon universe. Finally, Couch to 5k doesn’t explicitly guide users to explore new running routes or trails, while Pokémon Go has exploration and discovery at its core.