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Description
Diseases caused by poor lifestyle lead to disability, and account for over 80% of premature deaths, in particular of the elderly. Insufficient and irregular physical activity is one of the key factors behind the rise of civilization diseases in modern aging societies. While the group of the most fit Poles is steadily growing and people are increasingly aware that exercising has a positive impact on our health, still one out of three Poles is not physically active, and we belong to the least active societies in the European Union.
The project develops a recommendation system for people who suffer from ailments caused by sedentary lifestyle and a reduced level of physical activity. It aims to encourage its users to follow an exercise routine adapted to their physical condition, and as a result, to mitigate the risk of civilization diseases. The system will be based on my many years’ experience as coach and trainer involved in services intended to improve the general physical condition by means of a reasonably devised exercise program, nutritional tips, biological regeneration and advice on how to cope with passive and sedentary lifestyle.
The system will be made available directly to users and business partners under a paid license.
My Norwegian project partner, Tingtun AS, has extensive experience in the application of modern IT solutions, including the availability and effective interaction between humans and IT systems. This know-how will be used in the project in the form of technical, business and research mentoring.
Summary of project results
Summary of a whole mentoring process between the mentor entity (Tingun AS) and the mentee entity (Feel It), with the particular focus on the UX/UI design including advice on accessibility and usability, as well as support on selected marketing matters, such as branding.
The mentorship provided by Tingun AS for Feel It has been divided into four main areas described below. Comprehensive mentoring support was provided to facilitate the process of specifying the whole project framework. This includes support in defining requirements, both functional (concerning the functionality of the developed application) and nonfunctional (for example, the system requirements or environments in which the app is expected to be deployed). In addition to mentoring project requirements, the mentee was also supported in the area of user interface developed in the course of cooperation with the IT contractor. A couple of the example application’s crucial views were discussed, including logon screen, a main menu or an exercise module. Any contemporary IT project needs to take into account the number of steps required to prevent the exclusion of potential users, especially if the aforementioned users struggle with
disabilities. Based on the extensive experience of the mentor, to ensure that the target system and application will provide the best possible experience to the diverse audiences, the mentor was introduced to a wide range of practises and tools that will ensure the accessibility of the project implementation. The complementary aspects of the above-mentioned elements of mentoring support were devoted to selected organisational as well as marketing aspects of the future product. In particular, one of the important topics was the branding of the application. Based on the experience of the mentor and some prior market research and competition analyses, in the course of the mentoring process it was suggested by the mentor that the initial name chosen for the project (“Bodyfitting”) may encounter some difficulties when the app will be released to the general public.
Assistance in establishing project specification (like identifying use cases and non-functional requirements) and the technologies, including cloud services to deliver the solution and fulfil project requirements. The advisory role in the user interface and user experience area included support for both designing mockups and technical advisory. In particular, recommendations were made to provide the best usability and accessibility practices, including needs of people with disabilities. During the mentorship process, support in selected organisational and marketing aspects was also provided, including supporting the rebranding of the future service that is a subject of the project.
Mentoring was concluded by the evaluation stage of the whole process conducted throughout the project and summarising the outcomes achieved by the end of the last stage of the project activities. In particular, the implementation of the graphical user interface was evaluated by the mentor together with the mentee, including final implementation of the user interface, including usability and accessibility aspects, based on tests conducted by the IT contractor.
The mentor, together with the mentee, concluded that the mentorship process had been successful and beneficial to the project and the mentee. Each aspect of the mentorship, including research, technical, organisational, and even marketing aspects, increased the competences of the mentee and enabled, at every stage of the project, effective cooperation with the IT contractor towards the successful development of the final service.
Summary of bilateral results
The mentor, together with the mentee, concluded that the mentorship process had been successful and beneficial to the project and the mentee. Each aspect of the mentorship, including research, technical, organisational, and even marketing aspects, increased the competences of the mentee and enabled, at every stage of the project, effective cooperation with the IT contractor towards the successful development of the final service. The main results of the cooperation with the partner were as described above. We are very satisfied with the cooperation with the partner, because he helped us organize and go through the difficult stage of creating this innovative solution. At the moment, there are no plans to continue cooperation with the partner, as the cooperation was envisaged for a specific stage of the project.