The most important risk factors for cardiovascular health are smoking and a sedentary lifestyle. This paper proposes Evitapp, a mobile application designed to promote physical activity and smoking cessation. The application does not use additional tracking devices, rather relying on phone sensors to track physical activity, and on users logging their behavior. Nineteen users tested the application over 10 days. Participants found the applications easy to use and used them approximately once per day. Even though the habits of the experiment participants did not change significantly, those who used the smoking cessation application reported decreasing their smoking habit.
Smoking is the biggest avoidable health risk, causing millions of deaths per year worldwide. Persuasive applications are those designed to change a person’s behavior, usually in a specific way. Several mobile phone applications and messaging systems have been used to promote smoking cessation. However, most interventions use participants’ self-reports to track cigarette consumption and avoidance, which may not be accurate or objective. Previous proposals have used sensors to track hand movements and other contextual data to detect smoking or have used devices to detect smoke or breath carbon monoxide. This article proposes a low-cost wearable device that may be worn in a front shirt pocket or clipped to clothing to detect smoke and secondhand smoke. Furthermore, the device is integrated into a persuasive application to promote smoking cessation. The device was evaluated through an experiment to detect whether it may detect direct, passive, and no smoking conditions. The results are promising and may help improve tracking of cigarettes in persuasive applications.
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