Tag Archives: facebook

Healthseeker: Engaging and Motivating with a Facebook Game

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This is the slidedeck for a presentation about HealthSeeker, the healthy Facebook Game we developed at the Diabetes Hands Foundation, in collaboration with Joslin Diabetes Center.

I am presenting HealthSeeker along with Michael Fergusson, from Ayogo Games, at e-Patient Connections 2010 Sept. 28, 2010:

Session description:
There is a widely-held belief that playing games online is a waste of time at best (“Your friend sent you a sheep!”), and part of an unhealthy sedentary lifestyle at worst. A closer look reveals something quite different, however: games and play are one of the strongest motivators of behaviour, and a key tool for anyone looking to develop or reinforce healthy habits. HealthSeeker is a game that turns your Facebook network of friends onto a source of support as you complete real-world missions to get healthier through simple everyday actions. Join us for a discussion about the game, how it works and how it came about.

Play HealthSeeker at:
 http://www.HealthSeekerGame.org

Like HealthSeeker at:
 http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=114713051892552

Follow HealthSeeker at:
 http://twitter.com/healthseekerFB

Whole Foods Market Missions app: a HealthSeeker ripoff?

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Aug. 18, 2010 Whole Foods Market launched the new Whole Foods Market Missions iPhone app. Read the app description below, taken from the iTunes Preview page (the bolded words are mine, to point out the coincidences between this app and another app we launched on Facebook two months ago):

Get on a mission to better health! The Whole Foods Market Missions (WFMissions) app will help you broaden your palate by introducing you to a range of delicious, nutrient dense foods. Learn more about healthy eating and start a conversation with your social networks about the road to good health.

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Missions — Complete steps of varying difficulty and earn badges through fun and healthy Missions.
Tips – Get simple, practical advice on cooking, nutrition, green living, food storage and more. Save your favorites for easy reference.
Profile – Keep track of your accomplishments and brag about them via email, Facebook, and Twitter

More than two months before, the Diabetes Hands Foundation launched HealthSeeker™, a new Facebook® game, with the goal of helping players make specific lifestyle changes that focus on healthy eating. While the benefits of the game are available to anyone, HealthSeeker™ specifically helps people with diabetes make more informed lifestyle decisions in an innovative way that complements their daily use of social media.

There are MISSIONS and ACTION STEPS to help players achieve LIFESTYLE GOALS and create an opportunity to advance in the game. These LIFESTYLE GOALS include eating more healthfully, achieving or maintaining a healthy weight, improving one’s diabetes control and lowering cardiovascular risk factors. As ACTION STEPS are completed and players return to report their progress, they receive experience points and other awards for their achievements.

HealthSeeker™ combines a supportive social networking environment with important information on managing diabetes. The game utilizes the player’s own Facebook® friends as sources of inspiration and support on the road to better health.


On HealthSeeker game, missions are made up of action steps as shown:

This is how a comparable screen looks on the Whole Foods App:

When you complete a mission on HealthSeeker, it appears as follows:

This is how it looks on the Whole Foods App:

This is how my achievements page looks on HealthSeeker:

This is how the badges tab looks on the Whole Foods app:

Has Whole Foods Market been patterned off HealthSeeker™? Is it a ripoff? I would like to hear your thoughts…

All I can say is: there seem to be a LOT of similarities. Considering how broad this space is and how much resources Whole Foods should be able to put behind developing a truly innovative and groundbreaking app, I would have imagined that they’d try to avoid repeating the same thing that others are already doing out there… but I digress. What do YOU guys think?

HealthSeeker: a healthy Facebook game

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We are SUPER-excited to announce one of the biggest undertakings we’ve worked on pretty much since we launched our communities.

It’s called HealthSeeker, a new Facebook® game, with the goal of helping players make specific lifestyle changes that focus on healthy eating. While the benefits of the game are available to anyone, HealthSeeker™ specifically helps people with diabetes make more informed lifestyle decisions in an innovative way that complements their daily use of social media.

HealthSeeker™ combines a supportive social networking environment with important information on managing diabetes. The game utilizes the player’s own Facebook® friends as sources of inspiration and support on the road to better health.

There are MISSIONS and ACTION STEPS to help players achieve LIFESTYLE GOALS and create an opportunity to advance in the game. These LIFESTYLE GOALS include eating more healthfully, achieving or maintaining a healthy weight, improving one’s diabetes control and lowering cardiovascular risk factors. As ACTION STEPS are completed and players return to report their progress, they receive experience points and other awards for their achievements.

HealthSeeker™ is a unique collaboration between diabetes experts and patient advocates who are on the front lines of diabetes care. It was developed by the Diabetes Hands Foundation in collaboration with Joslin Diabetes Center, with financial support provided by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

We wanted to harness the Facebook® phenomenon to help people with diabetes make necessary changes in their daily lives. Many people with diabetes struggle with the lifestyle changes that are needed to help manage their condition, such as adding more fiber, fruit and vegetables to their diets, or increasing their daily activity. HealthSeeker™ can help people with diabetes stay motivated by suggesting simple, everyday steps to help them achieve their lifestyle goals and then rewarding them for their success.

One of the people involved in the Joslin team was Dr. Richard Jackson (an endocrinologist and Director of Medical Affairs, Healthcare Services, Joslin Diabetes Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School). He had this to say about the game and his hopes for it:

“As a clinician who has been treating people with diabetes for over 30 years, I can tell you that food is often the most frustrating area of concern for people with the condition. We hope this novel and engaging game will break down some of the barriers that are preventing people with diabetes from building a successful lifestyle approach to their condition.”

Here is a video to give you a feel about the game:

HealthSeeker™ can be accessed at www.healthseekergame.org. The game was designed by Ayogo Games, Inc.

Facebook Privacy: an oxymoron?

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Today as I stood in line to buy coffee, I read this piece from AllFacebook.com by Nick O’Neill. Quoting:

-Instant Personalization Opt-Out-It’s pretty outrageous to watch Facebook defend something which is obviously unethical. I’m talking about the company’s “Instant Personalization” program which the company forces users into, whether they like it or not. Despite the ongoing public criticism about the service, and a number of other products, Facebook is standing strong, arguing that users “love” what Facebook is doing.

On Facebook’s “Privacy” page where you can control this (the one shown in the screenshot above), they introduce it as:

Facebook’s instant personalization pilot program helps you connect more easily with your friends on select partner sites.

Doesn’t sound that bad, huh? The problem with this is that you are OPTED IN automatically, which is intrinsically wrong. At least <start_sarcasm>we are fortunate that we can opt out!<end_sarcasm>

A few years ago, it was Microsoft… then it was Google… now it’s Facebook… the big gorilla in the room always seems to make decisions that they are willing to defend no matter what, in spite of not necessarily being in the best interest of anyone but themselves. :(

Social Media and Community: not either or

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From luc legay

Maybe no more than a year or two ago, I used to think of Twitter and Facebook as ways to drive traffic to our “main” online communities: TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes. The hope was that we could reach out to people interested in what we had to offer in either community on these other growing social networks and try to get them to visit and sign up as members…

Time passed and we realized that was happening, but not to the extent that we were hoping. While some people would visit and sign up for our social networks, something else that was VERY interesting was going on. If we shared a link to an interesting discussion going on in, say, TuDiabetes and included the title of the discussion on our Diabetes Hands Foundation Facebook page, if the topic was interesting, the discussion didn’t depart the page. Fans (or “likers“, I guess, would be the new term) on the page would engage in discussion DIRECTLY on the page and not leave Facebook at all.

Think of it: the convenience! You simply have to monitor one site (or few sites, maybe), keeping an eye on your main feed, and relevant elements are presented to you, on which you can jump and participate commenting about them, liking them or sharing them with others. It’s simple… and it’s brilliant!

Something similar happens on Twitter, though perhaps not in a way that is as easy to visualize because Twitter is less structured.

So, next time you are wondering whether your community should live on a space separate from Facebook and Twitter or be a part of these growing spaces, don’t think either or: you may already have a community going on in two or all three places.

How to add a Facebook "Like" button to your WordPress blog?

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A couple of months ago, my friend Danilo helped me migrate my blog to its new WordPress home. Besides posting, I’ve spent the past few weeks learning the ropes of the WP backend.

WordPress lets you choose themes for your blog and the theme Danilo picked (for which I thank him!) is called Thesis. If you are using Thesis like me, I recommend you follow these steps to add a Facebook “Like” button at the bottom of all your posts.

One small thing, though:

I HIGHLY recommend you install the Thesis OpenHook PlugIn recommended by the author. It will save you a lot of time and protect you from making dangerous mistakes mis-handling PHP files via FTP.

A small correction to the WordPress listing for the Thesis OpenHook plugin: it reads “Visit Design -> Thesis OpenHook and customize to your heart’s content!”

Actually, to customize things to your heart’s content, you’re supposed to click on the Appearance tab on the left of your WordPress backend and click on the Thesis OpenHook link.

Ah! If you find this post useful, please click to Like below! ;)

Update on 4/23/2010 (from Jim F. Munro’s blog post about this):

Jim posted a workaround on his blog showing how to display the “Like” buttons on all posts appearing on the home page of Thesis-themed WP blogs. As you can see, it works like a charm!

Facebook Listens!

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I am happy to report Facebook seems to quietly be listening to feedback about their changes, including changes they rolled out to pages earlier this week.

I noticed a few minutes ago that we CAN actually see ALL people who like our pages (see the red box in the screenshot to the left). This is good news, not only because it’s a useful feature BUT because it shows that Facebook listens.

Yay for them!!

I don't "like" the recent changes to Facebook Pages

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Today Facebook launched the change on “formerly known as fan pages” letting Facebook users LIKE the pages, as opposed to become fans of the page. According to Facebook:
“To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.”

To a certain extent, I thought this was a good thing (for those of us running a Facebook Page). But two things came along with this:
1) As a page administrator, you used to be able to click on a “See All” link near your fan box and see all the people who have become fans. This allowed you to choose among them to promote to Admins (if you were on a page you managed) or Add as a Friend (if you were on somebody else’s page), as shown below.

Now, you can only see all the people who “like” a page who are your friends…

2) Facebook argue that they are promoting consistency across Facebook. That is not entirely so. While it is true that you can “Like” other comments/photos/videos/etc. throughout the site, “liking” a Facebook page can lead to unexpected communications from pages (via the Facebook feed and in the form of page updates which end up in your email)… so it is misleading, because it’s not consistent with other types of like.

If you ask me, they’ve reduced the value of Pages to a certain extent by increasing the chances that anyone can “like” a page, but not making it clear that you are essentially following that group, not just a single conversation as is the case with liking others things on Facebook.

Can’t say I am too happy with the change… :(