Comments on: Making Behavior Fun, Popular and Easy

By: Jen McCabe

Jen McCabe — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:51:38 +0000

Hey Alex-

Thanking Susannah for the intro and recruiting you to try getupandmove.me!

Would love to have your feedback. We’re in very early stages (v2.0, less than a month old) and already the emerging behaviors as users redefine fitness in the social graph using ‘microchallenges’ is fascinating.

We haven’t yet integrated with personal biometric trackers like FitBit or WakeMate (for sleep), but are considering it in the future – as well as telemedicine integration for challenges and self-reporting on metrics important for preventive health in conditions like diabetes, etc.

Planned future features include Facebook Connect integration, group challenges, export activity to calorie counters, etc.

The app uses Twitter.com OAuth to login, but Facebook integration is coming soon.

To get started, challenge your friendly founders @jensmccabe (me) and @shazow (Andrey Petrov, former 23andMe engineer) to kick the tires and burn off some excess holiday cheer.

Looking forward to moving with you!
Jen McCabe
Founder, Contagion Health
Getupandmove.me
@jensmccabe

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:54:46 +0000

Hi Mike,

I saw your post on the social marketing list serv and loved its elaboration on the concept of “fun, popular and easy” and love that it ties back pretty directly to theory. I will be sure to look up the citation you reference. Thanks! -Alex

By: Mike Newton-ward

Mike Newton-ward — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:51:27 +0000

Alex, I like your discussion here. To provide some historical context (and Nedra beat me to the keyboard here), I first heard the phrase “fun, easy, and popular,” used to define social marketing by Bill Smith from the Academy for Educational Development, 5-6-7 years ago at the USF social marketing conference.

It is important to note that fun, easy and popular is shorthand for things we know from theory about what influences behavior. FUN-refers to whether the population views the behavior having actual or perceived benefits for themselves. EASY-refers whether the population has access, knowledge, skills, products, etc to do the behavior. POPULAR-whether there is support for the behavior change among the various networks (familial, social, cultural, racial, professional, etc) to which members of a population belong.

All of this is based in work from a wonderful consensus conference that NIMH held to find commonalities among the proponents of various behavior change theories. Although that work was focused on efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, I believe it has broad applicability to other health behaviors, as well. The work is summarized in a very nice chapter: Fishbein, Martin, Harry C. Triandis, Frederick H. Kanfer, Marshall Becker, Susan E. Middlestadt, and Anita Eichler (2001), “Factors Influencing Behavior And Behavior Change,” in Handbook Of Health Psychology, ed. Andrew Baum, Tracy A. Revenson, and Jerome. E. Singer, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 3-17.)

By: Nedra

Nedra — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 04:50:37 +0000

Alex, this is a great compilation of examples! FYI, thought you’d like to know that the “fun, easy and popular” mantra we all throw around originated with Bill Smith of AED. But has become part of the SM canon!

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:20:48 +0000

@Susannah Yes! Dancing for exercise? I’m there. I knew there were FUN forms of encouraging physical fitness that I’ve seen on Twitter that also drive accountability by challenges, contests etc.–I just couldn’t recall them in the wee hours of last night. So, thank you for highlighting this one as it’s new to me.

By: Susannah Fox

Susannah Fox — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:41:58 +0000

Great post, Alex!

As for fun & easy behavior change, see: http://getupandmove.me/

It’s a way to challenge friends to take short breaks from our sedentary lives – to walk for 15 minutes, run for 5, dance for 2 songs, etc.

Stand by for a #getupandmove challenge from me (since we follow each other on Twitter I can send it via DM).

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:18:46 +0000

@Tresha Yes! I almost put down Twestival and Tweetsgiving down as FUN online examples as they both really tap into community and make fundraising and awareness=building a social event (even if those aren’t specific behavior change initiatives).

“Here’s to revving up the level of fun in my life and my work.” I’ll toast to that!

By: Tre ~

Tre ~ — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:05:25 +0000

Wow. Hey Alexandra. Awesome read. Truly. I’d seen the piano but not the others. How true it is that when something is fun it engages and inspires. This is exactly the reason I responded so well to the #twestival global campaign when it launched a year ago to promote #charitywater.org. This is surely what grabbed me to find out more about http://blogher.com initially 2 years ago. I used to teach middle school and actually much more aware of my ‘fun’ behaviors back then. I had to be! Here’s to revving up the level of fun in my life and my work. Thanks so much for this!!!