We live in a world where design has made convenience king. Want food? Tap a button, and Food Panda will drop it off at your doorstep. Want to catch up with someone? Dial a number or drop a WhatsApp message. Want to head to work? Just send a link on Google Meet, and you’ll be on your way to the next work meeting. In all this convenience, humans have become more sedentary, and therefore designers must contend with an ethics question: What is the ethical responsibility of designers to help people live healthier lives? Let’s explore this here.
It’s Certainly Ethical to Encourage People to Move More
That’s why Fitbits came to life. They help us count our steps, pay attention to our heart rate, and quantify active minutes in a single day. Gamification has turned boring walks into Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Tetris, with no limit to the fitness goals that can be achieved. Want to see how many calories are burned specifically during squash or swimming? Well, there’s an app for that, as they say.
It’s Certainly Ethical to Encourage People to Eat Healthier
Get MyFitnessPal, and you’ll be able to scan what you ate and have it shoot the calories back at you. What a convenient way for users to study the caloric density of a cheesecake when compared with a banana. This information can, in the long run, lead to healthier eating choices.
It’s Certainly Ethical to Encourage People to Pay Attention to Their Mental Health
Many therapists swear by meditation as a way to reduce stress and anxiety. Designers can help cultivate this habit for many.
Insight Timer is a fantastic app that tracks minutes focused on the breath while gifting win stars for the number of consecutive days meditation has been practiced.
But What About the Flip Side?
The most obvious challenge is that there’s no way an app can accurately predict calories consumed or burned. Everything is an estimate. And people who find themselves following these numbers may not get the results they imagine.
Additionally, unhealthy competition over step counts or heart rate can turn into an obsession, much like the obsession over achieving unrealistic body standards that have dominated social consciousness in the modern world.
So the question is: How can designers make mindfulness of health fun but also safeguard against the trap of toxic obsession? One suggestion is to send encouraging and compassionate prompts even when a user crosses their daily calorie limit or chooses not to work out that day.
Apple Watches are fantastic at nudging when fitness goals haven’t been met. But why don’t they send an encouraging message on the days that fall short? After all, isn’t that precisely how life works? Every day is filled with uncertainty and difference. The products are designed for humans, not robots.
Perhaps, on the off day, the prompt could be some variation along the lines of: “Didn’t meet your goal today? No worries! Tomorrow is a new day, and you’ll have a fresh shot at meeting it.”
People are already hard enough on themselves as it is. We down’t need an app to do that for them too.
