Denk je zèlf! Developing a personalised virtual coach for emotional eaters using personas

Obesity is a fast growing societal threat, causing chronic conditions, physical and psychological health problems, as well as absenteeism and large healthcare costs. Despite numerous attempts to promote physical activity and healthy diet, existing interventions do not focus on often occurring emotional causes of obesity. There is a need for self-management support of this vulnerable target group: emotional eaters. This paper presents the results of the design case study focusing on a holistic development of a personalised virtual mHealth coach that provides self-management training u0027Denk je zelf!u0027 (Dutch for u0027Develop a wise mind and counsel yourselfu0027). Target group are young adults with emotional eating disorder and obesity. The contextual inquiry study was conducted to get insights into the needs and experiences of the target users, including interviews and questionnaires with emotional eaters, obesity treatment patients and healthcare practitioners. Personas and user stories were derived from these results and translated into a new u0027Denk je zelf!u0027 virtual coach, based on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy and experience sampling measures to capture user experience and emotional state. This paper makes two main contributions: (a) combining holistic design with behaviour therapy in one virtual mHealth coaching application for emotional eaters; (b) applying Personas to guide the design. Preliminary results suggest that an online self-management training might be useful for the target group. Future research will be aimed at iterative evaluation and further development of the dialectical dialogues for the virtual coach and content for the education and instruction modules.