End of module evaluation

overall, the module has made me more aware of how to communicate a message appropriately, with focusing on the distribution and audience to which the message is being targeted at. The module has also allowed me to develop my skills within screen printing again, with the screen printing of the map. The module has made me think more about the message you are communicating within design and how you can make it the most effective. I enjoyed creating the Change4life app, with enhancing on my digital skills, with taking the knowledge that I had learnt from the start of the year and applying it to this module. Having a topic which could be seen as sensitive and needs to be carefully addressed was interesting to tackle and made the outcome more thought out. I didn't enjoy the map however due to the time constraints which were had with the Amsterdam trip. The schedule left only a couple of days to screen print, so the design had to be carefully thought out to cater for this, meaning it limited the potential. Overall, I enjoyed the module and was designing in a playful way that I enjoy and was able to be creative with the app possibilities. The module has allowed me to further develop my design skills and focus on more Digital design work, which I hope to continue in the future.

Change 4 life potato rating - project summed up

Project summed up

the issue is ; technology is making us lazy 

decided to tackle this with an app due to it being the most effective way of communicating the message due to most likely to see the message n a phone

for change 4 life who is a organisation that already have two apps - times at helping people to become healthier - ran by the public health England

the research of public health England who said that using apps and technology and social media is becoming a more purposeful and effective way of communicating the health message - becoming an important part of their marketing campaign 

aimed at parents with children - helping their family become healthier 

the app is approaching it in a easy, non patronising way - aims to asks questions and give you a rating - and then challenges so you can aim to reduce those problems and habits to be more healthy in a result - giving rewards

works alongside the other change 4 life apps 

having the option to share - want to be something which can be shared and people to ask 'what is your rating' and with the inclusion of the challenge with the tasks it gives parents the urge to change their habits and something which they can brag about if they managed to get to the top rating and not be a couch potato. With sharing it will spread the awareness to the topic, in a more lighthearted manner. 

crit feedback

physical rewards - pick them up
one for children to fill in, whole family log in - link accounts - view what they've done - how long since completed goal

prompt to retake

leaflets - advertise at schools etc - or supermarket

little cards - little game

change how many questions - full quiz or just asking some of the few questions next time

wording of the challenges - alternatively

pick your challenges - themes - food/entertainment

machine doesn't judge you...

check in the place - for like the movement ones

potato prints

potato in logo

adverts - question then describe underneath - one side question one being explanation (like rationale)

potato goes away as not a potato

to present - flow chart of app with arrows and some description

customise - bit emoji etc

Initial ideas for tackling social media making us lazy

social media is causing us to be lazy
technology is making us lazy

showing all the things you can do with just sitting on the sofa

with technology we have become lazy
to grabs peoples attention - digital

maybe an app that links all of the ways in

sofa 'binge' or like sofa cold turkey or something - links all of the things you do which Is a lazy way such as ordering food, social media, Netflix, etccc and you limit your uses??

how many things you can do on your phone with just a tap

we need a balance

digital detox
less consumption

dumb ways to die app

Change4life facebook app

Every year 'Change4Life' deploy multi-channel campaigns that seek to change behaviour and improve health. In 2012 the focus was how active a lifestyle we lead, which shifted to driving awareness of saturated fat, salt and sugar in the diet in 2013 and 2014.

In partnership with Freud Communications, ArtScience developed the digital and social engagement elements of these campaigns: In the 'Get Going' Facebook app (2012) you answer a series of questions to see which 'fitness typology' you are e.g. 'Stress Cadet' or 'Thrill Seeker'. Different activities would then be suggested to improve your diet and health. In the 'Food Smart IQ Quiz' Facebook app (2013) you had to identify the everyday food from a choice of 3 that contains the most salt, fat or sugar. The more correct answers, the higher your Food IQ.

Both campaigns generated a huge amount of online and traditional media exposure. 'Get Going' was played by over 10K people and 'Food Smart' by over 15K. Both contributed to significant fan growth and over-performed in organic and paid-for reach.

potato descriptions

The potato descriptions

ultimate 

You are the ultimate couch potato! When you do most of your errands with the help of technology, you are an ultimate couch potato. Your first instinct is to use your phone in any situation, having your phone think more than you do. Life has never been as easy, with technology there to entertain the kids, deliver food and help with house chores, all from the seat of the sofa.


You are a potato sprout! You use technology however don't let it consume you or your families life. You are partial to a takeaway every now and again however technology doesn't do your chores for you. You are aware of the positives that come with technology however limit the use where possible and spend valuable time with family.

You are a growing potato! you have started to adapt to more couch potato habits with the continual use of technology. The ease of using technology has become more apparent, with being able to complete tasks all from the comfort of your home. You use services such as Netflix very often and are beginning to substitute activities with the use of technology.  

You are a couch potato! The times where you have to drive to the shops for clothes or food are no longer thanks to technology. Family time usually consists of tablets, watching tv or watching a movie on Netflix. You can't remember the last time you walked your children to school or the times where you couldn't use your phone to find anything out.


Your first instinct is to use your phone in any situation. When most of your errands are done by technology, you are an ultimate couch potato. Ultimate couch potato's 

 running errands is done by the help of technology

App research

couch potato sitting tracker 

Couch Potato app is the world’s first sit-tracker, a one of a kind app that measures and celebrates your inactivity. The more you sit, the more your couch potato will grow. Once the app is downloaded, all you have to do is relax. The tracker will monitor how much time you don’t move. At the end of each day, you’ll get a couch potato score. The longer you sit, the better you do. All you have to do is download the app, authorize movement tracking, and lounge around all day. The more you couch, the more levels you advance. Unlock and redeem rewards along the way.

Active 10 - One you (PHE)

As part of the push to get adults doing more moderate intensity physical activity each day, health experts are encouraging people to increase the intensity of their walking, rather than just focus on the distance or number of steps.

Moderate intensity physical activity means getting the heart rate up and breathing faster. Just 10 minutes of brisk walking a day is an easy way for adults to introduce more moderate intensity physical activity into their day and reduce their risk of early death by up to 15%.

To help adults do this, PHE’s ‘Active 10’ app has been created and it is the only app of its kind that combines intensity and time, rather than just distance.

Couch to 5k- One you (PHE)

 

Couch to 5K is a running plan for absolute beginners. It was developed by a new runner, Josh Clark, who wanted to help his 50-something mum get off the couch and start running, too. 

The plan involves 3 runs a week, with a day of rest in between, and a different schedule for each of the 9 weeks.

Probably the biggest challenge a new runner faces is not knowing how or where to start. 

Often when trying to get into exercise, we can overdo it, feel defeated and give up when we're just getting started. 

Couch to 5K works because it starts with a mix of running and walking to gradually build up your fitness and stamina. 

Week 1 involves running for just a minute at a time, creating realistic expectations and making the challenge feel achievable right from the start.

Change4life smart recipe app

The Change4Life Smart Recipes app is a great, free way of helping everybody eat tasty, healthier meals. 

Sometimes it’s hard to know what to cook or have new meal ideas. And remembering ingredients and keeping track of calories can be a hassle. Don’t worry – the meal mixer takes care of it!
Download the app today and use it to:

-Search over 100 easy, calorie counted recipes for breakfast, lunch, evening meals, puddings and snacks
-Find delicious meal ideas if you’re short of inspiration – just use the meal mixer
-Keep track with the handy shopping list, which organises the ingredients you need by supermarket aisle
-Email recipes and shopping lists 
-Share with friends via Facebook and Twitter
-Learn more about being food smart and making healthier choices

Change4life food scanner 

Its new Change4Life advertising campaign, which includes the sugar app, suggests that on average children aged four to ten years old are consuming 22kg of added sugar a year which equates to about 5,500 sugar cubes - more than the weight of an average five-year-old child.

The app has been developed to raise awareness of how much sugar is contained in everyday food and drink and works on more than 75,000 products. This app will act as a quick guide to help parents to assess potential purchases that may harm their children's health.

Candy crush

The app candy crush was looked at due to the idea of having a challenge after the questions asked, looking at the design of levels and challenges.

Change4life brand guidlines

primary research - asking parents opinion

With having the idea to tackle the issue of technology making us lazy, primary research was had with my parents and their friends who have children of a young age to ask at the wireframes stage would they would benefit from and would be useful for the chnage4life potato tracker.

The results were;

Wouldn't share the rating at first due to not wanting to show 'how lazy they were', however they like to brag on social media such as Facebook so having a challenge to improve would be more realistic to share

Breaking down the tasks into manageable sizes is the best approach

more driven to sort their Childs health rather than their own

want simplicity - easy to understand and easy to do

having incentives and/or rewards would encourage them to change

engaging and interesting - not bland

not just the rating, a solving to the problem as otherwise they may not necessarily change

want challenges/guidance for adult health not just children's health

Research- potato life cycle

Due to the app being based around being a couch potato, to be engaging in the design and concept, the potato life cycle was looked at. The life cycle acted as a way in which the potato concept could be added to the app. New knowledge was found, as I wasn't aware that you had to plant a potato in order to get new ones. The life cycle had an impact on the final design with being the loading animation on the app- showing the potato being planted to growing.

Different routes I can take with the app

you know technology is making you lazy when...
couch potato syndrom...
technology couch potato 
lazy potato 
confessions of a couch potato 
couch potato tracker - put in data and can monitor how lazy you are being, trying to use social media less etc 

monitors the amount of time you're on your phone 
wouldn't necessarily use It 
defeats the point if on phone 


just shows the social interactions you have 
put the apps you use and the alternatives and see like a pie chart of what you use most - like a couch potato rating 

put in your date of what you use and it will come up with a couch potato rating - this signifies the problem and may give you a suggestion afterwards to what to do better etc 

website - like those one page ones 

where the audience - people benefit the most - likely to see online 

share with your friends etc 

could be a quiz

which ones would you most relate to you - less put info is this, which route would you take etc 

more approachable if less scientific - less bad if not putting in how many hours 
come up with scenarios - more fun

different rankings - different tips 

share with you friends - awareness can be shared 


being lazy - something about all the things we can achieve from the comfort of our home etc - such as ordering ..... different services, different apps, or like from one seat I can....

social media has caused us to be a lazy generation - for example talking to someone online when they are right next to us etc or calling for someone to come when in the same house etc


the illustrator - good example
the book from Amsterdam - good example

couch potato

the issue - technology had caused us to be a lazy generation
couch potato series - all the things we can achieve from the comfort of the sofa etc
have it be a friend or another veg which is doing all the other things etccc

like showing the difference on a poster - don't be .... be


using humour...

could be saying - if you're going to sit down for a long amount of time - might as well be on this sofa
an app - coach potato alert - can like track how long you have even sat down etc or tracking how many 'lazy apps you have used' , can limit time on social media

the app that already exists

constructing something just for Instagram

Be sure to note the interrelationships between medium, message and distribution.

saying how it is condratdictive but spreads awareness better
more engaging - questions could be like scenario based like if this happens what do you do....
more quiz like less tracker , having a rating is more engaging.



I am convinced that technology is making us lazy. Once upon a time, visiting a friend or family member meant traveling; nowadays we are satisfied with a few minutes on FaceTime or Skype. We friend and defriend people from social networks without actually meeting them. Our photographs are digitized, which allows us to keep what we want and delete the rest. We can order food and groceries online without leaving home. What makes technology even more fascinating is that it evolves so fast that we have trouble finding ways to take advantage of it. And as we get lazier, we expect technology get simpler. With this in mind, I came up with a few observations of how technology is making us lazy:

• If you call a friend’s cell phone and he doesn’t answer immediately, and you wonder where he is; technology is making you lazy.
• If you set aside time to pay your bills online, technology is making you lazy.
• If you blame your GPS for sending you to a dead end street, technology is making you lazy.
• If you use Facebook to send holiday cards, technology is making you lazy.
• If your kids consider Wikipedia a reliable resource for term papers, technology is making them lazy.
• If family time involves everyone sitting together in the living room playing Candy Crush on their smartphone, technology is making you lazy.
• If writing to your mother involves sending a text message, technology is making you lazy.
• Last but not least (and this is true for me): If you call your father in the living room from your bedroom because you don’t want get out of bed, technology is making you lazy.

stc.org

Research - 'Google effect' - Independant

The Kaspersky Lab concludes we don't commit data to memory because of the "Google Effect" – we're safe in the knowledge that answers are just a click away, and are happy to treat the web like an extension to our own memory.

Dr Maria Wimber, lecturer at the University of Birmingham's School of Psychology, worked with the internet security firm on their research. She believes the internet simply changes the way we handle and store information, so the Google Effect "makes us good at remembering where to find a given bit of information, but not necessarily what the information was. It is likely to be true that we don't attempt to store information in our own memory to the same degree that we used to, because we know that the internet knows everything."

"We're missing the real danger, that human memory is not the same as the memory in a computer: it's through remembering that we make connections with what we know, what we feel, and this gives rise to personal knowledge. If we're not forming rich connections in our own minds, we're not creating knowledge. Science tells us memory consolidation involves attentiveness: it's in this process that you form these connections.

"technology is making us shallower thinkers, multi-tasking, unable to digest speeches, even songs, perpetually flicking". In response, he says what we need now is creativity and innovation. 

Dr Wimber advises people to spend time offline to safeguard their memories. "We know from memory research that we only remember information we pay attention to," she says. "If we spend all our time online, or experiencing our lives through a smartphone camera lens, we might miss important experiences, and not commit them to long-term memory. Constantly looking up information online is not an effective way to create permanent memories. The best way to make information stick is to sometimes sit back, and mentally refresh what you learnt or experienced a minute, an hour or a day ago."

Research - BBC, articles and tesh.com on how technology/smartphones are making us lazy

Shannon Carr - wordpress 

People are becoming extremely lazy in their households these days due to the great advancements in technology. 93 percent of people go online everyday. Macale poses a few questions to prove the point of laziness in today’s society, “Why throw a grilled cheese sandwich on an actual grill when you can just toss it into an automatic sandwich maker? Why have mom over to show off your new apartment when you can just pop into FaceTime for a quick video chat? Why drive over to the library when you can pull up Wikipedia or do a Google search? In fact, why open a window when we can check the weather on our phone?” (Macale 1). It has been proven that people are becoming lazy even when they are just sitting at their computers. Even teens are being lazy on their computers. 69 percent of teens today own their own computer. People do not simply change their password when it expires; they change one number or letter to make it easier on themselves. They are too lazy to remember or write down a whole new word. A lot of times, people will ignore the fact that their computer needs a software update. They will wait until it is in desperate need of an update before they do it and they would rather wait than go out of their way to do it when they are surfing the web or doing research. At home, people have become very lazy because there are so many new pieces of technology that can make things so much easier. People are also able to check in with loved ones without really checking in because they can just send them a text message and not have to see them face-to-face. There are also a lot of people who are too lazy to cook for themselves and their families so they get take out from a restaurant or make a pre-made meal. There is a lot of online shopping that goes on these days. Some people even order their groceries online so they do not have to go to the store to get them. They have them delivered every week. People can get entertainment from staying on their couch, so they do not leave the house. They can watch television and go on a computer without having to get up at all. 63 percent of people have cable TV today and watch it

whenever they are in a room with a television in it. 33 percent of those people are watching it ten

hours or more a week. A lot of times, people do not even pick up the morning paper because they can just get the news on the Internet or on TV. Without all of the advances made in technology, people would have to do a lot more work around the house in order to get things done.

According to a study by the University of Waterloo in Ontario, smartphones are making it easier for us to avoid thinking for ourselves.

BBC - is my smartphone making me stupid

In 2015, researchers found that smartphone users who are intuitive thinkers (meaning they are more likely to rely on gut feelings and instincts when making a decision) would frequently make use of their phone’s search engine to find a solution rather than their own brainpower.

According to the study’s co-lead author Gordon Pennycook, this means people “may look up information that they actually know or could easily learn, but are unwilling to make the effort to actually think about it”.

Analytical thinkers, however, are more prone to second-guess themselves and analyse a problem more logically. These type of smartphone users spent less time using their devices search engine, the study found.

Lowered intelligence

According to Pennycook, the research “provides support for an association between heavy smartphone use and lowered intelligence”.

He added, however, that it was an “open question” whether or not smartphones actually decreased intelligence, and further study was needed. 

The study’s other co-lead author, Nathaniel Barr, pointed out that “our reliance on smartphones and other devices will likely only continue to rise”.

According to “decades of research”, Barr added, “human are eager to avoid expending effort when problem-solving and it seems likely that people will increasingly use their smartphones as an extended mind”.

7 reasons smartphones make us lazy - Charles Crawford 

We’ve invented apps… That do this for us. An app like TaskRabbit can connect anyone with money to people who will clean your house, shop for you… even assemble new furniture.

A local help app Zaarly helps you find someone to bake a cake for you.

An app called FastCustomer will actually connect you with people… who will wait on customer service’s hold for you. Then get back in touch with you when waiting times are done.

I mean, really? Really? People in the world actually get paid to wait on hold? I can understand these services for executives or people who are busy developing apps that (gasp!) help the world. But, personally, for the life of me… I can’t understand how people can be so lazy.

Such is the craze of the digital age.

Your smartphone is making you lazy - tesh.com

Are smartphone apps making us the laziest society in history?

Today, a growing number of smartphone apps make it easy to hire someone else to run all of our errands, and do all of our chores! For example:

• There’s TaskRabbit, which connects you to people who’ll do anything from clean your house, to shop for groceries, or assemble new furniture.
• Too lazy to bake a cake for your boyfriend’s birthday? The local-help app Zaarly will help you find someone to bake it for you within an hour.
• Hate waiting on hold for customer service? The app FastCustomer will wait on hold for you until someone picks up.
• With an app called Cherry, you can hire someone to come and wash your car.

Fans of these apps say they help people save time, and create new job opportunities for people who need work. But psychology professor Larry Rosen disagrees. He says the apps are making it too easy to be anti-social and lazy! He says mobile devices make us “socially isolated” because we no longer need to have face-to-face interactions, or even voice-to-voice. After all, when you can unload your chores with the swipe of a finger, it makes picking up the phone seem like hard work!

Rosen says that’s bad news, because research shows that simple face-to-face interactions, like saying “hello” to the cashier at the grocery store, are good for our psychological health. Plus, experts say some chores can have a “deeper purpose” that provide happiness and meaning to your life. Like baking a cake for your boyfriend shows you took the time to do something special – and it means something to him, but that gets lost if you outsource it to an app!

As a result, people spend an average of just three to five minutes at their computer working on the task at hand before switching to Facebook or another enticing website or, with phone beside them, a mobile app. The most pernicious effect of the frenetic, compulsive task switching that smartphones facilitate is to impede the achievement of goals, even small everyday ones. “You can’t reach any complex goal in three minutes,” Rosen said. “There have always been distractions, but while giving in used to require effort, like getting up and making a sandwich, now the distraction is right there on your screen.”

The constant competition for our attention from all the goodies on our phone and other screens means that we engage in what a Microsoft scientist called “continuous partial attention.” We just don’t get our minds deeply into any one task or topic. Will that have consequences for how intelligent, creative, clever, and thoughtful we are? “It’s too soon to know,” Rosen said, “but there is a big experiment going on, and we are the lab rats.”

It seems there are apps to do almost anything--bring you food, run your errands, pick you up and more. 

Now, a new startup called Yoshi will send someone to fill up your car with gas. 

With all the apps that aim to make your life more convenient, it poses the question-- are we just becoming lazier?

“Folks will choose the path of least resistance when faced with two choices, you will usually do or almost always do what’s easiest,” says MSU Denver marketing professor Darrin Duber-Smith.

It seems the only finger lifting we have to do is a few taps on a screen to get what we want. We have Uber and Lyft for when you need a ride. If you want food delivered straight to your door, you can use Door Dash or Postmates. And, now there is even an app that will have someone stand in line for you at the DMV. That company is YoGov, and they are based out of California. 

Technology makes life easier, allows us to experience and accomplish more. But every time we outsource effort or decision making to other entities, human or otherwise, we relinquish some control. “What I worry about almost more than anything else is a certain kind of mental laziness, and an unwillingness to engage with the difficult issues…. It’s somehow more pressing in a time where there are systems out there willing to make the decisions for you.” - Forbes

Enter a San Francisco start-up called Shyp, which is expanding to New York on Monday. For a small fee, it fetches, boxes and mails parcels for you. The other week, I had a get-well package to mail to my cousin. I opened the app, snapped a photo of the items I wanted to send and entered her address. Fifteen minutes later, someone was at my door — and that was it. No boxes, no tape, no weighing, no buying stamps, no standing in line.

Are Shyp and similar tech start-ups for outsourcing chores the realization of the laziness economy? Or are they the opposite — a giant step toward unleashing the human productivity and creativity that technologists have prophesied?

Technology has conditioned us to expect ease, efficiency and speed in almost everything we do. Once it came from sewing machines and dishwashers, later from Google and Kayak, and most recently from start-ups that provide on-demand services like Uber for cars, Instacart for groceries and Munchery for dinner.

Now, even waiting in line at Starbucks is considered inefficient and necessitates an app to pre-order a latte.

There is evidence that technology has already made household chores much less time-consuming. Parents together now spend 27.6 hours a week on chores, down from 36.3 in 1965, according to data from the American Time Use Survey and Pew Research Center. Some of their new free time is being spent on their children. They spend 20.8 hours a week on child care, up from 12.7 in 1965.

Research - Obesity linked to technology use - live strong.com

the average child spends upwards of seven hours watching television, browsing the Internet and playing video games each day. While it’s tempting to turn to technology to help keep your children occupied, too much screen time may instill unhealthy habits that persist into adulthood. According to a review in Obesity in 2012, a lot of screen time may increase obesity risk.

Having a television in your child’s bedroom increases the impact of TV watching on weight status, independent of physical activity. This may be due to the decreased amount of sleep associated with late-night, unmonitored television watching. A lack of sleep causes an increase in ghrelin, the hormone that signals you’re hungry, and a decrease in leptin, the hormone that tells you you’re full. On average, a sleep-deprived person will consume 300 extra calories per day, usually from high-fat foods, and snack more frequently than someone who is well-rested.

“Teenagers who used devices such as mobile telephones and computers the most at bedtime were the most likely to be obese and to sleep the least. What’s more, teenagers who were ‘evening types’ were more likely to have unhealthy diets and to have a higher body weight. Also, the more overweight teenagers were, the poorer their academic achievement at school despite their aspirations.”

However, a study at the University of Washington of 8950 children under the age of 5 found that 66% exceeded that limit, spending an average of 4.1 h of daily screen time, 90% of which came at home 

Research - change4life

Change4Life aims to help families lead healthier lives by eating well and moving more. Change4Life is now a trusted and recognised brand, with 97% of mothers with children aged 5-11 associating it with healthy eating.

2019 campaign

The campaign features an exciting new TV ad featuring mischievous ‘sugar cube invaders’ which highlights the surprising amounts of sugar in everyday food and drinks. Retailers and manufacturers are supporting the campaign by highlighting healthier options and many will be using a new Change4Life ‘good choice’ badge.

Additionally, 4.2 million activity packs will be made available for free via primary schools and local authorities. The free Change4Life ‘Food Scanner’ app brings food labels to life

Launched in January 2009, Change4Life focuses on prevention and aims to change the behaviours and circumstances that lead to weight gain, rather than being a weight-loss programme for the already obese. In its first year, Change4Life focused on families, particularly those with children under 11. In years two and three, the campaign has expanded to address other at-risk groups.

Change4Life exceeded all of its first year targets, including:

• The campaign reached 99 per cent of targeted families
• 413,466 families joined Change4Life in the first 12 months
• Over 44,833 families were believed to still be involved with Change4Life after 6 months
• Over 1.9 million responses (postal, online, face-to-face, telephone) were received in year one

campaign - what has it achieved in 10 years 

At launch, we were pretty pleased to have a helpline. Now we have a website through which more than four million families have registered for support; one of the most-used health apps in the country (more than five million downloads and more than 50 million barcode scans); and a thriving Facebook community as we evolve to a more contextually relevant social-targeting model.

The use of brightly coloured plasticine characters in a yellow world represented everyone and alienated no one.

They were devoid of ethnicity, geography or demography, and appealed to both parents and children.

Has it made a difference? Yes, it has. While too many of our children are still overweight or obese, the most recent National Diet and Nutrition Survey shows that children’s sugar consumption from ages four to 10 has been steadily decreasing since 2013.

Similarly, we have seen a notable decrease in the purchase of sugary cereals and drinks as a result of Change4Life’s 2016 "Sugar Smart" campaign as well as a reduction of high sugar, fat and salt products being purchased, according to shopping basket data from the 2017 "Be food smart" campaign.

Over the past decade, Change4Life has welcomed an eclectic mix of partners into the Change4Life family, from the very small (breakfast clubs, leisure centres, children’s centres) to major global brands: Disney, Tesco, Asda, ITV and the BBC.

Alexia Clifford - deputy director of marketing activation at public health England:

More than ever before, people are finding that they can begin controlling aspects of their health in the new digital and social landscape in ways that were impossible to contemplate even a year ago.

At Public Health England, we recognise our role in ensuring everyone has access to clear, clinically proven information, advice and support to change their behaviour.

We also understand that this remit also means delivering engaging information to the right audience at the right time.

It also means constantly monitoring developments in technology to make it easier for people to make a change in their lives, while applying three core principles: effective targeting, cutting-edge digital tools and partnerships.

Targeting on digital platforms is incredibly important, enabling us to get to people with relevant health messages when they’re in the right mindset.

One of the ways in which we’re addressing this is by working to develop a deep understanding of how to balance "implicit" signals from our audiences, such as demographics and time of day, with "explicit" ones, such as topics they’re most interested in.

These signals continually change and it's our responsibility to adapt quickly to best use the targeting capabilities of digital platforms.

We also need to deliver the best content and we are evolving a wide portfolio of cutting-edge digital tools to do this. Examples include the "How are you?" quiz, which has helped more than two million adults identify the most important health behaviours for them to focus on; and the Change4Life Food Scanner app, which has been used more than 50 million times to scan products' bar codes, so that people can see at a glance the equivalent number of sugar cubes stacking up in their food and drink.

Our third focus, on digital partnerships, allows us to innovate with the platforms and technologies where people are spending their time.

We want our campaigns to reach everyone, not just the most digitally literate or technologically competent, which means we’re always on the lookout for mass-reach tech solutions.

Can it be delivered as a website, a free app, a social post?

In addition to this, through our work with leading platform partners, we’re looking at emerging technologies, such as our recent work with Amazon and Google, using their smart speaker technologies to develop a breastfeeding assistant for our early years campaign, Start4Life.

as well as parents and families, Change4life have catered for more adult audiences;

Drink checker app

The campaign warns against drinking above lower risk guidelines, highlighting the potential impacts on long term health - for instance regularly drinking 2 large glasses of wine or 2 strong pints of lager a day can triple the risk of developing mouth cancer and double the risk of getting high blood pressure. 

Last year the alcohol industry funded organisation Drinkaware launched 'My Drinkaware', which also offers online tools, an app and guidance to help people keep track of units and understand the risks.

smart step - o - meter 

Download the Change4Life Smart Step-O-Meter app today and use it to count your daily steps. It'll record your progress over time and for even more motivation it can set a personal goal!• Keep track of your daily, weekly & monthly steps on a progress wall 

• Add your height and weight for an accurate calorie count 
• Pick a step plan or set your own step target to keep motivated