1 Introduction

Wearable devices are gadgets, or technological artifacts, that can be worn by users [1]. They are deeply associated to the connected-self idea, normally using Bluetooth technology to pair with smartphones and built with a great number of sensors. These sensors are able to collect various types of data from the user’s body and the environment. Recently, wearable devices have been used to support common people achieve well-being goals, such as: staying active, losing weight or even keeping track of their current habits [2].

In recent times, there has been some debate about workplace health promotion programs [3] – also known as wellness programs – and whether they represent a good investment or not for the companies that sponsor them. In fact, some programs are successful while others fail but, most of the times, those results are related to how these programs are designed and executed. Furthermore, research shows that it is necessary to identify solutions that encourage employees to seek healthier habits – this is motivated by the high maintenance costs of health insurance, and the high number of medical clearance by employees [4].

There is a great expectation from the market for such problems to be improved by a higher application of wearable technology. Digital health can help with the challenges of achieving a healthier lifestyle because it is cheap, scalable, and mainly because it has the audience’s approval. Even if this involves privacy issues, the majority of people are willing to share data for personal and public health, including health history, physical activity, and genetic information [5]. Thus, it is believed that the employers’ engagement will increase with the use of wearable devices, assuming that this is the main challenge to the successful application of wellness programs [6].

This work investigates the adoption of wearable technologies are useful as a tool for improving participants’ engagement and building a healthier corporate culture. The focus is to bring an analysis of the literature by pointing out advantages, needs and strategies for the development of successful wellbeing programs. The study’s main hypothesis is that the usage of wearable technologies are powerful tools for wellness pro-grams in companies because they are less intrusive and allow greater interaction among stakeholders, higher information accuracy and a better performance visualization for those involved.

2 Wearable Devices

Most wearable devices are wrist worn, but an increasing number of devices have emerged in the market with a less intrusive technology format, even taking the form of clothes and jewelry [2]. Currently, wearable devices are found in the following formats: smartwatches, fitness trackers, sport watches, head-mounted displays, smart clothing and smart jewelry. Those devices are equipped with several sensors that allow them to measure a great amount of data, such as: number of steps, heartbeat, body temperature and cardiorespiratory fitness. Furthermore, products that have motion sensors can even monitor full sessions of physical activities. When connected to a smartphone, wearable devices can capture even more data.

By providing this kind and quantity of data, wearable devices are considered to be a powerful tool for chronic patients that suffer from cancer or epilepsy, for instance. Additionally, due to its appealing product design, wearable devices have become a promising tool for regular users (without any health impairment) in wellness programs on large companies.

3 Health Promotion

According to findings from 2015, the United States is struggling with an epidemic of chronic diseases caused by unhealthy lifestyles [5]. Inactivity, poor nutrition, tobacco use, and frequent alcohol consumption are among the behaviors that contribute to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer. In this scenario, wellness programs pose as an important tool to improve people’s wellbeing. The study also shows that if the interest in wellness programs continues to grow, employees may stay more engaged in the long term (if the program is not mandated or too intrusive).

Health insurance companies are also interested to enhance employees’ wellness. The health insurance market is one of the largest in the world with an estimated 618 million people covered by private and/or corporate health insurance alone [6]. This number is projected to grow to 920 million by 2020 [7]. However, the high costs related to chronic diseases are putting financial pressure on healthcare and insurance providers, with costs growing worldwide. By the year 2020, it is expected to have 70% of healthcare expenses coming from chronic diseases, and 30% will be up to health insurance companies to cover [8]. This represents an untenable scenario for this market, demonstrating the need to seek tools to provide scalable programs for reducing costs and increasing their return of investment.

4 Corporate Wellness Experiment

With the assumption that social interaction can function as an effective design strategy in encouraging individuals to be more physically active [10], an experiment was conducted. This experiment was planned by SIDIAFootnote 1’s Usability Lab team in order to evaluate – through two groups of employees – the difference between the participants’ engagement levels. For this, one group used wearable devices and smartphones and the other used only smartphones.

The experiment’s first steps were to define the number of participants and their profiles, and to decide the experiment duration (7 days). After this, an online survey was shared with SIDIA’s employees to identify possible participants. The survey’s introduction made it clear that, although shared through a corporate e-mail, this was an experiment made by the UX team and not a real wellness action made by the company. Answered by 115 employees, the survey was open for two business days and after it was closed, participant profiles were mapped (Table 1).

Table 1. Online sample of self-assessment by healthy profile
Full size table

Highlights from this phase results were:

  • 30% of employees say that they do not engage in physical activities and claim to have no interest in healthy food.

  • Most users claim that time and costs are the main difficulties for those looking to have healthier eating habits or to perform physical activities.

  • The lack of time is the main factor that makes it difficult or impossible to maintain healthy habits.

  • 30% of employees say do not perform physical activities.

  • 23% have a nutritionist’s specialist support.

  • 48% read blog and websites about healthy eating.

Through the online survey, it was possible to identify five groups:

  • Group 1 - Unhealthy people that are not interested in changing their habits.

  • Group 2 - Unhealthy people that are willing to change their habits.

  • Group 3 - Healthy or partially healthy people that are not interested in a corporate wellness program.

  • Group 4 - Healthy or partially healthy people that are interested in a corporate wellness program.

  • Group 5 - Totally healthy people that are interested in a corporate wellness program.

In order to select groups, the participants profile and interest in healthy habits were considered. Groups 1 and 3 were the immediately excluded because of the lack of interest in changing habits. This decision was made because people that lack awareness of how their lifestyle habits affect their health have little reason to put themselves through the misery of changing the bad habits they enjoy [11]. We also believed that Group 5 would contribute less to the experiment’s results because they already had a completely healthy lifestyle, making it difficult to identify changes related to a wellness program. Therefore, Groups 2 and 4 were selected because they met the study’s requirements and were believed to be the most appropriate profile for the experiment.

After the profile selection, the task was to send an email for the participants from Groups 2 and 4 to confirm their interest in participating in the experiment, to show the study’s schedule and explain what would be the next steps. After confirming their interest, 12 employees (6 from each group) were invited to an individual conversation where they received information regarding the experiment’s routine and daily challenges.

All participants had 4 daily goals that health experts claim can bring health benefits: walk 6.000 steps [12], drink 2 L of water [13], perform 30 min of exercise [12] and have at least 6 h of sleep at night [14]. These tasks had to be fully completed so the user could receive individual points. The completion of each goal was worth 10 points, and the partial completion or non-completion was not scored.

It was defined that the report should be sent through the Whatsapp messaging application, since all users had access to it and were familiarized with the service. Users should send a screenshot from Samsung’s health application (S Health) main screen – with the data that was synchronized with their wearable device or by the application itself – every morning during 7 days. The idea was to collect the results of the users’ previous day so they could receive virtual medals for each achieved goal (Figure 1).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Program’s handbook.

Full size image

The same program was applied for both groups, with benefits and prizes, but only six people received one smartwatch (either Samsung Gear S2 or Samsung Gear Fit2) for pairing with their smartphone and S Health account. The other participants would only use the smartphone with an S Health account (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Daily screenshots received from users. They represent hours of sleep, number of steps, milestones achieved, and partial score.

Full size image

The devices’ models choice as well as the use of Samsung’s S Health application – a service that makes it possible to synchronize the activities monitored by a wearable devices as well as manually register activities through the smartphone application – was also done thinking about the possible application of a real wellness program in the company.

Furthermore, the distribution of wearable devices’ models made after the analysis of the participants’ profile. Participants from Group 4 received a Gear Fit2 for being more active, since the device is mostly focused in this audience. However, both devices offered the same use conditions necessary for the study (Table 2).

Table 2. Equipment and service distribution
Full size table

5 Manual Chatbot

According to our research, there were no tools to monitor the activities proposed by this study that would offer support for Samsung’s wearable and mobile devices. Also, it was not possible to structure the experiment within the company’s applications ecosystem or to use third-party services/applications. It was necessary to create a method that would allow monitoring and support in the least intrusive way possible and with the minimum amount of effort from the participants during the 7 days of the experiment. For this reason, the idea was to create a manual chatbot using the participants’ preferred messaging service as an avant-garde system to mediate communication and represent the project’s virtual assistant.

All communication between researcher and participants was done through the app WhatsApp–as chosen by participants, simulating a chatbot [15]. Aiming to create an impartial communication, without association with a specific person the mascot Master Yoda from the Star Wars franchise was chosen to represent the virtual assistant. Using classic movie quotes through text messages and images, “Master Yoda” made recommendations, gave support, and recognized the participants’ achievements.

6 Results

By the end of the experiment, 9 participants were fully engaged in the program even though some had failed to meet daily goals. The other 3 participants said that family problems directly affected their participation.

On the experiment’s last day, participants were invited to answer a program satisfaction survey, which results highlighted important points:

  • 100% of participants - (including those who could not keep up with program) expressed interest in participating in similar wellness programs in the company.

  • 100% loved the experience of receiving incentives from “Master Yoda”.

  • Activities’ gamification encouraged competitiveness in the program.

  • They stated that the program did not weight heavily on their routine and it was fun to interact with “Master Yoda”.

  • Participants suggested that the program as it was could be implemented in the company.

  • Some participants identified opportunities to change their habits in order to achieve a healthier lifestyle.

  • The encouragement provided through “Master Yoda” and the incentives given for a healthier lifestyle were the experiment’s main highlights (Table 3).

    Table 3. Experiment’s final ranking
    Full size table

7 Conclusions

Although results indicate that the program had a high level of acceptance, some points must be considered:

  • All participants were SIDIA’s employees.

  • Group 2 had higher scores on goals related to water intake and sleeping, which are manual inputs of S Health and could not be validated.

  • These results are not enough to ensure that employees would get engaged in a corporate wellness program.

In contrast, results demonstrate that the use of a more relaxed and fun communication can promote the engagement in corporate wellness programs. Furthermore, the use of a wearable device provides greater visibility to healthy activities performed throughout the day (that previously went unnoticed), and healthy competitiveness stimulates the groups’ development as a whole.

It is in the interest of those involved in this research that a new phase with external participants should be performed considering a observation cycle of no less than 30 days, the option of choosing the virtual assistant and improvements regarding the visibility of the group’s activities for all involved.