AYIRO, Eliud Musumba

A Web service based Integrated fitness and Diet Mobile Application For  Health Promotion

A sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy food and work related stress are part and parcel of the lives of many people thus their wellbeing and consequently their quality of life is adversely affected. Studies show that physical inactivity and improper diet contribute to over 3 million deaths annually. Efforts have been made in different areas to address the problem whereby different technologies such as web services in distributed systems, cloud technologies, internet, Artificial intelligence, mobile technologies have been used in providing solutions as interventions to lifestyle diseases.The emergence and pervasiveness of smartphones and mobile devices has led to an increase in health and fitness applications which possess an assortment of behavior change techniques such as managing and monitoring exercise, diet weight and sleep. The existing mobile apps used to promote healthy lifestyle are inadequate as they are either fitness trackers or dietary applications. This research focused on designing and developing an integrated fitness and diet prototype which can comprehensively promote health by having an assortment of exercises and diet plans. The functional requirements were determined by carrying out an expert interview on 12 expert, 8 fitness trainers and 4 dieticians selected through cluster and snowballing sampling respectively. The Application was developed using RAD within the Design Science Research Methodology. The prototype was quantitatively evaluated using a usability test on 197 fitness enthusiasts who were selected using systematic sampling from 8 gyms located in different areas within Nairobi. Links to the APK file and Google Form questionnaire were shared to the prospective subjects through whatsapp groups of the selected gyms. 81% of the users found FitLink to be pleasant to use with over 60% indicating perceived acceptance of the application. Based upon the respondents feedback, Conclusion: The results demonstrate that a functionality unified mobile application is effective in providing all-inclusive information on exercise and diet to the fitness enthusiasts and by extension the larger population that may require to change their health lifestyle.