Online social networks for health behaviour change: Designing to increase socialization

• We designed an online social network, VivoSpace, for health behaviour change from a theoretical foundation.
• We evaluated the ability for VivoSpace to change determinants from the reviewed theories.
• We found that socially-based determinants were not met in the design.
• Through follow-up focus groups, we found several design strategies that can promote more socialization.

Positive health behaviour by eating nutritious foods and performing physical activity has been shown to have significant benefit. Furthermore, theoretical models show that social factors contribute to health behaviour. However, social technology for health behaviour has provided limited social interaction. This paper presents an online social network for health behaviour change called VivoSpace that was designed from a theoretical foundation. The results from a field study (n = 35) are presented that include participants from both clinical and non-clinical settings. The results show that there was a significant change in some of the individual determinants for health behaviour change; however, social determinants did not change. Furthermore, the social features such as commenting were under utilized. Two follow-up focus groups (n = 7 and 8) were conducted to determine how the design should be iterated to increase socialization on VivoSpace. The results suggest that the posts need to add interest through system intelligence and allowing the user to add photos and other information to the post.