Back in 1999, Michael Paolini, an inventor at IBM in Austin, Texas, was having lunch at a Ruby Tuesday with fellow engineers when the group decided that too many burgers and fries were translating into thicker waistlines. It was time to lose weight.
But, being engineers, they weren’t just going to hit the StairMaster. They decided to build a computer program to make shedding pounds as geekily fun as playing Xbox, but with an added incentive: the opportunity to win cash.
The idea for this program, which recently won patent approval, was simple: Participants would be rewarded for eating well and discouraged from eating poorly. So a salad for lunch could mean winning 50 cents. Pecan pie? Forget it.
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The invention is an example of how gamification - applying game techniques and psychology to influence behavior in the real world - is affecting the health arena. Eventually, IBM hopes to license the system to companies or insurers as they seek to improve employees’ wellbeing.
Already, a cornucopia of mobile apps on the market try to make the arduous process of losing weight more fun. Weight Watchers lets dieters see how many points they’d use by adding, say, blue cheese dressing instead of balsamic vinaigrette to greens.
But IBM’s program is a more customizable model. It can be used by anyone from kosher eaters to moms trying to get their children to eat peas.
The nature of rewards is also flexible. Paolini noted that “everyone understands cash,’’ which is why the initial version employs it, but that users could also earn movie tickets or even FarmVille animals for use in the online game.
Paolini and his colleagues were inspired by the Honda Insight, a hybrid car that gives drivers immediate feedback on how their driving is affecting the car’s gas mileage. Seeing that feedback immediately, they reasoned, motivated people to change how they drove.
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The dashboard “shows gas mileage in really big letters,’’ Paolini said. “It has the current average and the lifetime average. Everyone can see it. So if you get in the car and it has 50 miles to a gallon, and you’ve been driving in stop-and-go traffic and are down to 25 miles a gallon, what does that say about you and your driving technique?’’
It’s possible to imagine health insurers supporting the IBM program as a way to lower employees’ medical bills and, eventually, their monthly premiums. But this may raise privacy issues of the sort that Facebook has been battling. Should a health insurance company or an employer be privy to a 3 a.m. Snickers bar binge?
“Health insurance providers could theoretically start to use the program as leverage,’’ said Paul Hebert, managing director of I2I, a marketing company that works with companies on incentive and rewards programs. “In other words, ‘Use the program with your employees or pay a higher premium.’ ’’
Paolini acknowledged that there is no guarantee that people will be honest about what they do or don’t consume when they use the IBM program.
“You could strap an ankle bracelet on people if you really cared to, but I don’t think people would do that voluntarily,’’ he joked.
Ultimately, he acknowledged, the program is built around trust - that the overseer isn’t exploiting data, and that participants aren’t cheating, say, by failing to record that Snickers binge.
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Ethical debates aside, is the program effective? Paolini says he thinks it is. After using it, he says, he succeeded in losing 18 pounds.