Designing a Wellness Self-Management Tool for Older Adults – Results from a Field Trial of YourWellness

It is recognized that empowering individuals to manage their own health and wellbeing will result in more cost-effective healthcare systems, improved health outcomes and will encourage healthy individuals to remain that way. With the advent of the quantified-self movement in recent years, there has been an increase in technology applications supporting wellness self-management. Such applications allow people to self-track and self-report, with many providing feedback. However, little research in this area has examined how best to support older adults in health self-management. This paper reports findings from a 5-month home deployment of YourWellness – an application that supports older adults in self-reporting on their wellbeing and provides feedback to promote positive wellbeing management. Our findings contribute to a greater understanding of older adults’ attitudes and behaviours in relation to wellbeing self-management that can facilitate the creation of new, personalized health and wellbeing interventions for this population.