Well-being is a diverse concept – it entails the perceived condition of an individual or group characteristics based on select states, be it medical, psychological, economic or political. Frequently, it may be interpreted as a reflection of the level of happiness, which is generally difficult to measure.
We, at Sentab, believe that the way how our users interact with our comprehensive social TV system can be quantifiable in a manner that benefits our users beyond the system itself. That has been the reason why we have developed a concept that is termed as the Sentab Index – a novel way of capturing and representing behavioral data over Sentab devices.
Sentab's InTouchTV platform was chosen as a data input device for several reasons – firstly, on average, the demographical group benefitting from this data interpretation is generally older. According to Ofcom, older adults spend on average more than 4 hours a day viewing TV. Sentab is willing to transform this experience by adding more social interface to the TV, but also making use of the time spent with TV to feed back useful statistics to the viewer.
Sentab Index is a dynamic score on a scale of 1 to 10 that measures user’s social exposure, cognitive state and physical activity and combines that in an easy to understand numeric representation. It is based around empirical findings around the effects of the level of social interaction on one’s health and cognitive state, and the importance of physical activity in maintaining higher quality of life. Sentab index is elaborated together with cognitive and behavioral scientists and the research has been supported by Horizon2020 programme run by the European Commission.
The below screen-capture is an example of Sentab index composition over Cognitive, Social and Physical Activity Indexes. Each of these sub-indexes is represented through a value with an explanation of what that value entails. User can also benchmark each of sub-indexes as well as Sentab Index towards historic values and make a conscious judgment of the progress across all the verticals.
Naturally, there are limitations to this approach. Sentab can generate meaningful data analysis about person’s social, cognitive and physical conditions only through use of Sentab technology that enables us to aggregate and interpret the data accordingly. Physical activity index relies on utilizing wristband that collects activity data. Lack of usage thereof will lead to non-availability of the data.
Sentab Cognitive Index is based on the algorithms analyzing the results from cognitive tests pushed by the system, watched media polling queries and navigational analysis. Our cognitive section is in constant development and more and more data points are used for aggregated representation of behavioral and cognitive state of the user.
The formation of Social Activity Index is based on the ratio and nature of socially driven activities performed via Sentab system, where a higher weight within the Index is put on activities focusing on outreach and lower weight on non-interactive features of the system. The conductive levels of Social Activity Index start from 5 points and above, with 10 being exceptional.
The Physical Activity Index is formed through data analysis rendered from an external fitness tracker whereby daily activity and steps taken are measured, benchmarked towards the desired levels and summarized by the index. Sentab aspires to go beyond engaging people at TV – we are appreciative if people embark on physical activities that have a significant effect on their general well-being.
The discussed way of analyzing personal well-being through an interaction with electronic device is novel approach that requires further research and testing. However, the playful and incrementally stimulating nature of the indexes hopefully engage our users more, while they also perceive benefits around keeping their cognitive and social behavior active and through that find a satisfaction from competing against established historic scores.
Sentab Index will be launched this autumn and is available for InTouchTV users only.