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 quantifiedself 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 selfmanagement. 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.