On April 2nd, 2024, the Make-Marathon, organized by Comon, took place. During this intense four-day event, students from diverse academic backgrounds came together to devise innovative ways to promote physical activity in our daily city lives. The participants were split into different teams of 3-5 people and spent the 4 days brainstorming for a feasible, desirable and viable solution and designing a high level prototype. Among the participants was Stephanie Chen, a doctoral researcher from our very own Predict team. Stephanie, alongside her teammates Eileen (doctoral researcher applied economics), Camille (nutrition and dietetics) and Suëda (student oral care) tackle the sedentary lifestyle epidemic amongst workers and ultimately won the jury prize with their Walk & Meet mobile app and plugin.
A typical workday consists of 4 on 5 people sitting behind their desk all day and agendas filled with many meetings. More than half of sedentary people will at some point get neck and back issues due to this lifestyle, leading to lower productivity and dropouts due to illness. The “Walk & Meet” solution creates a plugin to your existing agenda app where you can select that a meeting becomes a walking meeting. The app has the following features :
- When indicating that you want a walk meeting all participants get a link with the route to the starting place of the meeting. The path of the meeting itself is completely computed. Ensuring that everyone can get to their next meeting on time.
- An internal AI model analyses the meeting content based on the textual description and looks into how many people participate and how well it could work as a walking meeting. E.g. Instead of a stressful sit down personal evaluation where you look into each others eyes constantly. It will feel more relaxing if you can do so while walking and make the participants feel more connected. Furthermore context data is also included such as the weather and location. 5 people meetings or hybrid meetings are not very fitting and will therefore not be suggested.
- We understand! Not all meetings can be walked, but nevertheless it is important to walk throughout a busy day to keep your focus high and body healthy! Therefore the app also suggests walks between your meetings that you can tailor to your wishes : types of routes (parks, snackbar,…), how long you want to walk, perhaps select colleagues that also are in a need of a walk!
With this app the aim is to change the way employees and companies think about their workday. By planning the route, looking into your agenda to select a moment and make sure you get everywhere on time you are just a single click away from moving. During a busy day walking may seem like a waste of time, but by integrating walks into your professional life as an employee you can prevent neck and back problems, improve mental health and ultimately be more productive.