Abstract

This study seeks to determine to what extent increased awareness of the implications of modal
choice directly influences intention, translates into action, and increases the use of active
methods of transportation to sustain or enhance personal and ecological health. The problem
is that the general public awareness about the impacts of sedentary lifestyles on health
and the environment is marginal and the systems that combine visualized information into
meaningful knowledge about said issue do not respond to individuals’ life circumstances.
Previous work has failed to address the problem as no connections between psychological inquiries
of awareness, the intention-behaviour gap, motivation, decision-making, and the impact
of customizable information presentation have been drawn. In this thesis we introduce a
future system that combines mobile media technology with sensed data to generate customizable
information in a way that responds to the user and encourages a behaviour change toward
a more active lifestyle. A research-through-design approach was applied that combined
the development of five different knowledge visualization mock-ups with a presentation of
those options in an online survey examining people’s perception regarding a general interest
in customizable information, a preferred information presentation style, and an estimation
about the likelihood of how such information would affect use of the system and subsequently
modal choice. We expect this approach to help in specific design practice while improving the
quality of knowledge visualizations for systems that produce customizable information, and
personal and ecological health in general.