Developing a Personalized Virtual Coach for Emotional Eaters 41 2 Personas and use-case scenarios Two Personas were derived from the questionnaire data: Lisanne (25 years) and Anita (46 years). Figure 3 shows their personal profiles. Lisanne is a highly educated young woman. She is an obese emotional eater. Her eating behaviour is caused by a negative self-image. Eating gives her a feeling of comfort as long as the eating lasts. Afterwards, she feels guilty and depressed. Anita is 46 years old and a mother of two. She worries about the family’s financial situation and overeats in stressful situations. Anita left school at an early age. She is from a low socio-economic background. What we learned by creating the Personas is that we achieved a better understanding about the specific needs of the target group. We obtained a better comprehension of the moments and situations that cause emotional eating behaviour and the kind of intervention that might be helpful to them. During the design process, you can ask questions such as: “What would Lisanne think of this? Would she like it? Would she consider this as useful?” To illustrate how Lisanne will benefit from the virtual coaching application, we created a use-case scenario (Fig. 5) in which she is about to give in to emotional eating craving. Use-case scenarios [54-55] are derived from Personas, interviews, and questionnaire results by describing the user goals, motivations, actions, and reactions while using the virtual mHealth coaching application. In the “Day of Lisanne’s life” scenario (Fig. 5) – the most common characteristics are mentioned, such as suffering from negative emotions and low self-esteem. Persona Lisanne is enriched with emotional characteristics and personal feelings. All her emotions are linked to realistic and possible causes, such as difficult situations at work or at home. Personas are distinguished from each other in terms of technical skills, demographic backgrounds and healthcare status specifics. As a result, they are realistic personifications of their very specific sub-target groups. The existing Personas Lisanne and Anita both are emotional eaters but the emotions and feelings that urge them to overeat, diverge widely.
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