Relying on Technology Alone to Sharpen Your Focus? You Might Be in For a Wait.

If we pause and look at the people around us in almost any public space, we’re likely to find someone with a wearable device. "Wearables" have become widespread consumer products over the past several years, extending the capabilities of our phones and computers (think: FitBits, Apple Watches, and Oura Rings). The devices promise to improve your sleep, physical fitness, nutrition, and even your productivity.  When paired with other sensors and phone applications, they provide us with more information about ourselves than we ever thought possible. But this begs an important set of questions: what are we supposed to do with this information? Can this mountain of data change how generally healthy individuals eat, sleep, exercise, and work? In essence, are wearables worth our attention and the other resources we spend on them?

Maybe, but when it comes to establishing healthy habits and behaviors, wearables can’t do the job alone. reDirect’s Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) framework suggests that it’s our own knowledge of how our environments are either helping or hindering us that can unlock the success of wearable technology.

What Information Can a “Wearable” Provide?

An essential piece of how we navigate our everyday environments, and change behaviors,  requires having the right information—the right amount, the right type, and at the right time. When it comes to the type of information that wearables provide, this consists of:

• The “what,” or an overview of our current behaviors or states; and, occasionally,

• The "why," or the importance of changing our behaviors or states.

Together, this is called declarative knowledge, and wearables share plenty of it. It's often what we feel overwhelmed with when we check into our devices. For example, a single application paired with an Apple Watch can tell us when we cycled into and out of a deep sleep stage over the past week, when we last stood up and walked away from our desks, and the last time we engaged in intensive exercise. On the surface, this seems like useful information! But we’re often left feeling lost about what we should do with that endless stream of facts.

This is where a second type of information comes into play (or, in the case of wearables, often gets left behind). Most of these devices fail to provide informed, timely recommendations for how to act on the information they’re recording. Feeling equipped to respond —or having the procedural knowledge about next steps—is crucial to helping us build the competence and awareness needed to change behavior.

Tuning Into Our Environments

For health behavior categories where setting measurable goals is challenging, such as “I want to feel more productive throughout the week,” it’s understandably difficult for technology to assist us. Most of us can recall a time when we were asked to help our team or colleagues achieve a broad, somewhat ambiguous, goal at work, but we lacked a clear roadmap for how to do so. In the case of wearables, we’re experiencing the same challenge. Wearables fall short of leading us down the right path if our initial goal is unclear, or if we lack clarity about what is happening in our environment that might hinder that goal. This is where our own awareness of our environments becomes important.

Over time, wearable technologies have certainly improved in terms of the prompts they provide us. They’re slowly adapting to reflect the understanding that simply telling someone to do something (“it’s time to stand up from your desk!”) doesn’t actually create long-term behavior change. Discovering the appropriate “how” requires our own input! We are the only ones with a full sense of what our environments are like and with the capacity to observe when they are and are not in alignment with our goals. Our physical, social, and digital environments can either prevent or aid in shaping the behaviors we want to see.

Taking Notice: Through the Lens of Productivity

At reDirect, many of the organizations we work with experience challenges related to bandwidth and lack the staff capacity and time to get everything done. So let’s explore the goal of boosting productivity as an example. Recently, I began working on a draft of this very blog when, only 30 minutes in, I received a prompt from my Apple Watch to stand up and take a break. It tracked my movements, observed that I had been sedentary for an extended period, and issued the prompt to take a movement break. Helpful, right?

Well, considering I had already been in a sort of creative “flow” state when writing, the only thing the prompt achieved was distracting me from the task at hand. Fortunately for me, I also have a desk space with views of nature just outside my window, so I can more easily restore my attention when I begin feeling fatigued. But, my watch had no way of knowing what my current work environment looked like!  How, then, could it prompt me toward a more productive day and overall workflow?

As was the case before wearable technology, the research behind SEE would suggest that action or progress toward our desired outcomes still requires our awareness of how our environments are supporting us. 

Small Experiments and Recognizing Patterns

An oft-repeated recommendation we make at reDirect is to try out a series of “small experiments.” In the case of wearable technology, that suggestion holds true once again. SEE encourages us to take the information from our devices and begin to recognize the patterns of our day. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What types of work activities are you engaging in when you receive notifications about being unfocused?  

• Does this happen during particular times in the day? Or, are there distractions coming from your laptop, phone, or physical surroundings that correspond with lapses in focus? 

• Make some small adjustments (e.g., dedicating time for focus work when you notice you feel more alert, or eliminating the source of noise nearby) and track  any changes you experience. 

• Did your changes have the intended effect? If not, are there other adjustments you can make?

Engaging in the small experiment process helps to close an information “feedback loop” that would otherwise remain open. To truly change how we sleep, eat, exercise, and work, SEE reinforces the need to tune in to our environments and build an effective mental model of the challenges we’re facing and how to approach them. With just a little bit of tracking on our part, we can further improve the utility of wearable technology and help our devices live up to their intended potential.

SEEing our Way to Solar: Using Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in Program Analysis

Incorporating Supportive Environments for Effectiveness (SEE) in program analysis is a great way to understand a program’s success, as well as potential areas for improvement. This past summer, I had the privilege of working with Julie Roth from the City of Ann Arbor to take a closer look at what is making the Solarize program so successful in the Ann Arbor area. We wanted to uncover what elements of SEE were contributing to this success, as well as how SEE might inform the expansion of this program to other regions.

Ann Arbor, Michigan. Credit: Denis Tangney Jr. Getty Images

In short, the Solarize program is a group- buy program for solar installations. This means that a local host, organizer, and installer work together with a group of residents to secure bulk-buy discounts on residential solar installations. The program has seen exponential growth since 2019, but similar initiatives throughout the state have struggled to gain the same momentum. By using the SEE framework, we were better able to understand what is contributing to the success of Ann Arbor’s program, as well as what can be improved in future iterations.

There are three elements of SEE that represent our human need for information: model building, being capable, and meaningful action. These are not distinct elements working in isolation, but rather complimentary and dynamic facets of the framework as each one supports and perpetuates the next. Model building is essential to understanding what action needs to be taken and how to complete that action. Being capable is having the physical and mental resources to carry out that action. Finally, meaningful action is the behavior itself and the purpose that it carries both for the individual and for the broader community.

Program Analysis

Specifically, program analysis can help us pinpoint which program mechanisms contribute to, or detract from each element of the SEE framework. To take a closer look at Solarize, we surveyed participants prior to group-buy presentations to identify perceived barriers to solar installation. Overwhelmingly, the results showed that the primary barrier was not having the necessary information to take action. The need for procedural knowledge is a common theme: humans don’t necessarily want more information about why they should do something, but rather how they can actually achieve it.

What we found is that offering procedural knowledge was one area in which the Solarize program excelled. Following the survey, the organizer at the group-buy event clearly provided the information needed to get solar installed. One clear step was given at the end of the presentation, and the majority of participants took this next step towards solar installation. In doing so, Solarize was creating clarity for participants—building their understanding and increasing their ability to take effective action.

However, when attempting to replicate Solarize in another part of the state, the program did not gain as much traction. It turned out that while a similar presentation was given, final directions for taking the next step weren’t as clear. The success of Solarize in Ann Arbor, brought by helping participants find clarity and feel capable, was lost in translation. Some meetings were purely informational in providing the “why”, with no call to action, while others lacked the organizational direction that characterized the program originally. As a result, participants did not have the clear guidance they needed to move forward, and few were pursuing solar installations through the group-buy events.

Now that we had this information, we had to share it in a way that would be easily assimilated into future programs. To accomplish this, we formed the following outline for group-buy events:

• Provide clear information with specific steps for participants

• Create simple, visually engaging presentations

• Limit the amount of information per page/screens

• Highlight points of success, and the impact from taking action

A design platform, such as Canva, can help display next steps in such a way that enhances clarity by reducing the need for information to be solely presented in text. Simple graphics provide a visual anchor for each point, and examples provide a story of potential application methods. As a result, new information can more easily integrate with the existing mental models of the audience.

Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that less is more; focusing on a few key points in program analysis can make a significant impact. Limiting the amount of information on each page can make what is presented easier to process and retain.

Finally, it is critical to elevate points of success. This encourages program facilitators and fosters a meaningful connection to their work. By emphasizing what is going well, team members feel capable and motivated to tackle areas that may need improvement. Reminding program team members about the bigger picture and the meaning behind their work can have a lasting, positive impact on morale, and do the same to inspire further action from participants.

An approach that reinforces the information needed to act, supports the ability to act, and establishes a meaningful connection to the bigger picture, can help create the type of community environment for solar energy to flourish. While both simple and intuitive, these steps can have a profound impact on the success of a program. By using the SEE framework, we can provide supportive environments for programs to achieve durable, transformative change.

Tara-Sky Woodward was a reDirect fellow during the summer of 2022, working with the city of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovation to help study the success of their A2Zero Solarize program.