Make normal better: Developing health resilience interactive technology to transform health and wellbeing at scale

In this seminar Professor M.C Schraefel will present strategies to explore how interactive technology can be designed to help us take care of ourselves.

According to Professor M.C Schraefel, we are in a strange place in the UK in terms of health and wellbeing: our cultural practices are designed almost as if by intent to lead to "life style conditions" like obesity, heart disease, chronic stress, sleep deprivation. Our infrastructure and social policies seem designed to support these conditions too with nutritious foods being harder to access than cheap calories; work places being sedentary. Where do we find the time to take care of ourselves? In the face of such pressures against health and wellbeing, what can digital technology do? Where is the app for that?

She will lay out a research agenda for Health Resilience Interactive Technology towards a Health Resilience Infrastructure that can help us make health and wellbeing not the exception but become the new norm in the UK.

Further information

M.C Schraefel is a professor of computer science and human performance at the University of Southampton where she directs the WellthLab for Human Systems Interaction. She is also a certified strength and conditioning coach and nutritionist, doing research in workplace pain and performance. To find out more about her research you can visit her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.