Students find new way to keep joggers motivated

Sep 10, 2016 08:47 GMT  ·  By

Smartwatches and fitness trackers are everywhere you look these days, so if you do want to start working out on a regular basis, there really shouldn’t be a problem to find the right device for your needs.

But the biggest problem every time someone decides to work out is the quickly dropping motivation, since a significant percentage of those who go running for the first time never go for the second time.

This is why students participating in Microsoft’s summer school in Kazan, Russia, have been looking for a way to keep joggers motivated and make sure they keep running on a regular basis. And it appears that they actually found a method that could really be effective in keeping joggers motivated to keep running. You’re not going to like it, but truth be told, it could really serve its purpose in a very unexpected way.

Not feeling like working out? How about donating some money to charity?

As Microsoft explains, students have created a smart band that automatically donates a certain amount of money to charity every time the jogger misses a planned workout. So staying longer in bed could be really costly if you decide to give a try to this device, with students explaining that money is often the best motivating factor to do something. Including going out for a run, that is.

“Originally we wanted to embed many lie detectors, which would work on the basis of an analysis of the skin temperature and other sensor readings,” the students explained.

Of course, this is just in project phase for the time being, so you can’t actually buy the smart band right now. But even if it does reach mass production, don’t expect too many people to get one since, in the end, it could prove to be a lot more expensive than the price they pay at first.