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Scientific journal publication

Designing an ethical and explainable automatic coaching (eCoach) system for community based, persuasive recommendations

Chatterjee, Ayan; Riegler, Michael; Halvorsen, Pål

Publication details

Journal: Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2025

Doi: doi.org/10.1007/s11042-025-21116-2
Archive: nva.sikt.no/registration/01995bd0da8e-ae167fdd-78ad-46d0-a5b1-6285b41c234d

Summary:
Abstract This study introduces a community-focused eCoach recommendation system aimed at enhancing physical activity by leveraging demographic data, wearable sensor inputs, and machine learning algorithms to generate both individual and community-based activity recommendations using advice-based collaborative filtering. Existing eCoaching systems largely focus on personalized feedback without incorporating social reinforcement or group-level motivation, creating a gap in leveraging community influence for sustained health behaviors. Our system combines real-time activity tracking through wearable sensors and advice-based collaborative filtering to deliver adaptive recommendations. We collected data from 31 participants (16 using MOX2-5 sensors and 15 from a public Fitbit-based dataset), targeting daily activity levels to generate actionable guidance. Through decision tree classification and SHAP-based interpretability, we achieved a model accuracy of 99.8%, with F1, precision, recall, and MCC metrics confirming robustness across both balanced and imbalanced datasets. Ethical considerations, including privacy, bias mitigation, and informed consent, were integral to our design and implementation. Limitations include potential biases due to sample size and data imbalances, suggesting the need for future validation on independent datasets. This system demonstrates the potential to integrate with real-world healthcare initiatives, offering trust, transparency, and user engagement opportunities to meet public health objectives.