MotiVar: Motivating Weight Loss Through A Personalised Avatar This work aims to develop a personalised avatar based virtual environment for motivating weight loss and weight management. Obesity is a worldwide epidemic which has not only enormous resource impact for the healthcare systems but also has substantial health as well as a psychological effect among the individuals who are affected. We propose to tackle this issue via the development of a personalised avatar, the form of which can be adjusted to show the present and the future self of the individual. For the avatar design and development phase, we utilise a parametric based mathematical formulation derived from the solutions of a chosen elliptic partial differential equation. This method not only enables us to generate a parameterised avatar model, but it also allows us to quickly and efficiently create various avatar shapes corresponding to different body weights and even to different body postures.

WeightMentor, bespoke chatbot for weight loss maintenance: Needs assessment & Development Obesity and overweight are significant health risks. Effective communication can improve weight loss maintenance. There are technologies to support communication in weight management, such as text messaging that has been shown to benefit selfreporting and motivation but has its limitations. Having a conversation is an emotional experience, and chatbots are conversationdriven intelligent systems. Chatbots have been reported to increase compliance with health interventions. The aim of this study was to identify the needs of individuals who are maintaining weight loss in order to design and develop WeightMentor, a weight loss maintenance chatbot. This was a needs assessment and technology (chatbot) development study. The needs assessment identified the needs adults aged 18 who were maintaining weight loss using semistructure interviews. These needs were used to inform the design and development of a chatbot. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings identified five key themes: (1) Weight loss maintenance is challenging; (2) Social contact is beneficial but may also reinforce unhealthy habits; (3) Apps should be convenient and support progress tracking; (4) Personal messages should be specific and relevant; (5) Chatbots have potential for weight loss maintenance. Chatbot, WeightMentor, was designed and developed based on findings from the needs assessment and a review of the most popular nutrition apps. WeightMentor operates within Facebook messenger, which is currently one of the most popular social media platform. WeightMentoru0027s purpose is to positively influence the useru0027s emotions while maintaining weight loss. Its functions include selfreporting of diet and physical activity, viewing previous selfreporting trends, and motivational messaging. Chatbots such as WeightMentor has the potential to aid weight loss maintenance. Further research is required to test the usability and effectiveness of this WeightMentor.