So, why no digital display?

Why did we decide not to include a digital display on the Moki Band? To keep costs down maybe? No, but it has certainly helped us do that. For battery life? No, but the upshot of not having a digital display is that the Moki Band battery can run for 6 months or more. It's definitely a feature that stands out, especially when you compare the design of our Moki Band to the likes of a Fitbit or Garmin, right? Well, the difference is that these fitness trackers are designed primarily for the individual user and Moki has been designed for schools.

At its core Moki is about measuring and motivating whole school activity. From the outset we have been concerned that introducing physical activity trackers into the classroom may result in unwanted competition between students and there is evidence that when groups become competitive the least active become demotivated. We didn't want students constantly checking their step counts or being able to compare those of their peers. This design consideration also applies to the app, where the focus is on 'Team' step counts and challenges and all individual step counts can be hidden from the students.
 

The Moki Band does not contain a display to reduce short-term reactivity to feedback from the display. Reactivity is a well-known phenomenon in physical activity research, where the awareness of being monitored influences a person’s physical activity. This could be particularly important in a classroom environment where children will inevitably compare themselves to others if they can see their feedback on the display – and not all children will respond in the same way to the feedback or the competition/peer-to-peer comparison that this might generate.

Of course, if the school or teacher decides that they want to be able to encourage this type of activity then they can always display the step counts of individual 'Players' to the classroom. We just wanted to make sure that Moki allowed them to do this in a controlled way.