D-AIM

D-AIM

The Digital Activity Improvement Measure (D-AIM) is a smart-phone app with which people can self-track the occurrence of a limited set of important activities and see how their activities change over time and with planned interventions. The app opens to a screen with 12 buttons (and another set of buttons one swipe away). The default button labels are categories of important adult activities like “Time with Family” identified by earlier research but the button size, locations, and labels are user-configurable. Tapping a button records the date, time, and button identity. Press and hold allows editing of the data stream for that button. A swipe allows review of a chronological list of all entries. Another swipe provides a weekly scatter diagram of the data, scrollable through all older data.

Our beta version keeps all data on the user's device. However, a version of the D-AIM designed for use in clinical settings links to a website that keeps the data, allows 24/7 access and provides more graphical analyses.  

In clinical use, the D-AIM allows therapy clients to set quantitative goals for specified activities (e.g., “5 communications with friends next week”) and track their progress toward goal attainment and greater independence while providing clinicians with a detailed record of activity. With these data the clinician may coach the client toward problem-solving and barrier-reduction to facilitate community entry or re-entry. The client tries out the possible solution and the data provides empirical evidence of progress or the need to try something different.