Ally Study

Ally is developed for research purposes only. It is used to deliver physical
activity interventions using the MobileCoach (https://www.mobile-coach.eu/) platform. Ally is a chat based coaching platform, where the users receive customized step goals daily, and receive interventions based on whether they complete their goals or not, to help them keep track of and eventually increase their daily steps.

Ally also aims to study how to intelligently deliver those physical activity interventions, such that the users are most receptive to them. To this end Ally collects certain contextual information for understanding the situations where the users are more/less receptive towards interventions. The collected context information is automatically uploaded to the Ally servers.

These are the contextual information being collected by Ally-
- Location (GPS)
- Motion and Activity Types
- Screen Lock and Unlock events
- Wi-Fi information (Only about the currently connected Wi-Fi network)
- BLE Devices (like Heart-rate sensor, or some bluetooth headphones)
- Phone Battery state and level
- Screen brightness level

** NOTE **
- This app requires an "Access code" to start the Ally application. The "Access Code" is available only to invited study participants, who sign a consent form and complete an online questionnaire with the Center for Digital Health Interventions (http://www.c4dhi.org/).
- Ally needs to use the location sensor to keep running in the background, so that it can passively collect and upload the data. Please select "Always Allow" for location updates in iOS 11.
- Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.
- In the addition, this app may use your location even when it isn’t open, which can decrease device battery life.