The new Mobile MORE Field Guide to Life app from Hazelden supports those in recovery no matter where they are. Born from MORE , or My Ongoing Recovery Experience , a web-based program of personalized continuing care provided by Hazelden to our clients, the Field Guide to Life app offers the best of this program to the entire sober community. Offering a year of recovery support with inspirational messages, weekly challenges, tools for tracking progress, a community support system, and relapse prevention tools, this app will teach you essential skills connected to core recovery principles.
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The Field Guide to Life is available on iTunes for $6.99 per volume. Search for “Hazelden” in the app store and download The Field Guide to Life. This will include “The Basics” and the other two volumes may then be purchased within this app.
Watch a video of the app in action at hazelden.org/fieldguide. |
Jodie Carter, Electronic Products Manager from Hazelden, discusses her favorite aspects of the app.
Q. What inspired you to create the Mobile MORE Field Guide to Life app?
A. Increasingly people are using mobile apps for health and fitness. There are very popular apps that help people do things like quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, train for a marathon, or deal with early parenthood. So why shouldn’t there be a mobile “training plan” to help people in early recovery?
We searched the app store we found quite a few apps for people in recovery, but we found that the content was often “one size fits all.” These apps often include daily meditations that are interesting and affirming once you have already built a solid foundation, but don’t offer guidance specifically for those who are still working every day on the ground work essential in that first year of sobriety.
Q. How did you go about deciding what features to include?
A. First of all we wanted to create features that would over-deliver for the user. Many of us have experienced reading a press release about a new app with features that sound absolutely great, but when you try to use the app, it’s not intuitive and just leaves you with a bad experience. We wanted every feature of our app to be intuitive, usable, and engaging. We wanted our customers to feel like the app over-delivers with a more refined, more helpful experience than they have seen yet in the recovery space.
To answer your question about specific features, we know that a person training for a half-marathon doesn’t go from couch potato to running ten miles in one day. This progress happens over time in stages. It’s the same in recovery, and people need guidance as they work through those stages. We thought about what people need most in each stage and found that invariably people need and want clear instruction on what to do “Today.”
This also lined up with a user survey we did that revealed that the biggest feature people wanted on their mobile device was access to a daily message. Customer feedback on our other apps made us aware that people want to record and save notes on favorite topics so they can revisit these easily. They also would benefit from an intelligent search tool to find immediate answers on any topic they are having trouble with. And from our research in popular fitness applications we see that people appreciate tracking tools that can help easily them see what they did (or didn’t do) today so they can monitor progress. Just as the runner needs to track whether they got in that two mile base run today, a person in early recovery needs to track whether they went to an AA meeting or talked with their sponsor today. And what else happened? Was I stressed out or confident? Did I feel resentful or balanced? We know that people like fitness apps that make it easy to share their “training” progress with their social team or coach so we made sure that the user can share the Track My Day chart with a friend or sponsor for support.
Q. What’s your favorite feature on the app?
A. This is a really hard question. I love the daily messages and the Track My Day feature is super-cool and offers a lot of utility and insight. But for me I really like the sober counter because it helps me remember what’s important to me. It shows my days, minutes and even seconds in recovery as they keep ticking upward. In the background is a photo of my family on my favorite vacation in Kauai. Sometimes at work I play music on my iPhone in the background, then open my Field Guide to Life app and set it to show my sober counter while the music plays. I like working and listening to my favorite music and seeing that photo while my seconds keep ticking forward in recovery. It’s very grounding and motivating. It’s everything I’m proud of.
Q. Why do you feel a mobile app is so important for those in recovery?
A. Most people are moving toward mobile as a primary means of accessing and sharing information. It’s a mobile, social world. Facebook has more than 800 million active users and more than a third of those access Facebook through their mobile devices creating more than a million mobile status updates per day. Of course, lots of people still use their desktop computer to access the full features available on Facebook or health sites like Web MD or LiveStrong. Many people like these tools so much that they want them “everywhere.” Being in recovery is something you have to keep in your awareness all day, especially in the beginning. It just makes sense that a person in recovery needs and wants access to utility, support, and guidance that is available anywhere/anytime.
The social aspect of any app is also important. The first version of the Field Guide to Life allows a user to share (by email) a daily message or share the user’s Track My Day results. We hope to add more social sharing features in the future. We know that people in the world are sharing millions of pieces of content each day and that people benefit from sharing. According to a recent study, 73% of people say that reading other’s shared comments on content helps them understand and process information more deeply. Allowing people in recovery to share their favorite content through a mobile app gives them an easy way to “pay it forward” by sending positive messages to others who may benefit.
Q. What’s so unique about the Mobile MORE Field Guide to Life compared to some of the others out there?
A. Again, our app offers new guidance each day to help people take the specific actions needed to grow in their particular stage of recovery. In essence, it suggests a daily path to follow to do the “next right thing” and the “next right thing” after that, until those things become a positive habit. Users will find our app is very usable with navigation and gestures that seem familiar and intuitive. These strategies are based on Hazelden’s model of recovery and the Twelve Steps, along with what we know about relapse prevention, adult learning, and treatment like cognitive behavioral therapy to address any negative, inaccurate beliefs that are holding a person back.
A lot of the mobile apps for recovery rely on an internet or mobile broadband connection in order to work. We designed the Field Guide to Life so that almost all the features work without an internet or broadband connection. If you are traveling in a plane or taking a road trip, you can still access all the daily strategies, video challenges or refer to your relapse prevention plan, and you can still Track Your Day. Bottom line, if your phone has power, you can use this app. The only features that won’t work include email sharing a message, using GPS to find a meeting, or sending a text or email message out for support.
Another thing that’s different is that the Field Guide to Life app has personality. It includes a lot of rich media with images that represent the theme of each of the Twelve Steps and video of real people in recovery. It looks and feels very modern and positive and even a little edgy, which, to me, makes it more fun to use.
We know that people really like to customize things like their iPhone screen. For example the Pimp Your Screen app was one of the best selling apps on iTunes in 2011. Our app is unique in that it lets people customize their sober counter screen as another expression of their personality and what’s important to them. I don’t see other mobile apps in the recovery space yet that let people customize or express the positive culture of recovery. Being in recovery isn’t boring or dull at all. It’s pretty cool and we feel that the Field Guide to Life app expresses and reinforces that culture while at the same time letting people create their own expression.
Q. What types of challenges are presented to users within these apps?
A. We challenge people to complete some of the core activities needed to grow in recovery like going to meetings, learning how to avoid a relapse, dealing with triggers, developing supportive friendships, avoiding overconfidence, and others. There are sixteen challenges that pop up over time as something new to check off your list or revisit later. We hope this keeps people engaged in the priority activities they need to practice.
Q. How will these apps help me renew my recovery experience if I’ve been in recovery for more than a year?
A. We think anyone who enjoys daily messages that reinforce the Twelve Steps or wants to stay tuned into on the small actions that keep us on the right track in recovery (like improving relationships, paying it forward, or dealing with stress, blame and resentments) will enjoy this mobile application. Features like being able to Track My Day, reach out for support, and celebrate days in recovery with the Sober Counter offer value to anyone in recovery.