The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile computing in education offers new avenues to address complex health behaviors that affect cognitive performance. While traditional health education relies on passive information delivery, emerging research suggests that interactive systems can bridge the gap between intent and action. This study addresses the “double burden of malnutrition” in Ecuadorian schoolchildren (N = 120) as a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) challenge. By utilizing a quantitative profiling approach rooted in the Social Dimensions of Health framework, we modeled the user requirements for a proposed intervention system. The findings identified a critical “Action Gap”: while 78.3% of users possess the motivation to improve habits for academic gain, 53.3% remain entrenched in high-sugar consumption patterns due to environmental latency. Statistical profiling reveals a significant dissonance (p<0.05) between cognitive intent and behavioral execution. Consequently, this paper presents the “Digital Bridge Architecture,” a computational framework that leverages these motivation metrics to design an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) logic. We conclude that conventional static applications may be limited in their capacity to support sustained behavioral change in this context. The proposed framework suggests that context-aware, gamified feedback mechanisms can offer a promising direction for aligning academic motivation with healthier behavioral outcomes.
Pesantez-Jara et al. (Sun,) studied this question.