Podcast Profiles: The Drink Less app with Fred Yates prize winner Claire Garnett
In this episode of the Addictions Edited podcast, Dr Claire Garnett, winner of the SSA’s Fred Yates prize 2022, talks about her research and career. She focuses on her work at UCL developing the Drink Less app for reducing alcohol-related harms and drinking, including how the app was based on theoretical models of change, health psychology and behavioural science principles.
“My career thus far has been: If I’ve really enjoyed doing something and found it interesting, I’ve kept going”
Claire discusses her work on user testing and the lengthy process of making sure that health related apps work how they are intended before then evaluating them.
“We thought we’d created the best app – I was so proud of it. We did those first ones and no one had any idea what to do when they arrived at the landing page […] And it was so obvious to us because we’d been so involved with it, and it really highlighted the importance of [user testing].”
She also talks about the impact of being endorsed by a certain 51-year-old celebrity…
“I was like ‘everyone knows who Adrian Childs is’, and somebody went ‘no they don’t’ […] so we need to explain from a scientific perspective who actually is this person and why might it matter that he spoke about the app.”
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