The digitalization of coaching practices is rapidly changing traditional coaching and self-improvement efforts. These e-coaching systems deliver personalized, timely, and just-in-time coaching. Simultaneously, they raise practical and ethical concerns regarding privacy and personal autonomy.

Many of these concerns raise the type of issues preeminent with other data collection efforts. Some key questions are: Who owns the data? Who can access the data? How long should the data be stored? These concerns are referred to, but not fully explored; nonetheless, I would suspect that there is subsequent work to be done in this area.

The primary issue that is addressed in the paper is how to define an e-coaching system. E-coaching constitutes computerized components that examine a user’s behavior and proactively collaborate with the user through persuasion. This type of coaching then promotes specific goals to strive for. In addition, the author works out a set of eight features that systems must have in order to satisfy his definition of an e-coaching system: social ability, credibility, context-aware, tailored, interface, proactive, model of behavior change, and planning. These are the minimal necessary features for coaching systems. (The number of features will be expanded in subsequent work.)

The primary contribution of this paper, then, is to articulately define both the features and the characteristics of an e-coaching system. What should be determined are the issues that are raised but that will require further discussion, for example, ethics and privacy issues concerning data collection when using a coaching system. In addition, the paper should spark a critical discussion about how an e-coaching system will perform actual coaching as opposed to just facilitating persuasion of the person who is coached.

The implications of the paper are that e-coaching systems must go beyond the simple persuasive presentation of collected data. Second, to qualify as coaching, the users need to know that they are being coached. Finally, e-coaching systems are not just passive reactive aids; they should actively shape the user’s life in accordance with their goals. Other works as reference may include [1,2].