Let's Walk and Talk

Abstract

Prolonged sitting time in adults has become a major societal issue with far-reaching health, economic, and social consequences. The objective of this study is to reduce sedentary behaviour in office workers by integrating physical activity with work. In this case study, we present Workwalk, a concept to encourage and facilitate office workers to have a walking meeting. This idea arose by merging a traditional health research approach with an iterative design process. With this method, it was possible to integrate behaviour change techniques effectively into an interaction design process.

Understanding Walking Meetings: Drivers and Barriers

“…There is a relatively small body of literature on supportive tools and interventions for walking meetings. Merely four papers on walking meetings can be found in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) library [1,2,3,24]. Three studies investigated the use of mobile technology to mediate walking meetings [1,2,3].…”

“…In these papers, the 'Walking metro' mobile application and 'Brainwolk' mobile application were introduced. A fourth paper by Damen et al [24] presents the WorkWalk, a service design for walking meetings that is used in this study.…”

“…This study makes use of the WorkWalk service design, based on prior work by Damen et al [24]. The WorkWalk consists of three elements ( Figure 2): (a) A set walking route with a visible physical 1.8 km dotted blue line, (b) outdoor meeting point signs at the entrance of all faculty buildings and (c) the WorkWalk is listed as a meeting location in the room booking system.…”

“…While most interventions at the workplace are designed to reduce sedentary behavior by encouraging people to take more breaks and interrupt work [24], a strategic perspective on this challenge is to combat physical inactivity by offering office employees alternative ways of working and integrate activity in office work practice. One way to integrate physical activity and work are walking meetings.…”

“…In this study, a service design called WorkWalk by [24] was used in a living lab setting at a university campus (Figure 1). The WorkWalk consists of a physical route that is 1.8 km long, has meeting point signs at all faculty buildings, and is integrated in the university's room booking system [24] ( Figure 2). The WorkWalk was used as a design research artefact to study walking meetings and reflect on them during walking interviews with the participants.…”