NEAT-Lamp and Talking Tree: Beyond Personal Informatics towards Active Workplaces

Abstract

A growing number of personal informatics (PI) systems have been designed to break the habit of prolonged sitting and to encourage physical activity during workdays and leisure hours. Few studies, however, have investigated the nature of local movement and mobility in workspaces. Relatively little is known about how such movement patterns are shaped and in what ways micro-mobility in workplaces could be increased. By undertaking a concept-driven design approach, and on the basis of our ethnographic prestudy, we introduce a conceptual framework. In this conceptual framework, we indicate the five main agencies that shape local movement and mobility among office workers. On the basis of this empirical and conceptual work, two prototypes, the non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)-Lamp and Talking Tree, have been designed, implemented and observed in an office environment. This paper describes this design project and articulates the role of discussions in socially established settings in work environments in order to increase daily movement. The paper concludes by highlighting not only technology, but also collective reflections to spark behavioral change in office environments as social settings.

A Scoping Review of Digital Tools to Reduce Sedentary Behavior or Increase Physical Activity in Knowledge Workers

“…Twenty-six interventions were specifically designed for the office environment, while 19 studies had a more generic approach in which they did not specify the context of use. Eight papers reported an evaluation of their intervention on SB or PA [35,37,43,65,66,77,78]. Thirty-three studies did not give a definition of PA or SB, while nine studies provided a definition of PA and four studies offered a definition of SB (Table 3).…”

“…Physical activity [35,43,46,53,58,65,66,74,77] Sedentary behavior [36,45,48,60] Not defined [12,34,[37][38][39][40][41][42]44,47,[49][50][51][52][54][55][56][57]59,[61][62][63][64][67][68][69][70][71][72][73]75,76] Although the majority of the papers did not provide a definition of SB or PA, a general distribution of the main targeted behavior could be made based on the description of the interventions. Just over half of the interventions targeted PA (24) while 9 interventions targeted SB and 12 targeted both PA and SB.…”

“…Step count [1,4,5,13,16,29,31,32,37,41,46,48,52,54,57,62,68,71,72,74,81] Heartrate [38,40,55,57,71,78] Motion or gestures [48,52,61,62,66,69,76,77] Caloric intake or energy expenditure [37,52,63] Of the 45 interventions, 7 employed existing infrastructures or tools. The tool most commonly used to build upon was the office chair [12,69,71,72].…”

Charting the Path: Requirements and Constraints for Technology-Supported Walking Meetings

“…Methods of increasing physical activity at work often include taking more breaks from productive activities [16,41,46]. On a similar note, Moradi and Wiberg [49] studied mobility inside workplaces. They introduced a conceptual framework that encompassed five categories that influenced patterns of movement in the workplace, such as spatial possibility and social relations.…”

SensorBadge: An Exploratory Study of an Ego-centric Wearable Sensor System for Healthy Office Environments

“…noise, lighting, temperature, and air quality [18,30,49]), personal level (e.g. physical activity, sedentary behavior [7,38,40] and work level (e.g. productivity [8,56]), which infuences the work performance, well-being and overall ofce vitality of ofce workers.…”