Self-Tracking and Management of Physical Activity Fluctuations: An Investigation into Seasons

Abstract

Many active people experience physical activity (PA) frequency fuctuation over the year and need to overcome several perceived barriers to PA to remain active. This paper mainly addresses one of these barriers, Seasonal Variability, and its adherent infuencing factors on PA maintenance, which has received limited attention in previous self-tracking studies. We followed a Research through Design approach to explore the infuence of the seasons on people's PA fuctuations. We were inspired by professional athletes' seasonal training plan approach, and conceptualized Seasons, a PA self-management tool. We used the tool to gather PA maintenance and fuctuation coping strategies from 10 participants. Our results show that experiencing PA fuctuations is commonplace, especially due to weather conditions, as well as unexpected circumstances. Individuals deploy diferent strategies to overcome these fuctuations. Our fndings lead to recommendations for HCI researchers to consider when designing future PA maintenance tools. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design; User centered design; Interface design prototyping.