Grace: Designing for Exercise Motivation Through Social Support and Graceful Interactions

EasyChair Preprint 1670, version 1

Abstract

Increasingly aware of the importance of active lifestyles, many people intend to exercise more. Yet the main challenge is to translate their intentions into actual behavior. Wearable devices supporting physical activity tend to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach by monitoring activity through quantified data as a motivation strategy. Since certain individuals are driven by social motives to exercise, less addressed through quantification, the impact of these devices on user experience and motivation is questionable. We contribute to the field by defining interaction attributes of graceful interactions in product design. We embed these in designing Grace, a piece of jewelry enabling women to share exercise intentions with friends to encourage social support. Instead of focusing on quantification, we rely on a qualitative approach using graceful interaction. Through this we extend the design space of sport-related wearables for women and inform how to design for exercise motivation through social support and graceful interactions.

Keyphrases: Constructive Design Research, exercise intentions, graceful interaction, social support, wearable technology

@booklet{EasyChair:1670,
  author    = {Daphne Menheere and Carine Lallemand and Ilse Faber and Jesse Pepping and Bram Monkel and Stella Xu and Steven Vos},
  title     = {Grace: Designing for Exercise Motivation Through Social Support and Graceful Interactions},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 1670},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}