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“The Device Is Not Well Designed for Me” on the Use of Activity Trackers in the Workplace?

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COOP 2016: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 23-27 May 2016, Trento, Italy

Abstract

The workplace, with its central place in peoples’ lives, can be considered as a key site for promoting better health practices. From this perspective, companies are considering providing employees with activity trackers and supportive services aiming at improving employee health. As an initial exploration of possibilities and challenges for activity trackers in the workplace we undertook the following study: a qualitative study of 13 users of activity trackers within our company. Our main findings are that the successful adoption of activity trackers within the workplace is not straightforward, unless for short term intervention, since all participants stopped wearing them within 3 months. In this case we also saw that the use of activity trackers generated various frustrations and raised a number of concerns around end-user configurability, usefulness and privacy and control of data. The findings can have broad implications in designing and developing adequate wellness solutions at the workplace.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Of course ‘knowing thyself’ through data is something new. Conventionally knowing thyself is all about, qualitative, critical, moral introspection. We might think about what sort of knowing is possible through data and measurement on physical activity.

  2. 2.

    The device can access calorie counts through product barcodes and doing rough calculations based on input of self-prepared meals.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xerox Research Centre Europe, 6 chemin de Maupertuis, 38240, Meylan, France

    Cécile Boulard Masson, David Martin, Tommaso Colombino & Antonietta Grasso

Authors
  1. Cécile Boulard Masson
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  2. David Martin
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  3. Tommaso Colombino
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  4. Antonietta Grasso
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cécile Boulard Masson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. InterAction Laboratory Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Antonella De Angeli

  2. LERO Department of Computer Science & Information Systems, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Liam Bannon

  3. Department of Communication Science, University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Patrizia Marti

  4. Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Silvia Bordin

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Boulard Masson, C., Martin, D., Colombino, T., Grasso, A. (2016). “The Device Is Not Well Designed for Me” on the Use of Activity Trackers in the Workplace?. In: De Angeli, A., Bannon, L., Marti, P., Bordin, S. (eds) COOP 2016: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 23-27 May 2016, Trento, Italy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33464-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33464-6_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33463-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33464-6

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