Herman Saksono will present his paper titled “Social Reflections on Fitness Tracking Data: A Study with Families in Low-SES Neighborhoods”  at #CHI2019 on Tuesday, 7 May, 16:00, Room Carron 1. Summary of this paper can be found at ACM CHI’s Medium site:

Fitness tracking wearables, such as Fitbit and the Apple Watch, have been touted as valuable platforms for helping people to exercise more. However, research shows that within 2 months people often stop using their trackers or even abandon them altogether. This waning user engagement suggests that current fitness trackers may not have a long-term positive impact on users’ wellness. Our 2-month study of family physical activity tracking further explains why waning engagement limits the impact of fitness trackers: participants in our study rarely thought about their digital fitness data in a way that could help them to be active in the long-term. Read more

Herman will also present his original research paper at WISH symposium (Workgroup on Interactive System in Health) which is held alongside CHI. In the paper, titled “Designing for Psychological Needs in Fitness Tracking: Supporting Engagement and Adherence”, Herman and Andrea examined how psychological needs during family self-tracking manifests at different socio-ecological levels.

Wearable fitness trackers o er new opportunities for monitoring physical activity (PA) and reduce the risk of obesity. However, much work is needed to understand how to engage individuals in fitness tracking and how to support adherence to regular PA, especially in families and in low-socioeconomic status (SES) contexts. In this work, we synthesize our qualitative findings across two fitness tracking studies with 27 families of low-SES backgrounds. We found that the psychological needs of relatedness and competence were particularly salient during fitness tracking. We provide recommendations on how to support engagement and adherence by satisfying the users’ psychological needs (Download paper here).

We’re at #CHI2019 Glasgow