Mobile Devices for Facilitating Group Fitness and Visualization of Fitness Data

• Main Author: Liu, Shuai
• Other Authors: Computer Science
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2020
• Subjects: Fitness; Motivation; Interventions; Group Goals; Social Recognition; Visualization
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/98622

Lack of physical activity is a major problem contributing to diseases and poor health. Nowadays, mobile fitness apps serve in important roles in encouraging and facilitating people to do more physical exercise. Many apps focus primarily on individual behavioral strategies, such as displaying individual steps to encourage physical activity. Such strategies help evoke one's internal motivation such as peer recognition and competition achievement. However, such apps usually de-emphasize or ignore interpersonal behavioral strategies, such as team rank. And group-based strategies are very important in aspects such as peer recognition and can facilitate more physical activity. This research explores the design strategies of group-based dynamic approaches for encouraging physical activity in small-size groups. The development effort takes into account the different roles of mobile devices and laptops and the evaluation explored the effectiveness of the design. === Master of Science === Lack of physical activity is a major problem contributing to diseases and poor health. Nowadays, mobile fitness apps like Fitbit and Runkeeper help encourage people to exercise. Many apps focus primarily on things like steps for each person. However, this research shifts the focus to small team goals and motivations, such as team rank and team progress toward an overall goal. This research explores ways to get people motivated through showing them information on their mobile phone or a web site. Several different visual displays were created and evaluated.