Co-creation: designing a smartwatch app to help sedentary people enjoy physical activity

Abstract: A sedentary life leads to numerous health problems, thus the need of constant motivation for a more active lifestyle. This paper presents a design process for a smartwatch app in its early stages while exploring and involving users in engaging activities. Potential users have been involved throughout the design process, in design experiments in order to co-create engaging physical activities. The key element “engaging” refers to physical activities as being fun, captivating, attractive. After an online questionnaire about physical activity and reasons for not being active, followed by an autoethnography on fitness apps, like Let’s Muv, Zombie, Run!, Coach5K, 7 min workout and Fitnet, three experiments were conducted. The experiments - interview, bodystorming, brainstorming - were performed with the focus on exploring engaging physical activities in a work environment, and therefore understand the effective features a smartwatch could have to motivate people to a more active lifestyle.