Bringing new voices to design of exercise technology

Anne Marie Kanstrup,Pernille Bertelsen

doi:10.1145/2940299.2940305

Abstract

Physical activity is important for people's health, but it can be challenging especially for people who are vulnerable because of mental disorders. This paper contributes to participatory approaches developed to include vulnerable people in the design of exercise technology and situates participatory design to an exercise location and exercise activities. The results expand the current design space of exercise technology, which is dominated by sports enthusiasts and persuasive strategies. Visions for digital support that mediates local social exercise horizons are presented as a design alternative. The results exemplify that a participatory approach, which includes marginalized people in the design of technology, offers new knowledge for making existing and future applications useful to a broader audience. Specifically, the results point to opportunities for opening up the design space of health-promoting technology to support the cooperation of available health resources among residents in a community with attention to people who are in a vulnerable situation.

Highlights

This paper contributes to participatory approaches developed to include vulnerable people in the design of exercise technology and situates participatory design to an exercise location and exercise activities
The results point to opportunities for opening up the design space of healthpromoting technology to support the cooperation of available health resources among residents in a community with attention to people who are in a vulnerable situation
Knowledge comes in many voices and it is a fundamental ambition for participatory design (PD) to include people with a low voice or no voice in technology production [41]

Summary

Introduction

Knowledge comes in many voices and it is a fundamental ambition for participatory design (PD) to include people with a low voice or no voice in technology production [41]. In recent PD, this aim is found in a commitment to include people who are marginalized by global and local societies and a competitive elite-oriented technology industry [5]. We joined this commitment, and in this paper we present how we included vulnerable young adults in the design of health-promoting ICT, which, in this case, is technology designed to support exercise. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.

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Conclusion