Embodied Interaction

Motivating physically inactive people

In the times of Coronavirus outbreak, social distancing has become part of our daily lives. A solution to this situation is expected and sooner or later people will return to their normal lives. However, the change in our daily lives has shown that people in isolation tend to do less physical activities. When people do sports in groups, it is easier to motivate yourself and the experience is generally considered more fun. Modern technologies such as Augmented Reality could bring group feeling and extra encouragement to individual sports. Therefore, a research question was found to guide the search for solutions - How can the theory of socially situated practices be used to motivate physically inactive people via augmented reality based design? Creating a community for less active people contributes to a novel socially situated practice for these people focusing on physical activities. A literature review was carried out to study the approach of socially situated practises, physical activities, motivation theory, fitness tracker effectiveness and augmented reality technology. Sports cultures were also reviewed to understand how it encourages physical activities. Furthermore, a brief case study was done about existing applications of technology involvement in physical activities. Due to COVID19 restrictions, many sports competitions were held online. Analysis of the existing tools, technologies and competitions was done to identify best practices. The research resulted in design iterations and design proposal that has been grounded and analyzed from the standpoint of motivation and socially situated practice theory. Visualisations were done to show how an augmented reality environment could motivate and support people. The addition of virtual and social elements stimulate people to become part of a community that start to do sports.