Abstract
Increasingly aware of the importance of active lifestyles, many people intend to exercise more. One of the main challenges is to translate exercise intentions into actual exercise behaviour, the so-called intention-behaviour gap. To investigate barriers and enablers that affect this gap, we conducted a 7-day diary study with 16 participants. In this study, participants indicated what their exercise intentions and behaviour were per day, and whether and why they changed retrospectively during the day. Through the diary study, we gain insights into (i) the intention-behaviour interplay, and (ii) the experienced barriers and enablers that influence this interplay throughout the day. Based on the findings, we contribute new implications for design in supporting people translating their intentions into exercise behaviour, and propose three design concepts as examples. In these, the focus is on positively influencing the interplay of enablers and barriers of exercising and how these can be exemplified through design.
Keywords
Exercising, Intention-behaviour gap, Diary study, Design Implications
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.329
Citation
Menheere, D., Funk, M., van der Spek, E., Lallemand, C., and Vos, S. (2020) A Diary Study on the Exercise Intention-Behaviour Gap: Implications for the Design of Interactive Products, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.329
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
A Diary Study on the Exercise Intention-Behaviour Gap: Implications for the Design of Interactive Products
Increasingly aware of the importance of active lifestyles, many people intend to exercise more. One of the main challenges is to translate exercise intentions into actual exercise behaviour, the so-called intention-behaviour gap. To investigate barriers and enablers that affect this gap, we conducted a 7-day diary study with 16 participants. In this study, participants indicated what their exercise intentions and behaviour were per day, and whether and why they changed retrospectively during the day. Through the diary study, we gain insights into (i) the intention-behaviour interplay, and (ii) the experienced barriers and enablers that influence this interplay throughout the day. Based on the findings, we contribute new implications for design in supporting people translating their intentions into exercise behaviour, and propose three design concepts as examples. In these, the focus is on positively influencing the interplay of enablers and barriers of exercising and how these can be exemplified through design.