Self-Tracking and Management of Physical Activity Fluctuations: An Investigation into Seasons

Many active people experience physical activity (PA) frequency fluctuation over the year and need to overcome several perceived barriers to PA to remain active. This paper mainly addresses one of these barriers, Seasonal Variability, and its adherent influencing factors on PA maintenance, which has received limited attention in previous self-tracking studies. We followed a Research through Design approach to explore the influence of the seasons on people's PA fluctuations. We were inspired by professional athletes’ seasonal training plan approach, and conceptualized Seasons, a PA self-management tool. We used the tool to gather PA maintenance and fluctuation coping strategies from 10 participants. Our results show that experiencing PA fluctuations is commonplace, especially due to weather conditions, as well as unexpected circumstances. Individuals deploy different strategies to overcome these fluctuations. Our findings lead to recommendations for HCI researchers to consider when designing future PA maintenance tools.