PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN THE CONTEXT OF EVERYDAY LIFE AND HOW WEARABLE ACTIVITY TRACKERS INCORPORATE INTO EVERYDAY LIFE OF OFFICE WORKERS

Abstract

Sitting in the office occupies so much of people’s time that they often do not have time to exercise to stay in shape and maintain a healthy body weight. Because of the culture of hard work so deeply ingrained in Korea, Korean office workers have a sedentary lifestyle that they often do not have time to exercise. Recently, wearable activity tracking device allows people to track and understand their daily physical activities. These devices monitor users’ daily life and it could support of people who have a sedentary lifestyle by collecting their physical activity data. However, the device does not collect and consider users’ contextual factors and environmental factors how those affects physical activity in daily life. The objective of this dissertation is to discover how the context of everyday life affects physical activity steps in the use of wearable activity tracking device. This dissertation approach was triangulation mixed methods, using both quantitative and qualitative measures to identify a few everyday activities as a starting point and then tracking and analyzing those behaviors. By using this triangulation mixed-method approach, including in-depth, semi-structured interviews and questionnaire assessments, supplemented with daily diary (as known as Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA)) and activity log data, this dissertation aimed to concentrate on how the context of everyday life affects physical activity steps when using a wearable activity tracking device. Furthermore, to examine the potential differences in the use and adoption of the devices, this study included two specific populations: 27 adopters and 66 abandoners. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the utility of EMA methodologies by using wearable tracking device such as Fitbit to discover contextual and environmental factors that interaction with increasing physical activity among office workers. This study discovered integral contextual factors that could influence physical activity changes in the use of wearable devices in everyday life context. The findings presented in this dissertation add to our theoretical understanding of everyday life information practices. This also have practical implications for systems designers of wearable activity tracker who should consider users’ environments, individual contextual factors, and information practices.Doctor of Philosoph