We were tasked with creating a step tracker application, empowering its users to be healthier. Our focus user group is individuals who live in senior living communities. Our goal for this project is to provide them with a way to be mentally and physically active while staying motivated and active in their communities. With research and interviews conducted, we achieved an app that allows them to set personalized step and game goals, and participate in community walks. Overall, our goal is to provide an easy-to-use, user-friendly app to promote physical and mental activity and community engagement among seniors living in senior communities.
For our research, we investigated studies on fitness apps to explore how we can make the elderly engaged in a fitness watch. We did a specific fixation on the elderly so we could better understand our user group.
First, we researched existing fitness apps:
Strava is an app that caters to competitive individuals and strong community emphasis. The app records not only runs and bicycle rides but also promotes a sense of competition among users sharing similar routes. The app has community-driven leaderboards and offers the ability to explore popular geographical routes.
The study aimed to develop and validate a smartwatch step-counting app tailored for older adults, addressing the challenge of sustaining their motivation for physical activity. Using an open-source wrist-worn device, the app incorporated algorithms for activity level inference and step counting. Validation was conducted in lab and free-living settings over extended periods. Results showed strong performance, with the algorithm demonstrating high correlation with ground truth (Fitbit) in both controlled and real-world conditions. The findings show the importance of iterative algorithm development and highlight the potential of such apps in promoting physical activity among older adults.
The Braun Healthy Heart app provides a convenient way to track your blood pressure and take control of your heart health over time. It helps you to see how your lifestyle affects your blood pressure.
With the Healthy Heart app, you can track the following data points:
Blood pressure measurements (systolic and diastolic) and pulse
Medications
Lifestyle factors such as sleep, exercise, nutrition, and stress
Current health status
Data history
The app uses the latest algorithms to process the data. It calculates the average and standard deviation of the measured values. The user can add up to five readings to the history.
Then, we researched why people cheat and methods used:
Many fitness apps and programs which foster competition between users cause what's called “racing” where users will constantly push themselves to the limits every single workout. This occurs because when you are competing with people across the world and with differing experience and skill levels there will almost always be someone who is exercising more than you on a particular day. Because of this many people will strive to get their numbers as high as possible to show off their skill. However the practice of working to your limits at each workout can cause burnout and injury as the person is overworking their body and mind. This eventually causes the user to start missing workouts, but they don’t want to look lazy online so they begin to cheat on their app so they aren’t marked as lazy by their peers on the app.
Activity trackers and smartwatches, like those from various brands, use accelerometers to detect movement, measuring acceleration in three planes: front to back, side to side, and up and down. However, they may inaccurately count steps during certain activities like napkin folding or drum playing. Trackers use proprietary algorithms to analyze data and determine steps, but accuracy varies, especially at slow speeds or during stationary arm movements. Research has shown inaccuracies in step counting during household chores, sports, and for people with gait issues. Improved algorithms and additional sensors may enhance accuracy in the future. Some users take advantage of this inaccuracy to cheat their steps in order to feel more accomplished. Users can improve accuracy by calibrating trackers, providing accurate personal data, wearing the tracker near the hip, and being mindful of activities that may falsely register as steps.
We also gathered supporting evidence why keeping seniors active mentally and physically is important: