Flow is Not Enough: Understanding the Needs of Advanced Amateur Runners to Design Motivation Technology
Paper in proceeding, 2015

Motivation studies on running are often focused on how to convince non-runners to run, mainly through designing for extrinsic motivations such as health concerns or external reward systems. In contrast, we conducted a structured inquiry into understanding how to design technology for those whom are already committed to running and participate in organized races. Through interviews, focus groups, ethnographic observation, questionnaires, and design-based research over the course of two years, we investigated the needs of the advanced amateur runner community. An analysis of the gathered data led to five design themes – Festival, Competition, Practicalities, Togetherness, and Support – to inform future runner motivation technology. While flow theory appears to be a convenient tool to understand support during a race, we observed a number of other factors that need to be considered. Through combining the themes with previous research, we conclude by presenting nine guidelines for designing technology for this domain.

motivation

design

runners

Author

Kristina Knaving

University of Gothenburg

Pawel Wozniak

Chalmers, Applied Information Technology (Chalmers), Interaction design

Morten Fjeld

Chalmers, Applied Information Technology (Chalmers), Interaction design

Staffan Björk

University of Gothenburg

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15)

Vol. 2015-April 10-
978-1-4503-3145-6 (ISBN)

Subject Categories

Human Computer Interaction

DOI

10.1145/2702123.2702542

ISBN

978-1-4503-3145-6

More information

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7/11/2024