A NEAT Solution : Where Interaction Design and Public Health Meet

Office workers tend not to move about during work hours. A series of medical observational studies have shown that extended sitting is associated with several negative health outcomes including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), breast and colon cancer and premature mortality. Therefore, developing ways to encourage physical activity and breaking the habit of prolonged sitting in offices is urgently needed. Few studies, however, have investigated the nature of local movement and mobility in workspaces in depth and taking a cross disciplinary approach. This paper reports on an ongoing cross-disciplinary research project targeted at increasing physical activity of office workers while reducing prolonged sitting. Our collaboration between the departments of Informatics, Public Health and Clinical Medicine and the Design School at Umeå University resulted in two ethnographic studies. This led to the development and implementation of two prototypes referred to as the “NEAT Lamp” and the “Talking Tree”. The “NEAT Lamp” is a simple sensor-based lamp that was evaluated in situ in our second ethnographic study. The results of this study deepened our understanding of local movement and mobility in offices and resulted in the design of a second prototype, the “Talking Tree”. Using the knowledge gained through our ethnographic studies and the experience of using the prototypes, we were able to develop a conceptual framework for describing the patterns of local movement and mobility of office workers. This paper describes the process leading to the development of this framework. Moreover, it highlights how this process benefited from the cross-disciplinary nature of the project.