Exploiting Fitness Apps for Sustainable Mobility - Challenges Deploying the GoEco! App

The large interest in analyzing one’s own fitness led to the development of more and more powerful smartphone applications. Most are capable of tracking a user’s position and mode of locomotion, data that do not only reflect personal health, but also mobility choices. A large field of research is concerned with mobility analysis and planning for a variety of reasons, including sustainable transport. Collecting data on mobility behavior using fitness tracker apps is a tempting choice, because they include many of the desired functions, most people own a smartphone and installing a fitness tracker is quick and convenient. However, as their original focus is on measuring fitness behavior, there are a number of difficulties in their usage for mobility tracking. In this paper we denote the various challenges we faced when deploying GoEco! Tracker (an app using the Moves fitness tracker to collect mobility measurements), and provide an analysis on how to best overcome them. Finally, we summarize findings after one month of large scale testing with a few hundred users within the GoEco! living lab performed in Switzerland.