TogetherActive - Key Concepts and Usability Study

Despite the well-known benefits of physical activity on health, the recommended level of physical activity is not reached by everyone. Many interventions are aimed at reducing sedentary behaviour and increasing physical activity. As an intervention, we developed a virtual community system, TogetherActive, aiming at providing the social support to people in their daily life. Typically, virtual communities provide emotional and/or informational support, but our contribution aims mainly the instrumental and appraisal support. The community is coupled with physical activity sensor. In this system we focused on concepts such as individual and group goals, comparison, competition and cooperation in order to increase motivation to meet the daily recommended physical activity level. In this paper presents the design and the key concepts of the TogetherActive system, its implementation and the usability study.