Understanding prolonged sedentary behavior contexts among office workers as Input for Digital Technology-Empowered Physical Activity Interventions Design

Recent health research has shown that too much sitting, especially prolonged periods of sitting without breaks, is harmful to metabolic as well as musculoskeletal health. One of the specific contexts where people are engaging in prolonged sedentary behavior is in the office. To date, most of the digital technology-empowered physical activity interventions (DT-PAI) in reducing sedentary behavior or promoting physical activity use a traditional top-down research-driven approach, which lacks qualitative formative research in understanding relevant contextual concerns from the office workers’ perspective. Hence, this paper explores a range of contextual concerns in office-based prolonged sedentary behavior (O-PSB) and office-based physical activity (O-PA) from the office worker's perspective. These concerns are used as a starting point for DT-PAI design. We have recruited eight desk-bound office workers from China to gain an understanding of their work-life contexts and their contextual concerns about O-PSB and O-PA. The main contributions of this study are the following findings: (a) A location mapping of wellbeing-related products in the office; (b) Passive and active well-being interaction differences between onboarding workers and older workers; (c) The disruption of flexible working on physical health routine; (d) Seven key O-PSB contexts with office workers’ contextual concerns in O-PA. Finally, based on these findings, we discussed and derived four key contextual factors as design opportunities: active mind, active support, active behavior, and active environment.