Date

2022-2-11

Author

Şahin, Batuhan

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Physical activities are beneficial for physical and mental health and overall wellbeing. Physical activity engagement and performance are strongly linked with motivation. Mobile activity-tracking apps target various physical activities and provide features, including social interaction, to increase users’ motivation and engagement. Among these, running is one of the activities that does not require any special equipment, facility, or partner. This research aimed to understand the relationship between the activity-tracking apps' social interaction features and runners’ motivation. The features providing social interaction were identified from three popular mobile activity-tracking apps. Relevant data were collected from 120 runners through an online survey. The findings show that the social interaction features of apps positively influence runners’ motivation. Moreover, one-to-one interviews were conducted to examine the causes motivating runners to run and interact with others through social interaction features. In addition, factors affecting runners' experience with social interaction features were also examined. The findings of the study are presented as recommendations for future researchers and designers. Using these findings, the design of activity-tracking apps can be revisited to maximize runners’ motivation and overall experience.

Subject Keywords

Social interaction, Mobile app design, User motivation

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/96382

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis