Improving User Experience (UX) in fitness apps: A study on long-term motivational strategies to support health goals

Author Identifier (ORCID)

Jing Zhou: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7657-6127

Abstract

Health and fitness apps support health goals but have lower retention rates compared to other mHealth apps in China. Young people in China experience numerous physical activity issues: body dissatisfaction, insufficient physical activity, and disordered eating behaviours. Most Chinese fitness apps rely on motivational features such as exercise tracking, social communities, or live streaming influence to attract users [1, 2]. However, they do not promote a holistic healthy lifestyle to users. Our research reviewed current case studies to discuss the main features of the fitness apps: goal-setting, fitness influencers and gamification. We adopted co-design approaches involving twenty young Chinese adults and conducted research in four phases: user studies, ideating features, prototype tests, and evaluating implementations. Participants’ insights suggested one motivational strategy (Gamification, Relaxation, Mutual Growth, and Music) and provided a design model GEMM for improving User Experience (UX) in fitness app design.

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Date of Publication

1-1-2025

Volume

15792 LNCS

Publication Title

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

Publisher

Springer

School

School of Arts and Humanities

Comments

Zhou, J., Lin, Y., & Wang, W. (2025). Improving User Experience (UX) in fitness apps: A study on long-term motivational strategies to support health goals. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 133-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-93505-3_10

Copyright

subscription content

First Page

133

Last Page

150

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1007/978-3-031-93505-3_10