The interview findings highlighted two groups: 1) One group considered Fitbit to be a motivational tool
that encouraged behavior change, and 2) the other group thought that the device provided awareness but did
not change their behaviors or motivate them to engage in more physical activities.
Participant 9 (from the first group) stated that the resulting awareness encouraged behavior change: “I know
that this week then would have been a week of inactivity because now I’m tracking with the Fitbit and
paying attention to that. So I put active time in my schedule this week. So I’ve already got maybe three
hours of active time in because I want to again increase my activity during these really tough times. [If]
that where in the past I would just sit at my desk.”
Also, Participant 15 stated that the information she got led her to change her behavior: “It changed the type
of exercise I did, so that was a change in behavior. It increased my motivation because if I came close to a
goal I would do a little more so I would achieve it. It chastised me a little bit. If I totally bombed so like
maybe there would be some days where I would only do 3,000 steps or something not desirable it would
inform me of that information and make me a little more motivated to correct next day.”
In contrast, Participant 8 (from the second group) who was not motivated by the device argued: “It was
good because it clarified your perception or assumption about your activity but it didn’t get to the behavior
change.” Some of the participants in this group mentioned that they gave up using Fitbit after knowing
their daily patterns through the device, while their lives didn’t change significantly.
The discrepancy between the two groups led us to explore why uses of the same device resulted in different
outcomes. Although the features of the device were almost the same across all of the users, the affordances
brought about in use were not. Further examination of the interview data underscored two primary factors
that mediated the way the use of the device generated motivation. Figure 3 explains that the health-tracking
device was not the only factor that motivated users toward more activity: there were other salient factors
that mediated the effect of the health-tracking device on the user’s motivation. In fact, personal
characteristics, including health status, individual knowledge and attitudes toward physical activity, and the
psychological and behavior attributes may have affected the way the user engaged with the device. In what
follows, we explain two of the mediating factors.