"…is it normal to be this sore?": Using an Online Forum to Investigate Barriers to Physical Activity Tammy Toscos, M.S., Ph.Dc. School of Informatics Indiana University, USA Bloomington, IN 47408 ttoscos@indiana.edu Sunny Consolvo, Ph.D. Intel Labs Seattle Seattle, WA 98105, USA sunny.consolvo@intel.com David W. McDonald, Ph.D. DUB Group & The Information School University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 USA dwmc@u.washington.edu ABSTRACT The importance of regular physical activity to overall health has been well established, yet U.S. adults are leading increasingly sedentary lives. Research suggests that lowering perceived barriers to physical activity is a critical part of interventions that encourage physical activity. In this paper, we describe the top five barriers—two of which have not been reported as principle barriers in the literature—that emerged from our systematic qualitative coding of an online forum used to support a three- month healthy lifestyle intervention. Based on our analysis, we identify design considerations for technologies that encourage and support physical activity. Understanding the needs of a population is a critical step in the design process, and this paper offers unique insights for those working in this growing domain. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.3 [Group and Organization Interfaces]: Collaborative Computing; H.5.0 [General]; H.5.m [Miscellaneous]. General Terms Design Keywords Physical activity, fitness, health, barriers, message boards, bulletin boards, web forums, virtual community. 1. INTRODUCTION Constance has a plan. After work she will pick up the kids from daycare and head home. Her mother is going to meet her at 5:30pm to watch the kids for 90 minutes while Constance goes to the gym. By the time 5:30pm rolls around, Constance is dressed and ready to go to the gym, but her mother has not arrived. In fact, her mother does not arrive for another 20 minutes. While waiting for her mother, Constance receives an email about a work-related emergency that must be handled immediately—by the time she is ready to leave for the gym, she has already lost 45 minutes of her workout time. Given that it takes Constance 10 minutes to commute to the gym and another 10 minutes to return home, she only has 25 minutes of actual workout time remaining. Constance is so frustrated that she is no longer motivated to go to the gym tonight. She feels that the whole world is conspiring to defeat her efforts to stay healthy. Among adults in the U.S. who begin an exercise program, approximately 50% drop out after the first three to six months [12]. Research suggests that an individual's perceived barriers to physical activity are an important determinant of activity level [38][44]. Large-scale surveys have shown that people have many barriers to being physically active such as lack of time, lack of motivation and lack of energy (e.g., [4][7][27][48]). Several investigations have reported that helping people overcome their perceived barriers has more influence on encouraging people to be physically active than does enhancing perceived benefits of exercise [26][36][38]. In fact, knowledge of health benefits is not correlated with activity levels [38]. Barriers may affect those who are trying to make a change and cause those who are regularly physically active to break their routine. The study described in this paper is part of a requirements gathering effort to inform the design of technologies to encourage and support people who are beginning or maintaining a physical activity routine. Understanding the needs of a population is a critical step in the design process, and this paper offers unique insights for those working in this domain, an area of growing popularity (e.g., [3][9][11][21][22][30][32][31][32][42]). We examined the content of message board traffic during a three- month healthy lifestyle intervention that promoted physical activity and healthy eating. We employed a grounded approach to our analysis [41] and found natural categories of barriers for which message board posters sought advice. The principle barriers and ranking we identified differ from those reported in the literature. Our findings identify opportunities for technologies to help individuals overcome or mitigate barriers, as well as help designers and evaluators of the technologies understand potential issues that may arise during long-term use of the technologies which may adversely affect the technologies’ effectiveness. In the following, we provide an overview of the principle barriers suggested by prior work. The method we employed to analyze the message board traffic is described next, followed by our findings related to the message board posters’ top barriers. Finally, we discuss the limitations of our method, then propose design considerations for technologies that encourage and support physical activity. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. IHI’10, November 11–12, 2010, Arlington, Virginia, USA. Copyright 2010 ACM 978-1-4503-0030-8/10/11...$10.00. 346