Walking meetings are a promising way to reduce unhealthy sedentary behavior at the office. Some aspects of walking meetings are however hard to assess using traditional research approaches that do not account well for the embodied experience of walking meetings. We conducted a series of 16 bodystorming sessions, featuring unusual walking meeting situations to engage participants (N=45) in a reflective experience. After each bodystorming, participants completed three tasks: a body map, an empathy map, and a rating of workload using the NASA-TLX scale. These embodied explorations provide insights on key themes related to walking meetings: material and tools, physical and mental demand, connection with the environment, social dynamics, and privacy. We discuss the role of technology and opportunities for technology-mediated walking meetings. We draw implications for the design of walking meeting technologies or services to account for embodied experiences, and the individual, social, and environmental factors at play.
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Creative arts engagement has been shown to be related to maintaining wellbeing in older adulthood (Tymoszuk et al., 2019). For people living with dementia, music can be engaging and rewarding (Baird & Thompson, 2018), and is often presented as a therapeutic activity. It is theorised that music’s capacity to effect change is due to its engaging, emotional, physical, personal, social and persuasive qualities (Brancatisano et al., 2020). However, music itself is a complex intervention (Loui, 2020) and the ‘creative’ in music activities in the small number of studies with people living with dementia is rarely described or critiqued (Creech et al., 2020). Music is often described as passive (receptive)/active to reflect different listening or playing activities. Only a few studies detail opportunities for people living with dementia to exercise creativity (e.g. Zeilig et al., 2019).Technology to assist these musical interactions in dementia falls under distinct categories of listening to music, or playing music, with very little afforded in the way of agency, choice or control (MacRitchie et al., 2023). A few possible explanations could be: i) the musical activity is valued in terms of pre/post cognitive or social changes (Kontos & Grigorovich, 2018) i.e., the activity itself is not particularly critiqued, ii) creativity is assumed to be embedded in the activity and does not need to be enhanced or supported, iii) the locus of creativity is in cognitive processes occurring in the brain, so people living with dementia are often ascribed a passive role in creative musical interactions (Zeilig et al., 2019). We propose a new way of thinking about musical interactions for people living with dementia, building from the enactive, embodied experience of music (Schiavio et al., 2022), and considering a more relational view. Leaving aside the framing where the person with dementia is limited in what creativity they can offer, we propose instead a framework of design where subtle acts of agency and (mini-C) creativity are afforded, supporting a myriad of musical interactions that sit between listening and performing.
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Despite assumptions that wearable self-care technologies such as smart wristbands and smart watches help users to monitor and self-manage health in daily life, adherence rates are often quite low. In an effort to better understand what determines adherence to wearable self-care technologies, researchers have started to consider the extent to which a technology is perceived as being part of the user (i.e., technology embodiment) and the extent to which users feel they can influence reaching their health goals (i.e., empowerment). Although both concepts are assumed to determine adherence, few studies have empirically validated their influence. Furthermore, the relationships between technology embodiment, empowerment, and adherence to wearable self-care technology have also not been addressed. Drawing upon embodied theory and embodiment cognition theory, this research paper introduces and empirically validates ‘embodied empowerment’ as a predictor of adherence to wearable self-care technology. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis on a dataset of 317 wearable self-care technology users, we find empirical evidence of the validity of embodied empowerment as a determinant of adherence. We also discuss the implications for research and practice.
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