Sedentary behavior (SB) is prevalent in workplaces, putting office workers at an increased risk of severe health problems. To help designers and researchers gain a better understanding of office workers’ contextual concerns for physical inactivity (reducing SB and enhancing physical activity (PA)), we have proposed a conceptual framework ACTIVE4. This framework advises designers and researchers to consider four key factors that influence office workers’ physical inactivity: active mind, active behavior, active support, and active environment. We conducted three workshops (N=28 design students) to evaluate the framework. The participants found ACTIVE4 helpful in guiding them towards a more systematic understanding of the environmental influences and office workers’ personal needs for reducing physical inactivity. In future work, we will optimize the ACTIVE4 framework’s learning curve as suggested by participants and conduct an expert study to further discuss design opportunities and requirements for the ACTIVE4-related vitality toolkit.
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Eating healthier at work can substantially promote health and well-being among knowledge workers. However, little has been investigated on designing digital tools and interventions specialized in improving workday eating routines. This paper presents a user-centered contextual inquiry based on mixed-methods with an online questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. This study aimed to understand knowledge workers’ eating experiences and identify design opportunities and application strategies of digital tools to improve current practices. The questionnaire feedback from 54 Dutch knowledge workers revealed that their concerns over productivity, health and nutrition, energy support, and well-being could be decisive in shaping their eating routines at work. Furthermore, the results of 12 interview sessions suggested a set of expected digital features to encourage healthy eating at work, including health knowledge access, goal setting and self-tracking, technology-assisted health programs, and social support. Additionally, our findings also indicated that these digital features should be integrated into the office setting to offer personalized feedback and contextualized health interventions. Based on these findings, we derive design opportunities for workplace digital tools to promote healthy eating and discuss their potential contributions and future work to improved office vitality.
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The scope of technology has expanded towards areas such as sports and vitality, offering significant challenges for engineering designers. However, only little is known about the underlying design and engineering processes used within these fields. Therefore, this paper aims to get an indepth understanding of these type of processes. During a three-day design competition (Hackathon), three groups of engineers were challenged to develop experience-able prototypes in the field of sports and vitality. Their process was monitored based on the Reflective Transformative Design process (RTD-process) framework, describing the various activities part of the design process. Groups had to keep track of their activities, and six group reflection-sessions were held. Results show that all groups used an open and explorative approach, they frequently swapped between activities, making them able to reflect on their actions. While spending more time on envisioning and creating a clear vision seem to relate to the quality of the design concept.
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Eating healthier at work can substantially promote health for office workers. However, little has been investigated on designing pervasive health interventions specialized in improving workday eating patterns. This paper presents a design study of an mHealth app called EAT@WORK, which was designed to support office workers in the Netherlands in developing healthy eating behaviors in work routines. Based on semi-structured interviews with 12 office workers from a variety of occupations, we synthesized four key features for EAT@WORK, including supporting easy access to relevant knowledge, assisting goal setting, integrating with health programs, and facilitating peer supports. The user acceptance of EAT@WORK was examined through a within-subject study with 14 office workers, followed by a qualitative study on the applicability of app features to different working contexts. Quantitative results showed that EAT@WORK was experienced more useful than a benchmark app (p < 0.01) and EAT@WORK was also perceived easier to use than the benchmark app (p < 0.01). The qualitative analysis suggested that the goal assistant feature could be valuable for different working contexts, while the integrated health program was considered more suitable for office work than telework. The social and knowledge support were expected to be on-demand features that should loosely be bonded with the working contexts. Based on these findings, we discuss design implications for the future development of such mHealth technologies to promote healthy eating routines among office workers.
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Purpose:The International Commission on Illumination (CIE) recommends researchers to investigate a widevariety of behavioural and health outcomes. However, researchers often investigate only a part of occupationalhealth (OH) in relation to light. A literature study (2002–2017) regarding the relationship between office lightingconditions and OH was performed to identify gaps and methodological issues.Method:The OH outcomes investigated in this paper were grouped according to the International Classificationof Diseases and analysed per category: physical and physiological health, mental health, eye health, sleep param-eters and visual comfort.Results:Findings from the literature study (20 eligible papers) showed that all OH aspects were mostly but notexclusively measured subjectively. Furthermore, most studies investigated only a fraction of office lighting par-ameters and OH aspects.Conclusions:It seems that Correlated Colour Temperature (CCT) and illuminance mainly correlate with OH.However, this may also be explained by gaps and methodological issues in studies described in eligible papers.Based on the literature study, an overview was composed elucidating gaps and methodological issues of officelighting and OH studies. It can be used to design and target the purpose of light and health research.
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Light enables us to see and perceive our environment but it also initiates effects beyond vision, such as alertness. Literature describes that at least six factors are relevant for initiating effects beyond vision. The exact relationship between these factors and alertness is not yet fully understood. In the current field study, personal lighting conditions of 62 Dutch office workers (aged 49.7 ± 11.4 years) were continuously measured and simultaneously self-reported activities and locations during the day were gathered via diaries. Each office worker participated 10 working days in spring 2017. Personal lighting conditions were interpreted based on four of the six factors (light quantity, spectrum, timing, and duration of light exposure). Large individual differences were found for the daily luminous exposures, illuminances, correlated colour temperatures, and irradiances measured with the blue sensor area of the dosimeter. The average illuminance (over all participants and all days) over the course of the day peaked three times. The analysis of the duration of light exposure demonstrated that the participants were on average only exposed to an illuminance above 1000 lx for 72 minutes per day. The interpretation of personal lighting conditions based on the four factors provides essential information since all of these factors may be relevant for initiating effects beyond vision. The findings in the current paper give first in-depth insight in the possibilities to interpret personal lighting conditions of office workers.
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Deze rapportage omvat de evaluatie van de pilot Open Science Support Desk (OSSD). Het bemensen van de OSSD is een van de activiteiten die erop gericht zijn om de kwaliteit van het onderzoek dat uitgevoerd wordt in de faculteiten Gezondheid (FG), Bewegen, Sport en Voeding (FBSV) en Digitale Media en Creatieve Industrie (FDMCI) te ondersteunen in het kader van de SIA SPRONG subsidie Mensen in Beweging die in 2018 werd toegekend. Bij de OSSD kunnen Urban Vitality onderzoekers terecht voor individueel advies over kwantitatief en kwalitatief onderzoek, open science en over datamanagement. Deze evaluatie bestrijkt de pilotperiode tussen september 2019 en juni 2020. De evaluatie richt zich op:1. De mening van de gebruikers over de dienstverlening van OSSD;2. De motivatie van niet-gebruikers om geen gebruik te maken van OSSD;3. Het inventariseren van wensen van (potentiële) gebruikers voor OSSD diensten;4. Het geven van aanbevelingen voor de organisatie en toekomst van de OSSD diensten. GegevensverzamelingGegevens zijn verzameld m.b.v. twee verschillende vragenlijsten: Eén vragenlijst voor gebruikers van OSSD en één vragenlijst voor niet-gebruikers die wel tot de doelgroep horen.Daarnaast zijn gegevens gebruikt die in een excel databestand zijn bijgehouden over de dienstverlening, zoals aan wie waarover advies is gegeven en hoeveel tijd daaraan is besteed.ResultatenOSSD-gebruikers waren zeer tevreden over onze diensten en hoe deze werden geleverd. Iets minder hoog scoort de duidelijkheid van waarmee men bij de OSSD kan aankloppen. De onderzoekers die geen gebruik hadden gemaakt van de diensten van de OSSD wisten niet dat hij bestond, waarvoor ze bij de desk terecht kunnen, of hadden geen vragen. Een kanttekening is hierbij dat slechts een kwart van de niet-gebruikers de vragenlijst hebben ingevuld.Een meerderheid van de gebruikers en niet-gebruikers lijkt geïnteresseerd in deelname aan journal clubs, hulp bij literatuur zoeken en inloopspreekuren. Verder zijn onder OSSD-gebruikers de belangrijkste onderwerpen voor nieuwe dienstverlening journal clubs over statistiek, datavisualisatie, kwalitatieve analyse, kwalitatieve onderzoeksmethoden, kwantitatieve methoden en open science-tools. De belangrijkste taken voor de OSSD zijn volgens zowel gebruikers als niet-gebruikers advies, co-auteurschap en (data-) analytische ondersteuning. Conclusie De OSSD is geraadpleegd door ongeveer de helft van de potentiële gebruikers. De onderzoekers die advies hebben gekregen zijn (zeer) tevreden over de inhoud van de adviezen en over andere aspecten van de dienstverlening, zoals snelheid van reageren op vragen en de sfeer waarin de consultaties werden uitgevoerd. Daarnaast bestaat er een relatief grote groep die geen gebruik heeft gemaakt van de OSSD. De belangrijkste reden voor het niet gebruiken van de desk lijkt onbekendheid. Dit heeft mogelijk te maken met de huidige onduidelijke positie en inbedding van de OSSD. Aanbevelingen1. Formaliseer de OSSD binnen het Urban Vitality Center of Expertise (UV) of op faculteitsniveau2. Stroomlijn de rol van de OSSD in de procedures voorafgaand aan en na toekenning van subsidie en stem deze af met IXA3. Neem de 14 Open Science principes op in het UV-beleid4. Zorg er (middels beleid) voor dat de OSSD in een vroeg stadium bij nieuwe onderzoeksvoorstellen betrokken wordt5. Vervul tijdig de vacature die ontstaat voor een kwalitatief methodoloog6. Formaliseer de posities van privacy officer en informatiespecialist binnen OSSD7. Maak glashelder welke lectoraten de OSSD bedient8. Maak bij een promotieproject duidelijk welke verantwoordelijkheden liggen bij de verschillende instellingen die bij de promotie betrokken zijn9. Maak een toegankelijk content management systeem om inzicht te hebben in en te kunnen leren van lopend onderzoek10. Bespreek dit rapport en de aanbevelingen in de stuurgroepen van MiB en van UV en in het management van FG, FBSV en FDMCI.
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Background: There is increasing interest in the role that technology can play in improving the vitality of knowledge workers. A promising and widely adopted strategy to attain this goal is to reduce sedentary behavior (SB) and increase physical activity (PA). In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art SB and PA interventions using technology in the office environment. By scoping the existing landscape, we identified current gaps and underexplored possibilities. We discuss opportunities for future development and research on SB and PA interventions using technology. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in the Association for Computing Machinery digital library, the interdisciplinary library Scopus, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Xplore Digital Library to locate peer-reviewed scientific articles detailing SB and PA technology interventions in office environments between 2009 and 2019. Results: The initial search identified 1130 articles, of which 45 studies were included in the analysis. Our scoping review focused on the technologies supporting the interventions, which were coded using a grounded approach. Conclusion: Our findings showed that current SB and PA interventions using technology provide limited possibilities for physically active ways of working as opposed to the common strategy of prompting breaks. Interventions are also often offered as additional systems or services, rather than integrated into existing office infrastructures. With this work, we have mapped different types of interventions and provide an increased understanding of the opportunities for future multidisciplinary development and research of technologies to address sedentary behavior and physical activity in the office context
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This study was motivated by a desire to help working-age individuals gain a better understanding of their daily nutritional intakes with a new self-reported dietary assessment method because an unhealthy eating behavior increases the risks of developing chronic diseases. In this study, we present the design and evaluation of NutriColoring, a food diary that leverages doodling on sketches to report and reflect on everyday diet in the working context. Through a 2-week field study involving 18 participants, the usefulness of NutriColoring in facilitating dietary assessment was tested by making comparisons with the typical bullet diary method. Our quantitative results showed that NutriColoring provided users with improved dietary assessment experience and intrinsic motivations, with significantly low task frustration and high enjoyment. Because of the freedom and playfulness in reporting intakes at work, the interview findings showed a high acceptance of employing NutriColoring at work. This article is concluded with a set of implications for the design and development of a Doodling toolkit to support healthy eating behaviors among office workers.
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This paper introduces a creative approach aimed at empowering desk-bound occupational groups to address the issue of physical inactivity at workplaces. The approach involves a gamified toolkit called Workplace Vitality Mapping (WVM) (see Figure 1) designed to encourage self-reflection in sedentary contexts and foster the envision of physical vitality scenarios. This hybrid toolkit comprises two main components: A Card Game (on-site) for context reflection and a Co-design Canvas (Online) for co-designing vitality solutions. Through the card games, participants reflect on key sedentary contexts, contemplating their preferable physical vitality scenarios with relevant requirements. The co-design canvas facilitates the collaborative construction and discussion of vitality scenarios’ development. The perceptions and interactions of the proposed toolkit from the target group were studied and observed through a hybrid workshop, which demonstrated promising results in terms of promoting participants’ engagement experience in contextual reflections and deepening their systemic understanding to tackle the physical inactivity issue. As physical inactivity becomes an increasingly pressing concern, this approach offers a promising participatory way for gaining empathetic insights toward community-level solutions.
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