Who is active at Work? Expressing Social Feedback on Physical Activity in the Office Environment

Prolonged sitting at the workplace is a growing public health concern. In this paper, we present Stimulight, an intelligent system designed to explore the effect of providing personal and/or social feedback on the activity pattern of office workers. Stimulight was placed in an open office environment and three different feedback conditions were explored. We conducted a field study with 8 participants in an open office environment. Stimulight was used and evaluated. Our results show a positive effect of visualizing and sharing physical activity patterns with co-workers. Based on our findings, we present design implications and offer perspectives for future research on how to use social feedback mechanisms to reduce physical inactivity and to improve social interaction in the workplace.