Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
Activity tracking apps –such as Strava or Runtastic– are positioned to enhance people’s motivation towards physical activity and healthy behavior. Though positive consequences are widely anticipated, users have contradictory relationships with these apps resulting in often harmful experiences. To address the shortcomings in research and practice about why and when positive and negative effects can occur, this study makes an effort by drawing on the concept of affordances and goal theory to explain how user-artifact interactions produce different consequences. We identify six conceptual affordances salient in activity tracking and develop arguments how these affordances become actualized in dependence of the users’ goals. We also point out that users will become exposed to affordances that will not necessarily match their goal orientation leading to negative experiences. Our research therefore aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of activity tracking and to enhance the theoretical accounts of the affordance actualization process.
Recommended Citation
Rockmann, Robert and Gewald, Heiko, "Is IT What You Make out of IT? On Affordances, Goals, and Positive and Negative Consequences in Activity Tracking" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 35.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/HumanBehavior/Presentations/35
Is IT What You Make out of IT? On Affordances, Goals, and Positive and Negative Consequences in Activity Tracking
Activity tracking apps –such as Strava or Runtastic– are positioned to enhance people’s motivation towards physical activity and healthy behavior. Though positive consequences are widely anticipated, users have contradictory relationships with these apps resulting in often harmful experiences. To address the shortcomings in research and practice about why and when positive and negative effects can occur, this study makes an effort by drawing on the concept of affordances and goal theory to explain how user-artifact interactions produce different consequences. We identify six conceptual affordances salient in activity tracking and develop arguments how these affordances become actualized in dependence of the users’ goals. We also point out that users will become exposed to affordances that will not necessarily match their goal orientation leading to negative experiences. Our research therefore aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of activity tracking and to enhance the theoretical accounts of the affordance actualization process.