The Unanticipated Use of Fitness Tracking Technologies During Post-COVID Syndrome

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Long COVID is a new illness, and we still lack medical knowledge about possible treatments. This has led to the independent adoption of fitness tracking technologies for the management of long COVID. Through semi-structured interviews with 21 people with long COVID who used fitness tracking technologies, we found that fitness tracking devices were used to pace energy through finding correlations between activities and data, provide proof of illness to themselves, healthcare providers and friends and family, and to help gain a sense of agency and control during a new and enigmatic illness. Our findings support and extend design openings for the development of “pacing technologies”. These include the importance of customization and supporting the user in their recovery if appropriate, applying strategies for mitigating anxiety when tracking, facilitating the sharing of pacing data with friends and family and healthcare providers, and supporting users in identifying the optimal components of rest.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024
EditorsAnna Vallgarda, Li Jonsson, Jonas Fritsch, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Christopher A. Le Dantec
Number of pages15
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc.
Publication date2024
Pages556-570
ISBN (Electronic)9798400705830
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024
Event2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 1 Jul 20245 Jul 2024

Conference

Conference2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024
LandDenmark
ByCopenhagen
Periode01/07/202405/07/2024
SponsorACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI)
SeriesProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

    Research areas

  • chronic fatigue, chronic illness, fitness tracking, long COVID, misuse, pacing, pacing technologies, post-COVID syndrome, self-tracking, sensemaking, use

ID: 402489860