Wearable Activity Trackers in Managing Routine Health and Fitness of Indian Older Adults: Exploring Barriers to Usage

Geriatrics research has highlighted the importance of managing routine health and fitness for older adults to improve their quality of life. Correspondingly, public health organizations have given specific guidelines on recommended levels of physical activities for this age group. Despite these efforts, many older adults do not engage in physical activities. Fitness technologies such as wearable activity trackers can motivate people to be regular in their physical activities. However, the adoption and usage of these devices among older adults remains low, especially in developing countries. We present findings from a longitudinal qualitative study with five older adults from India who use wearable activity trackers. We wanted to understand how they currently use these devices and what barriers they face in getting the most out of them. We trained the participants to help them overcome some of these barriers. Though initially, participants used their trackers only to track their steps, they could learn to use these devices more proactively after our training sessions. From the study findings, we suggest that activity trackers incorporate short how-to videos in local languages, speech input, voice prompts, personalized feedback on progress, and Q&A chat-bots to help older adults overcome some barriers.