Tailoring digital apps to support active ageing in a low income community

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 15; no. 12; p. e0242192
• Main Authors: Castro, Paula Costa, Romano, Lua Bonadio, Frohlich, David, Lorenzi, Lorena Jorge, Campos, Lucas Bueno, Paixão, Andresa, Bet, Patrícia, Deutekom, Marije, Krose, Ben, Dourado, Victor Zuniga, Angélica de Oliveira Gomes, Grace
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 10.12.2020; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Activities of daily living; Adult; Age Factors; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Aging; Aging - physiology; Applications programs; Audio data; Authorship; Behavior; Biology and Life Sciences; Brazil; Chronic illnesses; Co-design; Computer and Information Sciences; Cross-Sectional Studies; Developing countries; Engineering and Technology; Exercise; Exercise - physiology; Exercise - psychology; Female; Focus Groups; Forecasts and trends; Health aspects; Health Promotion - methods; Healthy Aging - physiology; Healthy Aging - psychology; Humans; Income; LDCs; Low income areas; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Middle Aged; Mobile Applications; Mobile computing; Motivation; Multimedia; Older people; People and Places; Physical activity; Physical fitness; Physiological aspects; Population; Population aging; Poverty - psychology; Product development; Public health; Qualitative Research; Romano, David; Smartphone; Smartphones; Social Sciences; Subgroups; Technology application; Working poor; Brazil
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242192

Despite physical activity being one of the determinants of healthy aging, older people tend to become less active over the years. Maintaining physical activity levels during the life course is a motivational challenge. Digital tools have been used to change this pattern, such as smartphone applications to support physical activity; but there is a lack of in-depth research on the diversity of user's experiences, especially considering older users or non-users of information and communication technologies. Our goal was to identify requirements for designing a mobile app to encourage physical activity in a low-income community population of older people in Brazil (i.e. over 40 years old). We conducted a qualitative focus group study, involving by co-design of a physical activity application (Pacer)®. Seventeen volunteers were divided into 2 focus groups of physical active and insufficiently active, and 2 further 4 subgroups in each characterised by digital engagement. The following procedures were performed: (i) baseline assessments; (ii) a focus group with physically active older people and a focus group with insufficiently active older people (iii) design activities with both groups to re-design Pacer. Developing physical activity apps for older people should consider the following features: free application, simple interface, motivational messages using audio and visual information, sharing information among users, multimedia input and sharing and user customisation. In particular, we recommend that exercise apps in low-income communities be tailored to our four categories of users differing in baseline physical activity and digital engagement, to match the social and behavioural preferences we discovered.