Grace
A piece of jewelry enabling women to share exercise intentions with friends through graceful interactions to encourage social support
Increasingly aware of the importance of active lifestyles, more and more people, especially women, intend to be more physically active. Yet the main challenge is to translate their intentions into actual behavior. Wearable devices supporting physical activity regrettably adopt a one-size-fits-all approach by monitoring activity through quantified data as a motivation strategy. Since certain female groups are driven by health and social motives to exercise, less addressed through quantification, the impact of these devices on user experience and motivation is questionable.
We describe the design of Grace, a piece of jewelry enabling women to share exercise intentions with friends through graceful interactions to encourage social support. Instead of focusing on quantification, we rely on a qualitative approach using the aesthetics of interaction. With Grace, we extend the design space of sport- related wearables for women and inform how to design for exercise motivation of this currently less addressed target group.