🏹 Goals + Objectives
The insights from the user interviews showed that the primary concern of all participants was their deteriorating mobility and how they might maintain their health and energy levels.
The goal of the competitive research is to see how fitness apps help promote mobility and exercise for the elderly and other research on exercise recommendations for the elderly.
🎯 Expected Outcomes
I hope to answer the following questions:
- What factors are recommended for exercise for the elderly? (ie., low impact, duration, type of exercise)
- How do apps support those recommended factors in their offerings?
- How do apps support/hinder hesitant users from trying new workouts? Since 4/5 users expressed some hesitancy to adding new tech to their lives.
- How do apps support users to maintain their exercise habits?
🤔 Key Insights
- In general, more movement and less sedentary time is better than no physical activity.
- It is recommended for adults to have varied types of exercise focusing on endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility for at least 150 minutes each week.
- Mighty Health and Workouts for Older Adults offer workout types that align with most of the required exercise types, however, they have extensive onboarding processes including possibly sensitive information about the user that seem irrelevant to how the app functions.
- MH and WfOA are both mindful of possible health conditions and restrictions of its users.
- All three competitors included streak tracking and options to add reminders for workouts to encourage consistency.
National Institute on Aging (NIA) Exercises for Older Adults - Youtube Videos
App Comparison