Evaluation of a personalized coaching system for physical activity: user appreciation and adherence

Physical inactivity is an increasingly serious global health problem, which implies a strong need for effective and engaging interventions. Smartphone technology offers new possibilities to address physical activity promotion. For app-based interventions to have an impact, both the effectiveness and user appreciation of the app are important. In this paper, we explore the user appreciation of the Active2Gether intervention, which offers personalized coaching to increase physical activity levels in daily life. The results are compared to the evaluation of a simplified version of the Active2Gether app (in which no coaching messages are sent) and the Fitbit app. Overall, the results reveal that users of a physical activity app appreciate a coaching feature to be included (on top of self-monitoring functionalities), but are also critical of how it is implemented (in terms of the number and content of the messages). The results also show that it is important to find a balance in the number of messages sent: too many messages seem to be perceived as annoying, but on the other hand, such system-initiated user interaction seems to reduce dropout.