JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Spending a great deal of time in sedentary behavior is common among older adults and increases with age. There is a strong need for tools for reducing sedentary time and promoting adherence to reduced sedentary time, for which e-health interventions have a potential to be useful. In creating new e-health interventions, accessibility and effectiveness can be increased by including the end users as co-designers in the development process.

Objective:

To explore desired features of an e-health intervention including self-management for reducing sedentary time and promoting adherence to reduced sedentary time in older adults transitioning from working life to retirement. Further, the aim was to develop a digital prototype of such an e-health intervention.

Methods:

The study used Participatory Design to include end users, researchers, and a web designer as equal partners. Three workshops were conducted with six older adults transitioning to retirement, two researchers, and one web designer. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data from the workshops.

Results:

Participants expressed a desire for an easy-to-use e-health intervention, accessible from mobile phones, tablets, and computers, that could be individualized to the user. The most important features for reducing sedentary time were considered to be those involving finding joyful activities, setting goals, and getting information regarding reduced sedentary time. Participants expressed that the e-health intervention would need to first provide the user with knowledge regarding sedentary time, then offer features for measuring sedentary time and for setting goals, and lastly provide support in finding joyful activities to perform in order to avoid being sedentary. According to the participants, an e-health intervention including self-management for reducing sedentary time in older adults in the transition to retirement should be concise, accessible, and enjoyable. A digital prototype of such an e-health intervention was developed.

Conclusions:

The developed e-health intervention including self-management for reducing sedentary time in older adults transitioning to retirement is intended to facilitate behavior change by encouraging the user to participate in activities that are autonomously motivated to do. It uses several behavior change techniques such as goal setting and action planning by Mental Contrasting and Implementation Intention, and shaping knowledge. Its active components for reducing sedentary time can be explained using the Integrated Behavior Change Model. Further research is needed to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the e-health intervention.