Darcy Ummels

Patients’ experiences with commercially available activity trackers embedded in physiotherapy treatment | 53 3 the participants ’ mother tongue (Dutch). But even if the manual was written in Dutch, the activity tracker itself, the apps and web portals were still in English instead of Dutch, which still made them hard to understand and operate. “Well, make it clear, add a Dutch manual with it, how the install it [activity tracker] and stuff like that.” Female, 57 years, cancer Most participants felt that their technical abilities were insufficient. The most commonly expressed explanation was their age. Participants were reluctant to try different settings and buttons on the activity tracker as they might do something wrong and lose the data. “No, well, I always think, don’t touch it, you never know what you can do wrong. My son works in IT, and he always says: Mom, you can’t do that, you can always get it [data] back.” Female, 66 years, cardiovascular disease and cancer Some wrote down the data on paper and brought it to the consultation with the physiotherapist because they feared they would lose data and damage the activity tracker. “I think if I do this, I lose everything. Maybe it is very easy if you would do it. But I am afraid that I would do something wrong. I prefer to watch and write down the time and date and number of steps. I take the note with me and say: This is what I have done. I am afraid that I would break something again, and I don’t want that.” Female, 70 years, chronic pain Characteristics of the activity tracker Participants expressed that activity trackers should be as easy to use as possible (e.g., one button). It was hard for them to navigate and find their data in the corresponding app or computer dashboard. Because of the technical and procedural complexity of the activity tracker, they did not try to understand it fully. Some felt if they had tried harder, they would have understood the activity tracker better. “I did find the number of steps, but you had to push buttons to get more information, so you really needed to search. How do I find what I want and what does it all mean? I just didn’t think it was practical.” Male, 41 years, chronic pain This complexity demotivated them to search for the information on the app or dashboard.