AWAIT
Active Waiting with AI Tailoring
To promote physical activity in everyday life, we developed a digital health intervention called Active Waiting. Active Waiting targets waiting times, which we often spend on our mobile phones anyway, and encourages and makes it decisively easy to replace waiting with short bouts of exercise. This is achieved by addressing common barriers to physical activity such as time, effort, and high costs by providing a low-friction, easy-to-use solution that requires no login or user data.
The AWAIT study integrates GenAI into Active Waiting to explore whether contextualised exercise guidance increases perceived appropriateness of exercises and willingness to execute by users.
Research Objectives:
- To evaluate how AI-enabled task guidance influences user experience while using Active Waiting, compared to a standard/generic approach, across various environments
- To explore how environmental characteristics influence app usability and perceived effectiveness, as well as effectiveness/accuracy of AI output
- To assess whether the AI-enabled version increases the perceived appropriateness of exercises and willingness to execute
Hypotheses:
- The AI-enabled version will have higher overall user satisfaction than the standard version
- Environments with certain characteristics (eg. cramped, risky, or containing specific equipment) will show a greater benefit from the AI-enabled recommendations
- Users will have a preference for the AI-enabled version due to its contextual relevance
How it works:
Users can use the Active Waiting application to take a picture of their current environment, the AI will then recommend suitable exercises to them based on the characteristics of the environment and the preferences of the user.
Related publications:
- Young F, Alexandrovsky D, Wurhofer D, Krah E, Smeddinck JD. “Shared Achievements: Exploring the Design of Gameful Collaborative Elements and Fostering Social Relatedness Through Team Effort Contributions in a Social Physical Activity Application.” In dHealth 2025 , pp. 7-9. IOS Press, 2025. doi:10.3233/SHTI250149
>> Link - Wurhofer D, Maislinger M, Krah E, Kulnik ST, Treff G, Neudorfer M, Young F, Niebauer J, Smeddinck JD. “Active Waiting: Facilitating Short Bouts of Exercise During Idle Times for Promoting Physical Activity in Daily Living.” In dHealth 2025 , pp. 90-97. IOS Press, 2025. doi:10.3233/SHTI250167
>> Link - Young F, Veikoum D, Tkacz J, Wurhofer D, Smeddinck J. “Active Audio Adventures: Exploring Story-Based Motivation and Comparing Navigation Modalities for Enabling Physical Activity in a Location-Based Game”. (2025) Mensch und Computer 2025 – Workshopband. DOI: 10.18420/muc2025-mci-wip-286. Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. MCI: Work in Progress. Chemnitz. 31. August – 03. September 2025
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