UNIVERSITY OF MACAU

Study on Health &Fitness

Applicationcondition

Cheryl Ng, 吳吳吳2014/12/9

Abstract: This thesis focus on the burgeoning sport training application, to study the reason why they will be a go-go business.And conducted a survey of the uses to these sport apps, hoped we can analyze the truth of the development of sport training apps by these data. Keywords: sport training application, Questionnaire, Interview, New Media

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Catalogue 1. Introduction......................................1

Study Backgrounds....................................1

Significance......................................1

Definition...........................................1

2. Literature Review.................................2

The Prevalent Rates of Mobile Device applications. 2

The Related Studies On Health & Fitness Apps......3

Survey............................................3

3. Methodology.......................................4

Research Method...................................4

4. Findings..........................................6

People who always do sports tend to use health &

fitness apps......................................6

The effect of health & fitness apps is not obvious

currently.........................................7

The social functions are not enough now...........7

Demassification is the future development of health

& fitness apps....................................8

5. Conclusion........................................9

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Study Conclusion..................................9

6. Bibliography.....................................10

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1.Introduction

Study Backgrounds

With the development of the science and technology, the

global appetite for mobile applications (simply as “apps”) was

exploding these few years, and many application companies

produced various types of apps. In recent years, the Health &

Fitness apps act more and more attention. Different types of

these apps, including Nike+ Running, Nike training club (NTC),

Endomondo Sports Tracker, Codoon, 7-ELEVEN Calories Diary,

offer various types of functions to cater for the crowds. The

apps companies in mainland China are seeing it to, so all the

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methods above will accelerate the development of Chinese

Health & Fitness apps.

Significance

This study uses both questionnaire and in-depth interviews,

to investigate the impact of Health & Fitness apps and the

future development of them. It is a breakthrough because there

are few related studies in mainland China. So this study

intends to identify major successful reason of the Health &

Fitness apps. And draw a conclusion that the future directions

of this apps. Hope the work offers references and experiences

for developing and popularizing various Health & Fitness apps.

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Definition

Health & Fitness apps

Applications are the software which can install in the mobile

device, Health & Fitness apps is one of them. The main

function of Health & Fitness apps is helping people gain the

better effect and user experience during do some sports and

daily life. At present, Nike+ Running, Nike training club

(NTC), Endomondo Sports Tracker, Codoon are the most popular

apps in the apps market. Their function including complete

special training, keep-fit, get professional guidance, share

the experience for others and book the sports field. The

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Healthy & Fitness apps in mainland China were also out of

homeopathy makes the apps market competitive fierce.

Survey

This method can be used for descriptive, explanatory, and

exploratory purposes. And it provides a group of respondents

whose characteristics may be taken to reflect those of the

most people, and the questionnaires provide data in the same

form from all respondents.( Earl Babbie, 2010, p.254) Earl

Babbie is a famous scholar of research method filed, his book

“The Practice Of Social Research” is authoritativeness and

useful. So this study design mainly comes from his theories in

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the book.

2.Literature Review

The Prevalent Rates of Mobile Device applications

2014 is an important year of mobile device. According China

Internet Network Formation Center (CNNIC) data, 83.4% of

netizens in China used mobile phone, it is the first time the

mobile terminal surpassed the use rate of traditional PC

(80.9%). As the first Internet terminal, mobile phone in the

driver's seat and can gain more attention. (CNNIC, 2014). With

the production development and scientific advancement, the

Internet is all to the people living in various fields and

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levels of infiltration. Except for traditional consumption and

entertainment, mobile lifestyle, mobile commerce and mobile

medical system have become an indispensable tool in our life,

and made the neizens’ lives more “networking”.

The Related Studies On Health & Fitness Apps

Actually, there are few domestic reports about mobile phone

applications, especially the Health & Fitness Apps. But Taiwan

scholar, Xi-Wun Chen and Wu-Chou Chen in National Taiwan Sport

University, had investigated the situations of mobile phone

Apps in sports exercise. They were just as good at finding the

sport tracking type apps, which had popular in recent years.

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They offered that these apps should combined with the social

network and took the social communicate function. (Xi-Wun Chen

and Wu-Chou Chen，2014). From academic layer, this is the many

people’s hope to the applications, and varieties of apps

companies are improving their function to cater user’s social

needs.

In view of recent development of wearable equipment, some

investigators put their eyes on the combination of mobile apps

and wearable equipment. They develop and advanced golf sport

training platform using body sensor network on cloud, makes

the users can learn golf by using this application. This

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research shown the probability of the combination mentioned,

and offer a new idea for us to improve the function of Health

& Fitness apps.

Survey

Questionnaire and interview belong to the survey research,

which a method frequently is used to observation.

Questionnaire have often been use when the new production on

its way. However, these thought would make the questionnaire

too rigid and constricting. So we should combine different

methods with questionnaire, and tried to perfect the studies’

methodology. (Guo Jinran, 2014)

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In many research, questionnaire is abusive, though the return

on questionnaire was high in university, the limitation of

surveys population is obviously, usually are the young people.

(Fang Qianhua, 2008). This study would try to avoid these

problems by combine other methods.

In order to remedy the problems which mention before, we

would use interview for this research as supplementary.

Because the interview can show the realistic intention of the

interviewee. (Wang Qingfeng, 2014). It benefits the

completeness of the whole research.

3.Methodology 9 / 26

Research Method

Research Subjects

This study used both audience survey and interview. The

target audiences are young people in the 18-45 demographic who

use smartphone. The response rate was 85 % and 48

questionnaires were available.

Because we consider many possibilities, so we add some

explanation in the questionnaire for the people who don’t know

the Health & Fitness apps. And there are many questions for

them, to investigate their thought of this new software.

The data entry by excel 2010, and the data analysis would by

the formula.

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Considering there are many detailed related to this study,

the interviewee of interview would be chosen from the

questionnaire. And for the stake of time limit, the interview

lasted almost ten minutes, and we would try to detect their

though from expression, posture and movement. The details of

the interview would record by me and we would provide a

template in the attachments. Hope all of these methods can

complete the whole research by interview.

Questionnaire

This questionnaire total has 15 questions, from the

elementary to the profound. Because we have interview, most of

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the questions in the questionnaire are closed-ended questions,

it can guarantee the uniformity of audiences.

The related questionnaire attached, please check.

Open Interview Program

The study invited 6 people to investigate the use condition

of Health & Fitness apps in modern people. Most of them are

different gender, age, occupation and have some cognizance of

Health& Fitness apps.

Open interview program have 10 questions, all of them are

open-ended questions, including the user experience, the

suggestion and the social function. By interview, we can

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realize the deep - root cause of the popularity of these apps.

The related Open Interview Program attached, please check.

4.Findings

People who always do sports tend to use health & fitness apps.

The contingency table of the survey are shown below. Because

there are 8 people only answer the 15th questions, I did some

revise, and put their data in the last two sanctions.

Table 1

The Relationship Between the Frequnencyof People Do Sport And

the Use of Apps

The frequency of The amount of use Health & Fitness apps

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do sports a month Every

times

Frequently

used.

Seldom No Sum

More than 4 times

a week.

3 0 0 0 3

2-3 times a week 7 3 2 0 12

Biweekly 3 7 2 10 22

Almost once a

month

0 2 1 6 9

Sum 13 12 5 16

Figure 1: the tau-y formula of their relationship.

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From the data, we can came to the conclusion that people who

do more sport intend to use the Health & Fitness apps more

times.

The effect of health & fitness apps is not obvious currently.

According the grades for the satisfaction of these apps,

almost 75% people(30 people) chose the low and medium grade(1-

3 grades). It is the early stage of these apps, so people have

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a lot of suggestions on it. Most of respondent think the apps

just for fun, even the guy who use the apps frequently, they

don’t really believe the effect of these apps in the mobile

phones .In the interview, interviewees have many ideas to

improve the apps’ user experience. For example, improve the

application’s accuracy and sensitiveness to measure have a

recurrent theme of the interviewees, they hope the precisely

calculated would help them more during they are doing sports.

The social functions are not enough now.

In the open-ended question and the interview, many people

pointed out than the Health & Fitness apps in China, have less

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social functions. (28 people think the social function is the

most dislike part in the apps.) But the funny thing is most of

them don’t want to communicate with strange people in the

apps, they eager to do sports, have new sport class or mutual

check with families and friends, they have less interest in

the online community. So should the application developers

continue to develop the online community or focus on the

familiar people’s communication? It would be a research issue.

Demassification is the future development of health & fitness apps.

The development of mass media is very speedy, and the

mainstream media dominates most of social trend. However,

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demassification is another develop trend in recent years. In

the research, we find that people, who always play sports, use

more than one application in daily lives. The reason

including: different apps were differently qualified; protect

privacy; cater different needs and so on. According to these

reasons, it can be find out that make the production more

cater to the target audience better than make the production

cater to everyone.

In the interview, people also think use different apps in

daily lives is not a trouble work, but can feel more

satisfied. And most of them considered that the apps which

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only skilled in one thing, would be more professional.

5.Conclusion

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Study Conclusion

Taken as a whole, this study was fruitful. We found out that

the use conditions of Health & Fitness apps, and came to

conclusion that the main reason that why these apps are

popular.

1. Health & Fitness apps have become popular in particular

individuals at the early stage, but more and more popular

nowadays. With the development of smart phone, more and more

people intend to make their lives better and faster by use

mobile phone. During they are doing sports, there is no doubt

that using Health & Fitness apps would help a lot. It makes

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people rely on these apps and expands the influence and

reputation of the applications.

2. Refining product and optimizing quality are better than

extending the Scale. According the data, people favored a

professional application has one function not an application

with everything. So, how to refine the production to cater to

the demassification is a important issue to the developer.

3. The social function must target your exact audience, it

would be wrong to design the useless function just for the

trend not the audience’s needs. Compared to meet strange

people online when doing sports, people like to talk about

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their training experience with families and friends. So the

companies should be very careful to design the social

function.

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