ORCID

Abstract

Outdoor movement supports older adults' health and wellbeing, yet participation is constrained by environmental, physical, and social barriers. Existing technologies often prioritise clinical risk management and quantified functional metrics, and rarely integrate older adults' lived experience alongside physical activity experts' perspectives in early design. We conducted four focus group workshops with 24 urban dwelling older adults (63 to 91 years) and semi structured online interviews with 11 physical activity experts. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and grounded theory coding, then triangulated to identify convergent themes, divergent perspectives, and complementary views. Key tensions concerned risk management versus independence, clinical benchmarks versus personal enjoyment, and differing conceptualisations of support. We propose (1) embedding emotional and social value alongside clinical goals, (2) supporting autonomy while ensuring safety, and (3) incorporating intergenerational activity into technology installation in public outdoors spaces to support movement for older adults.

Keywords

Co-design, Domain Experts, Interactive Technology, older adults, Outdoor Movements, Physical Activities

Publication Date

2026-07-04

Event

1st ACM Interactive Health Conference, IH 2026

Publication Title

IH 2026 - Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Interactive Health Conference

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

ISBN

9798400724220

Deposit Date

2026-09-24

Funding

This work was conducted with the financial support of the Research Ireland Centre for Research Training in Digitally-Enhanced Reality (d-real) under Grant No. 18/CRT/6224.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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