Exercise Fakeouts
A watch face that shows how you moved, so there’s no number left to fake.
Fitness trackers reward a number, and people learn to game it: a shaken wrist, a workout that never happened, a streak kept alive. Over three weeks at Indiana University, our team of four redesigned the tracker around how you move instead of how many steps you log: an abstract watch face with friendly nudges.
We shared the research, interviews, surveys and usability testing. I designed the experience itself: the wireframes, the final interface and the abstract visual system behind the watch face.
Design & research
3 weeks, fall 2023
Sriram Hemanth Kumar
Tanya Bansal
Shantanu Thorat
Tanmayee Pemmaraju
Figma
Photoshop
Miro
Jordan’s world
Our story follows Jordan, a composite of the twentysomethings we interviewed.
Jordan
21, a student who checks the watch every day
Jordan’s day is measured in steps. Hitting the goal feels like a win, and missing it feels like failing. Some nights, a few shakes of the wrist keep the streak alive.
We called that move a fakeout: padding the numbers to meet a goal, on purpose or not. Jordan wasn’t unusual.
70%
of Gen Z adults, 18 to 25, say they regularly wear a smartwatch. Jordan’s generation lives with one on the wrist.
Source: ValuePenguin survey of 1,537 US adults, 202291%
of the people we surveyed track steps, yet many said the count doesn’t reflect real effort.
Source: Our survey, 30+ responsesThe call
The brief came from our Introduction to HCI/d class, INFO I541, in fall 2023.
The brief
Create or modify an activity tracker that links to a wearable and helps people be healthier, by changing what they believe is good for them and rewarding real activity instead of the usual cheats.
We focused on people in their twenties: quick to try new technology, conscious of their health, and under real pressure to share their progress with friends.
What we heard
We read what’s known about trackers and motivation, then ran 10+ interviews and a survey with 30+ responses. Three findings framed everything after: a step count says nothing about how hard you worked, unrealistic goals make people give up altogether, and small steps forward keep them going.
The number is the goal
- Motivated by hitting “X” steps, and deflated when they don’t
- Exaggerate their activity to others
- Push too hard to make up a missed goal
Numbers without meaning
- Too much data, and hard to read
- Steps say nothing about how hard they worked
- Notifications that nag instead of help
What keeps them going
- A small, reachable aim
- A kind word or an animation at the right moment
- Feeling accountable, without comparing
“When I fake out, I feel kind of guilty. And sometimes I feel like I’m stepping out of the fitness track altogether.”
“Sometimes I find myself gaming the tracker, shaking my wrist or logging fake workouts just to keep my streak.”
“Numbers are essential, but they should be easy to interpret, much like a car’s speedometer. The data is good to have, but it doesn’t tell me what it means; it’s just a number on the watch.”
“Steps alone don’t tell the full story. I can hit my daily goal without actually pushing myself.”
Interviews were anonymous, so quotes carry a role and an age
The turn
What changed the project
The fakeout wasn’t the problem. The goal was.
People were chasing a preset step count. Falling short left them dissatisfied, and that’s what led to exaggerating and faking. Punishing the cheat would only add pressure. Taking away the number to cheat on would remove the reason.
Same steps
In a trial of 162 adults, people shown a lowered step count felt their activity was inadequate and felt worse, though they hadn’t moved any less.
Source: Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2023Less fun
Across six experiments, measuring an activity made people do more of it but enjoy it less. It started to feel like work.
Source: Journal of Consumer Research, 2016The model trackers teach
- Start a workout
- Hit the goal
- Get rewarded
The model we designed for
- Move
- See how it went
- Feel encouraged
How might we
shift motivation away from rigid step goals, while still encouraging people to move?
First drafts
We storyboarded Jordan’s day before drawing a single screen: a watch that checks in, cheers at the right moment, and shows the day as shapes instead of a total.
1. The watch asks how the day looks
2. Relaxed, stressed or routine
3. On the walk to class, a quiet “on track”
4. A “keep going” when it counts
5. Sitting too long? A nudge to walk
6. By 11:00, the morning shows on the face
7. Bigger shapes where the movement was
Then I drew the wireframes. My first flow still leaned on the count, asking people to guess their steps and celebrating a good guess. It kept the number at the center, so the next round moved activity onto the clock face itself, as dots around the hours.
A face without a number
The final design is a watch face built on an abstract visual system I designed. It never shows a step count. Instead, the day builds up as soft colour around the dial.
Where it glows is when
Movement sits at the hour it happened, so the face reads as the day so far.
The colour is how
Each kind of movement has its own colour, and a harder effort has a second one.
No count to pad
With nothing to total up, a shaken wrist earns nothing worth having.
Detail on request
A tap opens the day’s mix and the minutes behind it.
The colour key
- Walk
- Brisk walk
- Run
- Hard run
- Stand
- Sit
From a glance to the detail
1. The face at a glance
2. A tap shows the day’s mix
3. Then the minutes behind it
Alongside the face, the avatar carries the encouragement people asked for. Its mood follows the day, and a nudge to walk arrives after a long sit, worded as an invitation rather than an alarm.
“Zzzzz”
“!!”
“Let’s go for a walk”
Testing it
We printed the second round of wireframes and tested them as paper prototypes with three students in their twenties: quick to make, cheap to change, and early enough to matter.
Student, 24
- Asked what each feature actually does for them
- Found the colours unclear
- Called it self-reflective
Student, 23
- Found it interesting and self-reflective
- Would feel motivated at first, but when busy would ignore a nudge to move
Student, 24
- Interesting at first
- Might get irritated by the messages
- Said the watch face alone would motivate him
That gave us three changes to make: messages that sound natural and suggest rather than push, a clearer way to read the face, and a line or two on why an activity is good for you.
Answering the brief
Back where Jordan started, here’s how the design answers each part of what we were asked.
“Links to a wearable device”
It lives on the watch face, the one screen Jordan already checks every day.
“Alter the mental model of what’s beneficial”
The face shows how Jordan moved, not how far. A brisk walk and a stroll look different, so effort becomes the thing worth seeing.
“Reward real activity, not cheats”
There’s no total to reach, so there’s nothing to fake and no streak to protect. Only real movement changes the face.
“Empower users to be healthier”
Nudges arrive when sitting runs long and praise when the day goes well, in a voice that encourages instead of judging.
What I’d carry forward
Remove the number, remove the reason to cheat
Every fakeout we heard about protected a goal. Designing out the goal did more than any rule against cheating could.
Abstract needs a way in
Testers liked the face but couldn’t read the colours at first. A first-run key, or labels on tap, would carry them through the first week.
Encouragement wears thin
Messages that delight on day one can annoy by day ten. I’d write them to vary, and let people turn them down.
Test it for weeks, not minutes
Our testers were students, in short sessions. Whether the face changes habits can only show over weeks of wearing it.
Four of us, three weeks
Thanks to Tanya, Shantanu and Tanmayee, who shared the research, the interviews and the testing that this story rests on.
