The Designing Pacing Technologies research project explores how people with chronic illnesses that include the symptom of fatigue use commercially available fitness tracking technologies to manage their energy levels. This research is inspired by my own experience of having long COVID since 2020 and having managed my recovery through using a Fitbit tracking device in my paper Self-tracking to do less: An autoethnography of long COVID that informs the design of pacing technologies. 

This experience led me to conduct an interview study on people with long COVID who use fitness tracking technologies to manage and understand their illness. The results of this research is presented in the peer-reviewed paper below published at the Designing Interactive Systems Conference in July 2024. Our research contributes design openings for the development of self-tracking technologies that are designed specifically for people with energy limiting conditions such as long COVID and ME/CFS to help them manage their energy levels and to avoid post-exertion malaise. These design opening include the importance of customization and supporting the user in their recovery if appropriate, applying strategies for mitigating anxiety when tracking, facilitating the sharing of pacing data with friends and family and healthcare providers, and supporting users in identifying the optimal components of rest.  

The next steps of our research project include using co-design methods to develop prototypes to propose how pacing technologies could live up to these recommendations. 

We thank our research participants and the Covid-19 Research Involvement Group for support with recruitment of participants.