Fitter, Happier, More Productive? The Normative Ontology of Fitness Trackers

Fitness trackers promise a longer and better life for the people who engage with them. What is forgotten in their analysis for HCI, though, is how they re-conceptualise the very notion of what constitutes a 'step'. We discuss everyday edge cases illustrating how fitness trackers fail to address goals and ideals of people using them. They merely re-affirm the fitness of already fit people and can have an adversarial effect on others. For future designers, we offer strategies to become aware of their own biases and provide implications for designers potentially leading to more non-normative and diverse designs of trackers.