The Office Flower
An interactive prototype in the form of a flower that blooms as a team progresses toward a shared step goal, visualizing and encouraging collective physical activity.
This project, developed in collaboration with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Prevention (LBI DHP), explored how technology can foster long-term engagement in physical activity through social motivation. Building on LBI DHP’s Shared Achievements multiplayer step-counter game, we sought to enhance the visibility and motivational impact of team-based step tracking by designing an interactive, ambient display.
Our solution consists of a mobile app and a physical prototype, the flower, tailored for office environments. The app records step data via GoogleFit or AppleHealth, while the flower, placed in a shared space, gradually blooms as the team progresses toward a collective goal. Users can send encouragement via the app or by physically interacting with the flower—lifting or shaking it—to trigger motivational messages. A subtle competitive element is introduced by color-coding each team member’s contributions, with the flower lighting up in the color of the most recent step donor.
By making shared achievements tangible and interactive, this system fosters accountability, engagement, and a sense of collective success in an everyday setting.
This project resulted in a pictorial developed as part of my coursework during the Master’s program in Human-Computer Interaction at Paris Lodron University Salzburg. It was not submitted to or published in any academic journals or conferences, but serves as a standalone exploration of the topic through design and visual storytelling.