IIITH study: Indians mix app use

Fitness apps measure steps, calories, and workouts. A new IIIT Hyderabad study says many young urban Indians use those numbers as one input, not as orders. (dl.acm.org) The paper is titled “Everyday HCI of Adaptive Fitness: The Bricolage of Self-Tracking in Urban India.” It was presented at the 2026 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held April 13 to 17 in Barcelona. (dl.acm.org) (programs.sigchi.org) The authors are Shivam Singh, Raagav Ramakrishnan, and Chetan Mahipal of IIIT Hyderabad, with Nimmi Rangaswamy. Their abstract says global fitness platforms often assume standardized routines that do not fit urban India’s local conditions. (dl.acm.org) Self-tracking is the basic idea behind these apps: count activity, log food, compare it to a target, then adjust behavior. The study argues that this model works like a template, and users in India often rewrite the template as they go. (dl.acm.org) The researchers use the term “bricolage,” which in plain language means building a workable system from whatever tools are available. In this case, that meant combining apps with handwritten logs, progress photos, timers, and conversations in the gym. (dl.acm.org) (blogs.iiit.ac.in) EdexLive reported the project as a year-long qualitative study with around 25 participants ages 18 to 40, across cities including Hyderabad and Gwalior. The team used in-depth interviews and participant observation in gyms to watch how routines and app use changed in practice. (edexlive.com) Participants did not reject technology outright. They often kept a smartwatch for steps or a phone timer for sets, but moved other parts of tracking offline or into social routines with trainers, friends, and other gym-goers. (blogs.iiit.ac.in) (edexlive.com) Food was a repeated friction point. Reporting on the study said participants felt apps struggled with home-cooked meals, combinations such as dal and roti, variable use of ghee, and meal patterns shaped by family schedules. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) (blogs.iiit.ac.in) Climate also changed how people read the data. Participants said heat and humidity in places such as Chennai could alter workouts enough that app targets felt detached from what their bodies were actually doing. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) (blogs.iiit.ac.in) The study also describes routines bending around festivals, weddings, and family meals. Instead of treating those interruptions as failure, participants often reset goals, paused logging, or relied on habit and self-awareness until routines stabilized again. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) (edexlive.com) Rangaswamy told local outlets that the point is not to design apps only around Indian habits. The point is that products built for global use need to be more sensitive to local food, weather, schedules, and social life. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) That leaves the paper with a narrower claim than “apps do not work.” The claim is that many users in urban India already make them work by turning rigid tracking systems into flexible, local routines. (dl.acm.org)