Office workers tend not to move about during work hours. A series of medical observational studies
have shown that extended sitting is associated with several negative health outcomes including
obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), breast and colon cancer and premature
mortality. Therefore, developing ways to encourage physical activity and breaking the habit of
prolonged sitting in offices is urgently needed. Few studies, however, have investigated the nature
of local movement and mobility in workspaces in depth and taking a cross disciplinary approach.
This paper reports on an ongoing cross-disciplinary research project targeted at increasing physical
activity of office workers while reducing prolonged sitting. Our collaboration between the
departments of Informatics, Public Health and Clinical Medicine and the Design School at Umeå
University resulted in two ethnographic studies. This led to the development and implementation of
two prototypes referred to as the “NEAT Lamp” and the “Talking Tree”. The “NEAT Lamp” is a
simple sensor-based lamp that was evaluated in situ in our second ethnographic study. The results
of this study deepened our understanding of local movement and mobility in offices and resulted in
the design of a second prototype, the “Talking Tree”. Using the knowledge gained through our
ethnographic studies and the experience of using the prototypes, we were able to develop a
conceptual framework for describing the patterns of local movement and mobility of office workers.
This paper describes the process leading to the development of this framework. Moreover, it
highlights how this process benefited from the cross-disciplinary nature of the project.