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Abstract
The availability of contextually relevant information is often safety-critical while practicing extreme outdoor sports. Off-piste skiing is not an exception. This activity requires group communication and information sharing before, during, and after each descent. We are reporting on the results of an exploratory research study that we conducted with an experienced group of seven backcountry skiers. Using grounded theory methods to evaluate data from participants, we discovered that "Sharing" is one of the key pillars contributing to a positive skiing experience. This poster describes current information sharing practices that emerged from the data analysis. We also present several design ideas from our participants for mobile and wearable devices / services to assist backcountry winter activities in the stages of planning, execution and follow-up.
... A plethora of dedicated ski apps available in today's app stores do support such sharing, yet interaction with a smartphone is often inconvenient on the slope due to harsh environmental conditions and/or cumbersome gear (e.g., gloves) [8]. Based on design requirements that we extracted from prior work [5,7,28], we developed SkiAR, a wearable augmented reality (AR) system that supports groups of skiers and snowboarders with their on-slope decision making processes. SkiAR offers a novel way to share personal content in situ using wearable AR equipment and a printed resort map. ...
... The sharing of personal and contextual information among members of a winter sports group is not only crucial for safety, but also often one of the key ingredients to a positive skiing experience [7]. An empirical study by Fedosov and Langheinrich [7] with a group of backcountry skiers showed that the most important information they shared within a group were reference information necessary for descent, upto-date location of skier in a group and captured photos and videos. ...
... The sharing of personal and contextual information among members of a winter sports group is not only crucial for safety, but also often one of the key ingredients to a positive skiing experience [7]. An empirical study by Fedosov and Langheinrich [7] with a group of backcountry skiers showed that the most important information they shared within a group were reference information necessary for descent, upto-date location of skier in a group and captured photos and videos. Consequently, our first prototype supports sharing four types of GPS-enriched content: pictures, tracks, points of interests (POIs), and hazards. ...
Winter sports like skiing and snowboarding are often group activities. Groups of skiers and snowboarders traditionally use paper maps or board-mounted larger-scale maps near ski lifts to aid decision making: which slope to take next, where to have lunch, or what hazards to avoid when going off-piste. To enrich those static maps with personal content (e.g., pictures, prior routes taken, or hazards encountered), we developed SkiAR – a wearable augmented reality system that allows groups of skiers and snowboarders to share such content on a printed panoramic resort map. The contribution of our work is twofold: (1) we developed a system that offers a novel way to review and share personal content in situ while on the slope using a resort map; (2) we report on the results from a qualitative analysis of two user studies to inform the design and validate the usability and perceived usefulness of our prototype.
... However, as we will discuss in more detail in the following, there is an increasing body of HCI literature that explores designs to better support outdoor activities [13,31,35,41,46,50] and draws inspiration from the outdoors for design [25,47,49]. More fundamentally, the outdoors as an idea has played a role in efforts to rethink the use and non-use of digital technology. ...
... Topics covered in HCI research on the outdoors range from sports to recreational activities with technologies, focusing on community building and fostering safety [13], motivation [31], exploring embodiment [35], optimizing performance [46,50], or removing disruptions [41]. Some studies, such as Muller and Muirhead's 'jogging with a quadcopter' project [35], emphasize how technology might enhance certain experiences, while others, such as Pielot et al.'s exploratory bicycle navigation system [39], aim to minimize the use of technology relative to the experience. ...
We present a study of long-term outdoor activities, based on altogether 34 interviews with 19 participants. Our goal was not only to explore these enjoyable experiences, but more broadly to examine how technology use was recontextualized 'away' from the everyday. Outdoor activities are commonly presented as an escape from our technology-infused world. In contrast, our interviews reveal experiences that are heavily dependent on technology, both digital and not. However, digital technology - and in particular the mobile phone - is reconfigured when taken out of its ordinary, often urban and indoor, context. We first present a diversity of 'aways' during outdoor activities by depicting cherished freedoms and interpersonal preferences. We then describe how participants managed connection and disconnection while away and upon coming back. To conclude, we discuss how constructions of away can support more purposeful engagements with digital technology, and how pointed (dis)connection can be useful for technology design also in non-outdoor settings.
... Another example was provided by Kajastile et al. [6] who collected requirements for information sharing and planning in climbing. Fedosov et al. [4] co-designed some prototypes with backcountry skiers. However, no past research has explored how to design technology for sharing in different sports taking in account common features and differences of those sport. ...
... On the other hand, skiers would generously share captured pictures and videos from their days outdoors, despite the extra effort required to edit and assemble content generated by a group (e.g. cutting best video footage) [4]. Conversely, climbers usually did not share trainings or regular trips, but just exceptional personal achievements, which were less frequent. ...
Online social networks have made the sharing of personal experiences with others -- mostly in form of photos and comments -- a common activity. At the same time, an ever increasing number of dedicated sport tracking apps on our smartphones allow us to record statistical and biometric parameters from our workouts and, subsequently, share them with family, friends, and other followers. However, it is unclear if the available set of tracking parameters (such as an average speed, or calories burnt during a sports activity) is expressive enough when it comes to sharing in different sports. In our ongoing meta-study across three outdoor mountain sports, we have investigated whether those tracking apps meet the actual sharing requirements of amateur skiers, climbers, and trail runners. Ultimately, we aim to identify both universal and sport-specific needs for sharing. In this paper, we discuss our initial insights.
... The sharing of personal and contextual information among members of a winter sports group is not only crucial for safety but also one of the ingredients of a positive skiing experience [1]. An empirical study by Fedosov and Langheinrich [1] with a group of backcountry skiers showed that the most important information they shared within a group were: (a) reference information necessary for descent (e.g., the time left until sunset, the operational hours of a ski lift at a particular location, conditions of the slope with detailed information about potential hazards during descent); (b) up-to-date location of skiers in a group and (c) personal media items (photos and videos). ...
... The sharing of personal and contextual information among members of a winter sports group is not only crucial for safety but also one of the ingredients of a positive skiing experience [1]. An empirical study by Fedosov and Langheinrich [1] with a group of backcountry skiers showed that the most important information they shared within a group were: (a) reference information necessary for descent (e.g., the time left until sunset, the operational hours of a ski lift at a particular location, conditions of the slope with detailed information about potential hazards during descent); (b) up-to-date location of skiers in a group and (c) personal media items (photos and videos). Consequently, our first prototype supports sharing four types of GPS-enriched content: pictures, tracks, points of interests (POIs), and hazards. ...
Winter sports like skiing and snowboarding are often group activities. Groups of skiers and snowboarders traditionally use folded paper maps or board-mounted larger-scale maps near ski lifts to aid decision making: which slope to take next, where to have lunch, or what hazards to avoid when going off-piste. To enrich those static maps with personal content (e.g., pictures, prior routes taken, or hazards encountered), we developed SkiAR, a wearable augmented reality system that allows groups of skiers and snowboarders to share such content in-situ on a printed resort map while on the slope.
... Prior research in ubiquitous computing related to the outdoors context in winter is scarce, but some examples exist. In the winter sports domain, Fedosov et al. have investigated social behavior in ski lifts [13] and cross country skiing [12]. Shiraishi et al. have demonstrated a wearable safety armor, to be used while skiing [37]. ...
Winter sports define a wide variety of different activities, which are adopted especially in northern countries. The winter context sets special requirements for designing interactive systems, as the activities are typically conducted in cold temperatures, with heavier clothing and equipment than summer sports. This chapter describes the authors’ experiences when designing, prototyping, and evaluating computational enhancements for use in outdoor winter sports. The chapter presents four case studies addressing different winter sports, namely cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, snowboarding, and ice skating. As a conclusion, we discuss the common themes, challenges, and lessons learnt from the case studies as a whole.
... Portions of this chapter are also published at MobileHCI'15[Fedosov and Langheinrich, 2015], Augmented Human'16[Fedosov, Elhart, Niforatos, North and Langheinrich, 2016],MUM'16 [Fedosov, Niforatos, Elhart, Schneider, Anisimov and Langheinrich, 2016], DIS'17[Wozniak et al., 2017], and CHI'19[Fedosov, Stancu, Di Lascio, Eynard and Langheinrich, 2019]. ...
Online social networks have made sharing personal experiences with others – mostly in the form of photos and comments – a common activity. The convergence of social, mobile, cloud and wearable computing has expanded the scope of user-generated and shared content on the net from personal media to individual preferences to physiological details (e.g., in the form of daily workouts) to information about real-world possessions (e.g., apartments, cars). Once everyday things become increasingly networked (i.e., the Internet of Things), future online services and connected devices will only expand the set of “things” to share. Given that a new generation of sharing services is about to emerge, it is of crucial importance to provide service designers with the right insights to adequately support novel sharing practices. This work explores these practices within two emergent sharing domains: (1) personal activity tracking and (2) “sharing economy” services. The goal of this dissertation is to understand current practices of sharing personal digital and physical possessions, and to uncover corresponding end-user needs and concerns across novel sharing practices, in order to map the design space to support emergent and future sharing needs. We address this goal by adopting two research strategies, one using a bottom-up approach, the other following a top-down approach. In the bottom-up approach, we examine in-depth novel sharing practices within two emergent sharing domains through a set of empirical qualitative studies. We offer a rich and descriptive account of peoples’ sharing routines and characterize the specific role of interactive technologies that support or inhibit sharing in those domains. We then design, develop, and deploy several technology prototypes that afford digital and physical sharing with the view to informing the design of future sharing services and tools within two domains, personal activity tracking and sharing economy services. In the top-down approach, drawing on scholarship in human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design, we systematically examine prior work on current technology-mediated sharing practices and identify a set of commonalities and differences among sharing digital and physical artifacts. Based upon these findings, we further argue that many challenges and issues that are present in digital online sharing are also highly relevant for the physical sharing in the context of the sharing economy, especially when the shared physical objects have digital representations and are mediated by an online platform. To account for these particularities, we develop and field-test an action-driven toolkit for design practitioners to both support the creation of future sharing economy platforms and services, as well as to improve the user experience of existing services. This dissertation should be of particular interest to HCI and interaction design researchers who are critically exploring technology-mediated sharing practices through fieldwork studies, as well to design practitioners who are building and evaluating sharing economy services.
... In our first inquiry, we conducted a set of in-depth qualitative interviews with amateur skiers to describe their sharing practices in greater detail. We looked at skiers sharing practices not in isolation but as a constitutive activity for decision-1 Portions of this chapter are also published at MobileHCI'15 [Fedosov and Langheinrich, 2015], Augmented Human'16 [Fedosov, Elhart, Niforatos, North and Langheinrich, 2016], MUM'16 [Fedosov, Niforatos, Elhart, Schneider, Anisimov and Langheinrich, 2016], DIS'17 [Wozniak et al., 2017], and CHI'19 [Fedosov, Stancu, Di Lascio, Eynard and Langheinrich, 2019]. making and planning. ...
Online social networks have made sharing personal experiences with others mostly in form of photos and comments a common activity. The convergenceof social, mobile, cloud and wearable computing expanded the scope of usergeneratedand shared content on the net from personal media to individual preferencesto physiological details (e.g., in the form of daily workouts) to informationabout real-world possessions (e.g., apartments, cars). Once everydaythings become increasingly networked (i.e., the Internet of Things), future onlineservices and connected devices will only expand the set of things to share. Given that a new generation of sharing services is about to emerge, it is of crucialimportance to provide service designers with the right insights to adequatelysupport novel sharing practices. This work explores these practices within twoemergent sharing domains: (1) personal activity tracking and (2) sharing economyservices. The goal of this dissertation is to understand current practices ofsharing personal digital and physical possessions, and to uncover correspondingend-user needs and concerns across novel sharing practices, in order to map thedesign space to support emergent and future sharing needs. We address this goalby adopting two research strategies, one using a bottom-up approach, the otherfollowing a top-down approach.In the bottom-up approach, we examine in-depth novel sharing practices within two emergent sharing domains through a set of empirical qualitative studies.We offer a rich and descriptive account of peoples sharing routines and characterizethe specific role of interactive technologies that support or inhibit sharingin those domains. We then design, develop, and deploy several technology prototypesthat afford digital and physical sharing with the view to informing the design of future sharing services and tools within two domains, personal activitytracking and sharing economy services.In the top-down approach, drawing on scholarship in human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design, we systematically examine prior workon current technology-mediated sharing practices and identify a set of commonalitiesand differences among sharing digital and physical artifacts. Based uponthese findings, we further argue that many challenges and issues that are presentin digital online sharing are also highly relevant for the physical sharing in thecontext of the sharing economy, especially when the shared physical objects havedigital representations and are mediated by an online platform. To account forthese particularities, we develop and field-test an action-driven toolkit for designpractitioners to both support the creation of future sharing economy platformsand services, as well as to improve the user experience of existing services.This dissertation should be of particular interest to HCI and interaction designresearchers who are critically exploring technology-mediated sharing practicesthrough fieldwork studies, as well to design practitioners who are building and evaluating sharing economy services.
... The role of human-computer interaction (HCI) in non-urban outdoor activities has largely been to support predetermined activities [4,8,11,14,15], minimize technology's disruption [6], and to make the experience safer [10], less complex and more predictable [12]. Thus, there's unexplored potential in designing for experiential qualities of confusion, unpredictability and the unknown. ...
This work presents ways into a design space of butterflies in the stomach; a qualia of belly tingling sensation possible of pleasure, discomfort and presence heightening. Three design instances are presented. From and within those are three conceptual directions drawn and exemplified. Conditional availability involves tuning the availability of an interaction to certain geographic locations, environmental conditions and time-of-day in strive for particular aesthetics. Erratic and dubious presence is about making interactions unpredictable and/or feeding a doubt whether the user is engaged in an interaction or not, in strive for confusion and startle. Sensorial evidence of interaction is a way of thinking about narratives within an interaction through elements of planning, exploration and suddenness in strive for experiential qualities like anticipation, surprise, and fascination of discovery. My felt experiences of a two-day camping trip were used as a design resource. Reflections of these experiences were used in the design and concept development through visualizations, textual narratives, technical implementation detailing, and thematic analysis. This work is a provocative step expanding on what human-computer interaction can be in the outdoors.
... By interviews they identified seven main categories that motivated them to use the online communities. Outdoor sports tracking [1], for example, has been suggested for climbing [5,7,8] and backcountry skiing [3]. ...
Wearable sports technology such as fitness trackers or smart watches has become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, resulting in a vast collection of recorded routes. This technology now enables new forms of tracking and sharing outdoor adventures, that go beyond prosaic descriptions and photographs of the tour. Existing web mapping services and online tour diaries already allow mountaineers an improved preparation of tours but it remains still a time-consuming and cumbersome task. In this paper we introduce the concept of pioneers in outdoor activities. The proposed concept lets people define their pioneers, which are other ambitious athletes who are well known and trusted experts of the area. Using the segments of their tracks and other personal preferences (e.g. length, elevation and difficulty) a personalized route that is based on the pioneers' activities is generated and recommended to the user.
... New interaction technology can be used to bring people to defined places to enjoy the same experiences [2] or to facilitate solitude by providing guidance on how to avoid other people [7]. Sports track- ing [1], for example, has been suggested for climbing [4,5,6] and backcountry skiing [3]. The relation of performance and experience of sports watch usage has been studied in runners [9] indicating that wearable technology can improve both performance and the experience. ...
Mobile and wearable computing has great potential to support alpine outdoor sport activities. This includes, but is not limited to, rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, paragliding, and skiing. Interestingly, technology for tracking, monitoring and supporting sport activities is broadly used in sports like running or cycling, but has not reached the top of the mountains yet. Nevertheless, such technologies could support people in many mountain scenarios such as activity tracking, navigation, or emergency support. Technologies and applications for mountaineers can learn from ubiquitous computing research in many ways to provide more joyful, motivating and safer outdoor experiences.
This workshop is building on the ideas and findings of the successful UbiMount '16 workshop and aims to further explore the newly established research direction of ubiquitous computing in the mountains. During this one day workshop the participants will present their positions and research, followed by a demo session and group exercises.
... This strain of research explored on-the-spot reactions and simple information processing, while a few works explored also complex two-way information exchange in the sport context. For example, Fedosov et al. [12] engaged in a co-design activity with a group of backcountry skiers to meet their information sharing requirements before, during and after the descent. Based on collected requirements they developed SkiAR, the augmented reality system to support decision making within group of skiers through sharing personalized virtual content on panoramic resort maps [13]. ...
While outdoor sport activities keep gaining popularity as part of a global trend to maintain a healthier lifestyle, current technology offers limited support for activity-specific needs. Therefore, a greater understanding of information sharing behaviours is necessary in order to build comprehensive, socially-embedded sports applications. To this purpose, we interviewed 46 practitioners in three outdoor sports: trail running, climbing, and skiing. Our qualitative study investigates how participants share information in the context of outdoor sports and how current technology supports this practice. Through thematic analysis, we derived five themes that describe the current information sharing practices: nature, risk and planning, content selection, audience selection, and privacy. Based on these themes, we present five recommendations for design that can inform, inspire and refine future sharing technologies for outdoor sport.
... The authors draw conclusions from two ethnographic case studies to explain issues related to interoperability of information management systems. In [21], a study of an exploratory research with experienced group of skiers to address group-sharing behavior among skiers is reported. Authors present several design ideas for mobile and wearable devices as well. ...
Mobile apps play an increasingly important role in healthcare institutions by enhancing the quality of
healthcare services. Their role in sport injury prevention is also instrumental. In this article, we propose a system architecture for ski injury registration using mobile apps. Our work follows the idea of integrating and using mHealth apps to manage skiing injuries and to provide higher healthcare service quality and faster availability of data. With this work, we aim to greatly simplify the information workflow between the ski patrollers and the medical centers. Having the right information in the right place and on the right time for the injured person, the ski patroller then delivers to the medical centers that information in a format that is easy to analyze by the medical personnel and be prepared for possible interventions. To develop the mobile interfaces for the ski patrollers, nurses and doctors, we employ user-centered design. The overall system features and implementation are also explained and described in this paper. For evaluation purposes of our proposed system architecture, we have conducted a traditional user test of the ski patroller system in collaboration with the ski patrollers in the ski resort of Trysil in Norway. Moreover, a heuristic evaluation with four evaluators is also conducted. The traditional test had two-evaluation points and based on the results of the tests, we obtained implications for enhancing the design of mobile interfaces for the proposed architecture.
... New interaction technology can be used to bring people to defined places to enjoy the same experiences [2] or to facilitate solitude by providing guidance on how to avoid other people [7]. Sports tracking [1], for example, has been suggested for climbing [4,5,6] and backcountry skiing [3]. The relation of performance and experience of sports watch usage has been studied in runners [9] indicating that wearable technology can improve both performance and the experience. ...
Mobile and wearable computing has great potential to support alpine outdoor sport activities. This includes, but is not limited to, rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, paraglid-ing, and skiing. Interestingly, technology for tracking, monitoring and supporting sport activities is broadly used in sports like running or cycling, but has not reached the top of the mountains yet. Nevertheless, such technologies could support people in many mountain scenarios such as activity tracking, navigation, or emergency support. Technologies and applications for mountaineers can learn from ubiquitous computing research in many ways to provide more joyful, motivating and safer outdoor experiences. This workshop addresses the promises and challenges that arise, when UbiComp technologies are applied to alpine activities. During this two day workshop the participants will present their positions and research, followed by a hands-on experience on current technology during a field trip.
... Although, similarly to our concept, RideOn is used in the real world skiing environment, we differ in the fact that we place the user in a visual virtual world rather than augmenting the real world. Considering non-AR/VR solutions to create an enhanced skiing experience,[6]has studied the inclusion of social aspects to back-country skiing. ...
In this paper we describe a concept of using a Head Mounted Display (HMD) whilst downhill skiing and snowboarding, and experimenting with it in-the-wild on a skiing slope. The wearer experiences an alternative Virtual Reality (VR) visually through the HMD whilst their other sensory inputs experience the full sensation of real-world skiing, creating a blended virtual/real experience. To enable accurate tracking of the wearer's motion, we implemented a 'snow mouse' device, which rotates on the snow as the skier moves and enables dead-reckoning of the user's position. The prototype device was evaluated in-the-wild, on downhill ski slopes by both a skier and a snowboarder. Initial feedback suggests the level of immersion achieved is high, and particularly, users noticed the non-visual aspects of the experience.
... Technology use has also arisen when we are in nature -using navigation apps and digital maps, or taking selfies with smart phones at beautiful nature views, for example. Technological aids are also used e.g. when hunting with dogs [10] or tracking sports [1], and more concepts have been suggested e.g. for mountaineering [8] and backcountry skiing [7]. Technology can be used to bring people to defined places to enjoy the same experiences [6] or to facilitate solitude by providing guidance on how to avoid other people [9]. ...
Being in nature is typically regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. When in nature, people often seek physical activity like hiking, or meditative, mindful or inspiring experiences remote from the urban everyday life. However, the modern lifestyle easily extends technology use to all sectors of our everyday life, and e.g. the rise of sports tracking technologies, mobile phone integrated cameras and omnipresent social media access have contributed to technologies also arriving into the use context of nature. Also maps and tourist guides are increasingly smart phone or tablet based services. This workshop addresses the challenges that are related to interacting with technology in nature. The viewpoints cover, but are not limited to interaction design and prototyping, social and cultural issues, user experiences that aim for unobtrusive interactions with the technology with nature as the use context.
... We have documented our findings in the form of notes, recorded interviews, and pictures. Additionally, to refine our observations, we went to a second ski trip in a French Alps resort in early February, where we have recruited seven experienced backcountry skiers (25-31 years of age) and organized a group interview to identify their information sharing practices while skiing [3]. All participants owned a smartphone and routinely used it on a daily basis. ...
Today, a wide variety of technologies and devices are available for skiers. Those gadgets perform a number of tasks to improve the overall skiing experience, such as collecting personal performance data, recording memorable moments, or assisting in communication with group members. In this position paper we outline our empirical findings from unstructured interviews with skiers and ethnographical observations during several field trips to skiing resorts. In particular, we aim to understand the challenges and opportunities of using personal and situated devices on a ski lift. Based on the findings, we discuss appropriate interaction techniques and propose possible applications that could support user needs and enhance the overall skiing experience.
Learning outdoor sports entails acquiring physical skills, managing gear, and coordinating with others. We investigated how speleologists are trained to explore underground caves. We interviewed 15 instructors and 10 trainees to understand the main problems that may occur during training cave trips. Our findings show that stressful situations are linked to beginners’ difficulties applying new gestures and procedures - on which their progression and safety depend - and coordinating with others when they are out of sight. It emerged that group awareness and communication are pivotal for their tranquility. Yet, the underground environment makes communicating very hard. This study led to the elaboration of design implications for technology supporting awareness, communication, and coordination in speleology training, which draw from and enrich previous literature on coordination in the wild, as it may happen while performing outdoor sports or during search-and-rescue operations.
We present a functional prototype of an interactive illuminated snowboard, which was trialed in-the-wild. We discuss the challenges in prototyping and evaluating ubiquitous computing demos in-the-wild in the winter mountain context. Equipment related issues such as reduced battery capacity, and camera functionality at low temperatures are identified as particular problems. Prototype design should enable operation whilst wearing gloves, for example switching test modes, via motion gestures. The necessity to open prototype devices to make adjustment whilst in-the-wild should be avoided.
Mountains are a place where many extreme sports take place. These sports are often associated with extreme contextual factors, such as altitude or speed, and the equipment is typically of high quality, high performance, and high cost. However, gear in this domain typically has a low level of information and communications technology integration. Yet, there are possibilities to develop new features that would provide the user more information, increased safety or a richer user experience. In this paper, we describe a concept design to enhance snowboarding gear, where a LED based display on the snowboard is used to communicate the speed of the ride to the user.
Although many technological devices and solutions to enhance the skiing experience are now available for skiers, skiing sometimes could turn to be potentially dangerous. The speed of movement, environment unpredictability, and variable weather conditions, among others, can contribute to some of the most common skiing injuries that skiers incur. In this paper, we conduct an interface prototype evaluation of a ski injury registration system architecture that is already developed. This system will improve the communication from the ski resort to the medical center, in case an injury has occurred. The results of the interface evaluation indicate that the ski patrollers showed very positive attitude and experience with this prototype. Furthermore, the post-task and SUS (System Usability Scale) question results showed very high score for all participants, indicating that locating the body parts and the right injury was very easy using the interface.
Web services that support exercise have become increasingly popular in the last couple of years. This paper describes a qualitative case study that includes a trial use and interviews with 20 users of three different online sporting communities. These services enable users to add the training content from their personal tracking devices. In the interviews, data was gathered on the users' experiences and their opinions on the social needs and motivation to share content in online sports communities. The answers from the interviews were categorised into three main classes: social needs in sports communities, motivation for sharing content, and motivation for adding personal content to the services. As a result, users were motivated to create a personal exercise diary and content inventory online and also to share it with others in order to gain important information on exercising as well as peer support. Though the primary need for most users was a personal training diary, they also saw major advantages in sharing their data with the other members of the community.
Today, many areas in the Alps, despite the high altitude and distance from urbanized environments, offer ubiquitous mobile phone and data connectivity, with 3G networks widely available. Many skiing resorts have recognized their users' desire for connectivity, and some even provide free Wi-Fi hotspots at cable car stations and restaurants. Furthermore, increased connectivity and other advance in pervasive computing have led to new products and services aimed at enhancing the user experience for skiers.
A number of studies in the literature have looked into the use of real-time biometric data to improve one's own physiological performance and wellbeing. However, there is limited research that looks into the effects that sharing biometric data with others could have on one's social network. The video documents the design and development of HeartLink, a system that collects real-time personal biometric data such as heart rate and broadcasts this data online to anyone. Insights gained on designing systems to broadcast real-time biometric data are presented. The video also reports on the key results from testing HeartLink in two studies that were conducted during sport events.
What is distinctive about Scandinavian participatory design approaches? What can we learn from Scandinavian participatory design approaches that we can take into our own design practices, collaborations in design, and design pedagogy? The discussion argues that three principles distinguish Scandinavian approaches to participatory design: striving for democracy and demo-cratisation; explicit discussions of values in design and imagined futures; and ways that conflicts and contradictions are regarded as resources in design. The author draws on recent experiences in Norway, in multi-disciplinary and international collaborations in health informatics. Background on Scandinavian approaches to participatory design is provided to give a sense of their distinctive history and critiques reflecting on problems and limits encountered. An instance of information systems interface design is presented in order to talk concretely about Scandinavian participatory design principles in contrast to mainstream systems design traditions in the United States.
Overweight and obesity are a global epidemic, with over one billion overweight adults worldwide (300+ million of whom are obese). Obesity is linked to several serious health problems and medical conditions. Medical experts agree that physical activity is critical to maintaining fitness, reducing weight, and improving health, yet many people have difficulty increasing and maintaining physical activity in everyday life. Clinical studies have shown that health benefits can occur from simply increasing the number of steps one takes each day and that social support can motivate people to stay active. In this paper, we describe Houston, a prototype mobile phone application for encouraging activity by sharing step count with friends. We also present four design requirements for technologies that encourage physical activity that we derived from a three- week long in situ pilot study that was conducted with women who wanted to increase their physical activity. Author Keywords
Tourism has been a key driver for mobile applications. This short paper presents the design and initial evaluation of a mobile phone based visualisation to support skiers. Paper piste maps often prove difficult for skiers and provide no natural way of assessing the mountain conditions while on the slope. They are physically large and difficult to manipulate in wind, they provide no information on which runs are currently open, no indication of which runs the user may find most enjoyable, and no information about the snow and weather conditions on each run. All this information is available at resorts, usually on notice boards or screens at central meeting points. The visualisation and personalisation approaches presented here combine this information and a map overview on a mobile phone screen. Initial trials showed significantly better performance for some tasks on the mobile condition (both in terms of accuracy and time), with no clear result for other tasks.
The Hummingbird is a wearable computer that aims to support communication in co-located groups of people, by giving users a continuous awareness of the physical presence (or absence) of others. To examine the effect on group communication, we performed a study where six ski instructors used the Hummingbirds during a five-day trip. The study showed that the Hummingbirds were used more as a support for informal social interaction than for the actual work activities of the test group. In subsequent focus group sessions, we saw a clear difference between instructors who had used the devices and those who had not, in that the first group gave many enthusiastic suggestions for improvements and new usage areas, whereas the second group had great difficulties in seeing any use for the devices at all.
A number of studies in the literature have looked into the use of real-time biometric data to improve one's own physiological performance and wellbeing. However, there is limited research that looks into the effects that sharing biometric data with others could have on one's social network. The video documents the design and development of HeartLink, a system that collects real-time personal biometric data such as heart rate and broadcasts this data online to anyone. Insights gained on designing systems to broadcast real-time biometric data are presented. The video also reports on the key results from testing HeartLink in two studies that were conducted during sport events.
This article details experience feedback resulting from a user experience study in the wild (i.e. in-situ). The system under test was a mobile device for skiers, which aimed at improving their users' experience. The skiers were equipped with a mini-camera, an accelerometer and a geo-localization system. Thanks to a smartphone, they could replay, on trails, theirs best performances (video, maximum speed, ...). The article focuses both on the methodological and the technological issues encountered during these experimentations, and proposes recommendations.
In this paper, the potential role of a sport tracking application is examined in the context of supporting tracking outdoor
sporting activities. A user study with 28 participants was conducted to study the usage habits and user experiences evoked.
The application consists of a mobile tracking tool and a related web service. It collects and stores workout data such as
the route, speed and time, and compiles a training diary that can be viewed in many ways during the exercise and afterwards.
Data can be uploaded into a web service for further analysis or for sharing it with others. The results show high interest
in tracking outdoor sports with a mobile phone application – the participants used the application during almost all exercise
sessions and stated that they would continue using the application after the study. Sharing data was not perceived as valuable,
although some usage scenarios for social sharing arose.
Certain patterns of interaction between people point to networks as an adequate conceptual model to characterise some aspects of social relationships mediated or facilitated by information and communication technology. Wellman proposes a shift from groups to networks and describes the ambivalent nature inherent in an ego-centric yet still well-connected portfolio of sociability with the term ‘networked individualism’. In this paper we use qualitative data from an action research study of social networks of residents in three inner-city apartment buildings in Australia to provide empirical grounding for the theoretical concept of networked individualism. However, this model focuses on network interaction rather than collective interaction. We propose ‘communicative ecology’ as a concept which integrates the three dimensions of "online and offline", "global and local" as well as "collective and networked". We present our research on three layers of interpretation (technical, social and discursive) to deliver a rich description of the communicative ecology we found, that is, the way residents negotiate membership, trust, privacy, reciprocity, permeability and social roles in person-to-person mediated and direct relationships. We find that residents seamlessly traverse between online and offline communication; local communication and interaction maintains a more prominent position than global or geographically dispersed communication; and residents follow a dual approach which allows them to switch between collective and networked interaction depending on purpose and context.
Tracking Outdoor Sports-User Experience Perspective
- Aino Ahtinen
- Minna Isomursu
- Ykä Huhtala
- Jussi Kaasinen
- Jukka Salminen
- James L Crowley