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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.

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... 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. ...
Conference Paper
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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. ...
Article
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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. ...
Conference Paper
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. ...
Conference Paper
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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]. ...
Chapter
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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]. ...
Article
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. ...
Book
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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. ...
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... 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]. ...
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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. ...
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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]. ...
Conference Paper
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. ...
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... 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. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
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. ...
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... 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]. ...
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... 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. ...
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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.
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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.
Article
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