Hello all, my name is Laia Turmo Vidal, and I am presenting on behalf of my coauthors our work
The Design Space of Wearables for Sports and Fitness Practices
In recent years, the area of wearables for sports and fitness has found commercial success and has attracted
research interest, due to this technologies' potential to accurately track and recognize
different performance parameters, and provide timely feedback to users.
Most design work has focused on creating example technologies and prototypes that
illustrate the technology potential. But, up to this day, we still lack synthesized design
knowledge that can help inform future development of wearable technology,
as well as their integration in sports and fitness practices.
Towards that end, in our work we articulate a design space of wearables for sports and fitness
We do so by reviewing existing HCI design research work in the domain. We selected 47 publications
that presented the design of a wearable device for a specific sport or fitness practice.
Through thematic analysis, we systematically mapped reported design elements, and interrelations
between them. Our analysis was influenced by practice approaches in HCI, activity
design, soma design, interaction design theory, as well as sports and fitness literature.
We visualize the design space in a taxonomical form, that shows the different design elements
considered in prior work. We group these elements in four overarching categories: sports and fitness
practice, technology design, wearability design, and design of the wearable use in practice.
The first category includes design considerations on the type of
practice and its social organization (if it is individual training, or groupal training, or instructed training)
and the skill level of the practitioners.
The second category, technology design, is the most extensive one. It includes the role and goals
of introducing technology in the practice, It includes considerations about input
such as modality. It includes considerations about the output, such as modality, but also the role
that has in the practice, and if its meaning is prescribed or left open for interpretation.
And finally, it includes considerations about the interplay between input and output. For instance,
if the sensing and actuating happen in the same time and in the same space, or not. The third
category is wearability design, and it includes considerations about individual wearability, such
as in how many places the device can be worn, and where it can be attached. But also, it considers
the social organization of the practice: how many people wear technology, and what is their role.
Finally, the last category has to do with designing the use of the technology,
and it considers aspects of presence: when the wearable is deployed.
Also when people are expected to interact with the device
and finally if deploying technology requires changes in the practice itself, or not.
The design space has analytical potential. In the paper,
we use it to review and characterize prior work on wearables for sports and fitness. This shows
current design trends, both regarding particular design elements and their interrelations.
But also more general trends in the domain, such as a clear focus on helping individual
people improve their performance, in order to make training more autonomous or accessible.
The design space also has generative potential
And while its capacity to inform design remains future work, in the paper we articulate a set
of opportunities that can contribute towards that end. These opportunities
revolve around novel design goals, novel design interventions, and novel technical features.
Our work contributes with a novel understanding that designing wearables for sports and fitness
practices involves more than technology design. It also involves designing sociophysical,
temporal, interactional and practice-related elements.
Our work presents three concrete contributions: 1) the design space as designerly tool. 2) A review
of prior work, showing current design trends. 3) And a set of opportunities for future design work.
We believe that these contributions can help designers think about key design decisions,
exploit trends and explore new areas in the domain of wearables for sports and fitness.
Thank you very much for your attention, we are Laia Turmo Vidal, Hui Zhu,
Annika Waern and Elena Márquez Segura, and I will be taking your questions now.