Exploring Exergame Design for Group Fitness Swimming
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Designing Physical Games #chi4good, CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, USA SwimTrain: Exploring Exergame Design for Group Fitness Swimming Woohyeok Choi, Jeungmin Oh, Darren Edge∗, Joohyun Kim, Uichin Lee KAIST, ∗Microsoft Research Asia Daejeon, South Korea, ∗Beijing, China {woohyeok.choi, jminoh, joohyun.kim, uclee}@kaist.ac.kr, ∗[email protected] ABSTRACT exercises into socially enriched ones. For example, Jogging We explore design opportunities for using interactive tech- over a Distance enables a pair of distant joggers to run to- nologies to enrich group fitness exercises, such as group spin- gether through spatial audio feedback [29]. Similarly, Swan- ning and swimming, in which an instructor guides a work- Boat allows multiple treadmill runners to play an exergame out program and members synchronously perform a shared in which two runners, as a team, collaborate to steer a boat, physical activity. As a case study, we investigate group fit- and two teams compete with each other in a boat race [3]. ness swimming. The design challenge is to coordinate a Group fitness is one of the most representative social exer- large group of people by considering trade-offs between so- cises and includes any forms of fitness exercises performed cial awareness and information overload. Our resulting group by a group of people led by an instructor [45]. A large num- fitness swimming game, SwimTrain, allows a group of peo- ber of people visit local fitness centers every day to partici- ple to have localized synchronous interactions over a virtual pate in various kinds group fitness programs, such as group space. The game uses competitive and cooperative phases spinning, rowing, aerobics, swimming, and yoga classes. As to help group members acquire group-wide awareness. The in social exercises, group fitness provides engaging and en- results of our user study showed that SwimTrain provides tertaining exercise experiences. Furthermore, an instructor of socially-enriched swimming experiences, motivates swim- a group fitness exercise encourages participants to adhere to mers to follow a training regimen and exert more intensely, a training regimen and helps them to learn fitness skills and and allows strategic game play dealing with skill differences develop overall fitness levels. among swimmers. Consequently, we propose several practi- cal considerations for designing group fitness exergames. A variety of design candidates for novel group fitness ap- plications have employed interactive technologies. One ap- ACM Classification Keywords proach is to provide opportunities for additional interaction; K.8.0 Personal Computing: General-Games; H.5.3 Group for example, Mauriello et al. proposed a wearable display and Organization Interfaces: Synchronous interaction for group running that shows pace or duration to a group of runners [22]. Interactive technologies also allow a group of Author Keywords remote exercisers to participate in group fitness, as in Exer- Group fitness; swimming; exertion games Sync, an exergame platform for a remote interpersonal syn- chrony [34]. More importantly, personalized workouts can be INTRODUCTION supported in the context of group fitness. For example, by co- People often exercise together instead of working out alone. ordinating user interactions in a virtual space, it may be possi- There are a variety of reasons for why people want to exercise ble to deal with heterogeneous workout goals and individual with others, for example, building social relationships, moti- skill differences, as in conventional exergame design [30]. vating themselves to exercise more, and extracting personal In this paper, we focus on instructor-led group fitness exer- enjoyment out of the activity [6, 17, 32]. In recent years, cises, such as group spinning and swimming, in which an in- sports industries have been aggressively releasing a variety structor guides a workout program, and members perform a of self-tracking products with social support features, such as shared physical activity. As a case study, we investigate group sharing and comparing exercise records with other friends [1, fitness swimming, which represents both a highly popular 2]. Moreover, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) communi- aerobic exercise and a challenging set of design constraints. ties have been actively studying methods to transform solitary For example, swimming allows a very small degree of free- dom for additional movement, because it requires tightly co- ordinated movements of the entire body. In addition, swim- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed mers tend to have limited opportunities for verbal social inter- for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full cita- action (e.g., in-depth conversation) because it risks disturbing tion on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or re- others’ training regimens [41]. Seamless wireless network publish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission connectivity is also required for group coordination; how- and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. ever, periodic water submersion renders connectivity highly CHI 2016, May 7–12, 2016, San Jose, California, USA. Copyright © 2016 ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-3362-7/16/05 ...$15.00. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858579 1692 Designing Physical Games #chi4good, CHI 2016, San Jose, CA, USA vulnerable. Prior studies have shown that swimming motions mouse). For example, Ahn et al. allowed two treadmill run- and audio feedback can be used for user interactions [13, 21], ners to play a boat racing game, where a virtual boat is collab- and wireless networking connectivity can be sustained if a oratively controlled by their treadmill speeds. In HapticTurk, Long Term Evolution (LTE) network is used [13]. a player explores a virtual world using other player’s collab- orative movements, such as lifting up and tilting [11]. Pulse Our aim is to build a group fitness swimming game that al- Masters Biathlon and Heart Burn are similar to a computer- lows a group of people to perform mediated synchronous in- based sports and racing games except that each player’s avatar teractions over a virtual space. The challenge is to coordi- is controlled by his/her heart rate, not buttons [31, 42]. In nate a group of people and deliver group awareness to them Nautilus, players collaboratively control a virtual diving bell without information overload. At the same time, we want the by physically moving on a interactive floor [43]. Body-Driven players of the game to experience a similar degree of social exergames allow multiple players to cooperatively play tra- awareness as in traditional group fitness exercises. ditional video games (e.g., “Bubble Bobble” and “Bomber- To this end, we designed SwimTrain, an exergame for group man”) using their motions, which are recognized by a single fitness swimming. In SwimTrain, each swimmer is metaphor- top-view camera [20]. ically mapped to a compartment of a virtual train, and uses Moreover, several exergame studies have augmented a phys- stroke rate to maneuver his/her own compartment. Swim- ical space. These exergames allow players to move around Train facilitates engagement through a combination of com- a physical world and interact with overlaid virtual objects. petition and collaboration, which encourages players to estab- One example is Paranoia Syndrome, where users interact lish and maintain their highest sustainable levels of exertion. with RFID-tagged objects using their own PDAs while walk- SwimTrain interactions are based on localized cooperation ing around physical rooms [16]. Human Pacman is an within subgroups of three swimmers, spanning the swimmer augmented-reality version of a video game, “Pacman”, where immediately in front of and behind each player in the virtual players interact with an augmented physical space and other space. This is based on the “peephole” design concept [14], players (e.g., their team and opposing team members) using which provides only a limited view of a larger information their head-mounted displays and touch sensors [12]. space (in our case, collective group awareness). Localized With advances of networking technologies, researchers have subgroup interactions also facilitate more directly interper- designed interactive systems that allow people to syn- sonal competition and collaboration across each round, with chronously exercise with others from a distance. For exam- group-wide communication of overall rankings in rest phases. ple, Sports over a Distance project allows remote users to We iteratively prototyped SwimTrain using waterproof smart- synchronously take a variety of exercises together, such as ta- phones and earphones. To explore user experiences, we con- ble tennis [25], air-hockey [24], shadow boxing [26], and jog- ducted an experiment with eleven participants to investigate ging [29, 32]. Park et al. proposed interactive exercise plat- (1) how the feelings of social awareness during game play forms that allow exercisers to play exergames with heteroge- compared to real group fitness swimming, (2) whether and neous exercise devices [33], and that enable remote exercisers why the game motivated players to swim more intensely, who use different exercise devices to synchronize the rhythm and (3)