Designing Wearable Systems for Sports: A Review of Trends and Opportunities in Human–Computer Interaction <s> B. Move Beyond "Generic" "Individual" Athletes <s> Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing both have the goal of pushing the computer into the background, supporting all kinds of human activities. Application areas include areas such as everyday environments (e.g. clothing, home, office), promoting new forms of creative learning via physical/virtual objects, and new tools for interactive design. In this paper, we thrust ubiquitous computing into the extremely hostile environment of the sparring ring of a martial art competition. Our system uses piezoelectric force sensors that transmit signals wirelessly to enable the detection of when a significant impact has been delivered to a competitor's body. The objective is to support the judges in scoring the sparring matches accurately, while preserving the goal of merging and blending into the background of the activity. The system therefore must take into account of the rules of the game, be responsive in real-time asynchronously, and often cope with untrained operators of the system. We present a pilot study of the finished prototype and detail our experience. <s> BIB001 </s> Designing Wearable Systems for Sports: A Review of Trends and Opportunities in Human–Computer Interaction <s> B. Move Beyond "Generic" "Individual" Athletes <s> Group exercise has multiple benefits including greater adherence to fitness regimens, increased enjoyment among participants, and enhanced workout intensity. While a large number of technology tools have emerged to support real-time feedback of individual performance, tools to support group fitness are limited. In this paper, we present a set of wearable e-textile displays for running groups called Social Fabric Fitness (SFF). SFF provides a glanceable, shared screen on the back of the wearer's shirt to increase awareness and motivation of group fitness performance. We discuss parallel prototyping of three designs-one flexible e-ink and two flexible LED-based displays; the selection and refinement of one design; and two evaluations'a field study of 10 running groups and two case studies of running races. Our qualitative findings indicate that SFF improves awareness of individual and group performance, helps groups stay together, and improves in-situ motivation. We close with reflections for future athletic e-textile displays. <s> BIB002 </s> Designing Wearable Systems for Sports: A Review of Trends and Opportunities in Human–Computer Interaction <s> B. Move Beyond "Generic" "Individual" Athletes <s> Cycling is a popular sport in which assistance devices are used for measuring heart rate, speed or cadence. Even if much more important than performance metrics, systems for supporting communication within the group are not available. Speech and standard hand-gestures are commonly used by cyclists to communicate danger and to propagate commands from the front to the end of the group. We propose an approach to enhance the communication chain by using gesture recognition and LEDs sewed into the backside of the cyclists' shirts. We studied the requirements for using the system for augmenting gestures with light, by presenting our prototype to a group of cyclists asking for their opinion. We found that about half of the cyclists fear new irritations, but most of the cyclists would also appreciate the support, especially for supporting large groups. <s> BIB003 </s> Designing Wearable Systems for Sports: A Review of Trends and Opportunities in Human–Computer Interaction <s> B. Move Beyond "Generic" "Individual" Athletes <s> Technological advances in wearable computing are changing the sports domain. A variety of Personal Informatics (PI) tools are starting to provide support and improve athletes’ performance in many sports. In this article, we interviewed 20 amateur and elite athletes of different disciplines, using an array of PI devices, to explore how sports, as well as athletes’ experience, are affected by such instruments. We discovered that amateur athletes present different patterns of usage compared to elite ones. Moreover, we found that elite athletes make sense of their data by exploiting the knowledge they have about their own body and sports practice. We then proposed four considerations for design that we believe should be explored in the future, to reflect on how self-tracking is changing our perspective on sports, and, by and large, on our everyday life. <s> BIB004
At present, HCI research seems to focus on individual sports and on generic sportspeople (that is, without specifying their level of experience, ability, or frequency in training). Most wearable devices are designed for individual sportspeople/athletes (only three team sports are present in our corpus). Likewise, evaluations usually involved athletes as individuals and not as a group/team. Indeed, there are few examples considering the social dimension of sports. For example, Chi et al. BIB001 focus on pairs of martial arts athletes, studying piezoelectric force sensors that detect when a significant impact has been delivered to a competitor's body; Kräuter et al. BIB003 recruit a regularly meeting group of cyclists to evaluate a prototype that enhances group communication; and Mauriello et al. BIB002 evaluate light jerseys with a small team of basketball players. Still, there are many possibilities to widen the "unit" engaged in the interaction with the device. On the one hand, focusing on team sports may open completely new design questions and opportunities, e.g., for improving the communication among the athletes and with the coaches. On the other hand, considering collaborative behavior at the wearable device layer, with particular reference to multiuser task/activity applications, may set new directions for wearables for sports research. For instance, wearables may become a collective support for strategy definition in team sports, whereby athletes may cooperate together by using the devices in order to tune their ongoing performance and refine their goals in real time. Likewise, the wearable may "mediate" the relationship between the athlete and the coach, helping them collectively define the workouts, or develop a "shared knowledge" that may benefit the athlete's understanding of her own body. In sum, there are a variety of collaborative activities in the sports domain that could be supported by wearables by enabling multiple users to work together on the same task. A further research direction is to consider the type of sportspeople involved in the interaction with the device. Few studies focus on elite sportspeople or beginners, rather preferring to target "average" athletes. Technology may support athletes in different ways along the spectrum of their expertise and sports knowledge. Actually, Rapp and Tirabeni BIB004 highlighted that athletes at different levels of experience have different information needs and engage in different sports practices. This should be further explored in future studies. Similarly, few papers focus on designing for disabled athletes. Moreover, they consider physical impairments, while ignoring cognitive ones. A research opportunity for using wearable technology in sports could be to enable cognitively impaired individuals to recognize and manage emotions or cognitive states relevant to certain sports activities, e.g., by supporting their memory functioning, focusing their attention, or reducing their emotional distress (e.g., in autistic individuals).