Surfing, like many water sports, offers a unique opportunity to experience natural environments, yet the design of interactive technologies for water activities– “WaterHCI” – so far prioritised athletic performance over experience. To explore this opportunity, we designed SurfSync, a novel wearable system in the form of an actuating vest and a hat that provides oceanic information through sound, vibration, and heat actuation, aimed at enriching the surfing experience as a playful encounter with the ocean. We studied SurfSync in an ocean-based field study with eight surfers. Through thematic analysis of interviews, we articulated the surfers’ experiences, indicating how they made sense of playful cues while in the ocean. By reflecting on our soma design process and the surfers’ experiences, we provide six design strategies to enrich the surfing experience. Our work contributes to the emerging field of WaterHCI by providing insights into how wearables can enrich human-water experiences outdoors.

Maintaining a certain heart rate zone is important for athletes during running. This is often supported by smartwatches or smartphones paired with chest belts. Such devices can easily distract or interrupt runners. To address this, we developed smart goggles with an integrated ambient LED strip that visually displays heart rate zone feedback. In a within-subject study (N=11), we compared the LED-Goggles and a state-of-the-art Apple Watch. The findings indicated no statistically significant difference in the efficacy of the two systems in assisting runners in maintaining their target heart rate. However, participants rated the goggles as clearer and more helpful than the watch. Open-ended responses highlighted the goggles’ continuous, ambient feedback as advantages, reducing cognitive load and allowing users to focus more on running. Our findings suggest that ambient light feedback in goggles can serve as an effective, less intrusive alternative to smart watch feedback systems for heart rate monitoring during runs.

Running is the most practiced sport worldwide. Locomotor-respiratory coupling (LRC) is a breathing technique claimed to enhance running economy and experience. Recent studies showed how sounds can guide runners in achieving and maintaining rhythmic breathing. This paper explores how runners can interact with the system to maintain control over the sonic breath guidance. The system enables runners to (1) reset the guidance when out of sync and (2) adjust the instructed rhythm based on their breath cycle and step count. Based on a user study (N=24), with participants running at +10% and -10% of baseline speed and at 2:2 and 3:3 LRC rhythms, we find that the proposed interactions are highly usable (SUS scores of 82 and 83 respectively) and a handheld button acceptable for most but disturbing for some. Sounds for guidance were highly effective (MAPE below 5%) across scenarios. We outline future steps for sonic guidance systems.

Running is the most practiced sport worldwide. Rhythmic breathing is a breathing technique claimed to enhance running economy and experience. Recent studies showed how sounds can guide runners in achieving and maintaining rhythmic breathing patterns. In this paper we explore how runners can interact with this sonic breath guidance while running, aiming to fit locomotion without forcing the runner to slow down or "stop-to-interact". Common devices, such as smartphones, smartwatches, and fitness trackers are widely employed, but their small interfaces and touch screens often necessitate slowing down for effective use. This demo paper introduces GestureGlove, a novel garment that captures fine and gross hand gestures to control rhythmic breathing guidance sounds. The concept combines gross arm gestures for sound selection by extending normal running motion, while fine in-hand gesturing enables fine-grained volume control of the selected sound independent of the running motion. These underlying principles of using gross and fine gesturing, and the embodied approach, show a new direction in the design for truly mobile interactions.

The field of Sports Human-Computer Interaction (SportsHCI) investigates interaction design to support a physically active human being. Despite growing interest and dissemination of SportsHCI literature over the past years, many publications still focus on solving specific problems in a given sport. We believe in the benefit of generating fundamental knowledge for SportsHCI more broadly to advance the field as a whole. To achieve this, we aim to identify the grand challenges in SportsHCI, which can help researchers and practitioners in developing a future research agenda. Hence, this paper presents a set of grand challenges identified in a five-day workshop with 22 experts who have previously researched, designed, and deployed SportsHCI systems. Addressing these challenges will drive transformative advancements in SportsHCI, fostering better athlete performance, athlete-coach relationships, spectator engagement, but also immersive experiences for recreational sports or exercise motivation, and ultimately, improve human well-being.

Traditionally, architects and designers have used scale models to explore, communicate, and evaluate concepts and ideas in large-scale, spatial projects. These scale models offer the user a bird's eye perspective and often tangible ways of interacting with the model. Nevertheless, they lack a realistic, first-person view on the effects that the design solutions have in the space. In this paper, we explore MacroScope, a tool that aims to support collaborative spatial design by providing a real time, 360o first-person perspective in a physical scale model, by means of a virtual reality head-mounted display. We reflect on the usage potentials in collaborative creative processes, before describing next steps for the development of MacroScope.

The use of generative design tools for collaborative design tasks has been common practice in the fields of HCI and Design. In this pictorial, we present the evolution of an open-ended design tool: a scale model of a car showroom, used to investigate collaborative interactions in spatial environments. The features of the scale model evolved through several impromptu usage scenarios. With this contribution, we share our observations about the use of the prototype as a means of communication, as well as a means of inspiration, and argue for the use of non-prescriptive design tools in collaborative design projects.

Gaze is an important aspect in social communication. In this paper we present a first exploration of visualizing gaze in the co-located physical world. LaserViz augments gaze in the physical world by means of an eye-tracking enabled wearable device that laser beams the gaze position to real world objects. Based on an initial prototype, we explored the effects of shared gaze through a collaborative as well as a competitive scenario in a co-located setting. This paper discusses the insights and implications following these explorations for the concept of shared gaze in the co-located physical world.

In this paper we describe the development and evaluation of three kitchen blenders that were specifically designed to stimulate mindfulness in interaction, that is: engagement with, and care for what you are doing. We find that the directness we used to have preparing our food has been sacrificed to efficiency and ease of use, which does not match our current zest for 'slow food' and 'slow cooking'. We argue that most of our kitchen appliances make us less engaged in the act of and less caring for cooking. In order to counter this we see opportunities for a more tangible or embodied interaction style where expressive input leads to expressive output. In order to research this argument we have developed three embodied kitchen blender interaction styles and compared these to a more traditional blender interaction. Preliminary findings suggest that more embodied interaction styles do indeed lead to more mindful engagement in interaction.