BALANCE TRAINING

Presentation Quarter 2 Hsin Ya Huang 4259203

1. Design Goal
Help people training in the gym to improve themselves in a most balance way without getting injury. And keep them more motivated to stick to the long-turn training.

2.Research Goal
The main research goals in this face are first; find out how many different aspects that I need to focus on to include the entire process. And also I need to know what kind of methods or ways that can imply in my design to improve the situation.

3.Set up from Q1
3-1.Users
The people working out in the gym.

3-2.Situation
I want to design something that helps people training and working out in the gym manage to keep their training healthy and balance process without getting injured or over train.

3-3.Effect
Users can improve themselves in a most efficient and relax process without getting injured or over train.

3-4.General effects
People can go over their limits to improve their physical statues in a fast way but without getting too much training and ended up injured.

4. Interaction Vision

The interaction between users and equipment and other users in the gym will be playful, secure, and confident. Just like a personal coach stand aside to help you in the whole process.

5.Back Ground Research

From the literature review, I know that a new study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital has found that the number of injuries from weight training has increased greatly due to the popularity of the strength training. ( CienceDaily Apr. 16, 2010) And most of the time the injuries occurred because user don't know the right way to train or they just do too much.( Epidemiology of Weight Training-Related Injuries Presenting to United States Emergency Departments, 1990 to 2007) These practices can result in muscle injury and torn tendons and ligaments, as well as inflammation of the tendons and bursae (the cushionlike sacs around the joints) all debilitating injuries that can discourage someone from returning to the gym or even worst, it will end up in long turn joint disease and lead to joint replacement . Lifting weights that are too heavy can injure the rotator cuff in the shoulder or strain the back. Although how much weight you can lift is very important, the more important thing is that you have to train in a balance way. For example, use the right muscle, use the same strength with both hands and stay to the training schedule.

6.Design Research Exploration

6-1.Four diemantions to keep on the right track

In quarter two I still go to the gym to observe people training and also I went with several participants with their training process. At the same time I keep on doing research on papers. Tried to find more insights and ideas. And in the process there are 4 important dimensions I find that I have to include in my design in order to really help users to have more control to their training. 1. Over train prevention 2. Retain balance training 3. Self monitor training process 4. Interactions with others in the gym First, the over train prevention is the very important because many serious injuries happen because people trying to do too much. And second is to retain balance training. For strength training, it is very important to follow the long-term weight training program and do the right movement. Either doing training randomly or bad techniques will end up bad injuries. Third, self monitoring their own process can not only keep the training on the right track, it can also motivate people to keep on improving themselves. At last interact with other users and trainers in the gym is very important because the interactions will help exchange valuable training knowledge and people can help each others to achieve the best training result.

6-2.Interactions in the fitness room

In order to fulfill the four dimensions above, I start to focus on the interactions inside the gym and find that there are 4 kinds of characters inside the gym. The first one is users themselves. One is other people training in the gym. Another one is the coach. The third one is all the equipments that people train with.

So I use these interactions to match the four dimensions and generate 3 to 4 ideas for each dimension.

6-3.How can you session

I also did a "how can you..." session with 5 other DFI students to try to find more possibilities toward my idea. And there are pretty interesting results. For example, to prevent over training maybe we can give strange sound to invoice the user. And in the interaction between people, we can tried to show which one is the most veteran users in order to stimulate positive interactions. And also it is a very good idea to use the mirror inside the gym to create interactions.

6-4.Idea generation face

I use the interactions that I find to match the four dimensions and generate 3-4 directions for each dimension in the form below. 4 dimensions Over train prevention How to achieve 1. equipment make adjustment for users 2. equipment will stop 3. make noise that everybody will hear to make you stop 1. find a schedule that fit you with coach 2. gain knowledge on right training with other users 3. adjust your training through time using equipments 4. maintain the good statues Self Monitor training process 1. get the statues of your training data from the equipments 2. record and analyze the data 3.display the data to user and the coach 1. by display the information in the mirror 2. show the same color when people are training the same muscle

Retain balance training

Interactions with others in the gym

Among these directions I select two to go on to the prototyping face. One is using equipments to maintain balance training. Another one is using the mirror inside the changing room to make people interact with each others.

7.Prototyping
7-1.Balance prototyping
At first, I focus on improve the interactions between users and equipment because that's the most of the time users are in contact with it. And I want to add and improve the feedback from the machine, so users can know at the moment if they are doing the balance training. For example, for free weight barbell training it is very important to maintain balance between both hands when you are lifting the barbell. And this rule applies to all the equipment that requires the force of both hands and legs. Therefore I tried to create a simple feedback on the barbell to inform users that whether they are using the same force. And at the same time there need to be a sound feedback so that users can easily get the feedback with different perceptions.

The first, prototype I did is tiding the iphone in the middle of the stick and tried different level device app and ask participants to try to stay balance during bench press. And I also tried another prototype using distance sensors. And with a simple coding on

Max I did a version that when the barbell is not balance the music will be twist and become quicker.

And the result is positive. The participant think that it can really help maintain balance when training and it is also very fun doing it.

7-2.User interaction role play

Another part of the interaction I want to try out is the interaction between people training in the gym. At first I want to design something to trigger interaction inside the training room but actually the atmosphere is very intense inside and everybody is very focus on doing their work out. And I think that's a good thing and I don't want to change that intensity. Therefore, I choose the big mirror in the rest room because that's the place people will go when they finish work out with more relax mindset. So I decide to put some information in that area and stimulate people to ask question or have conversation with each others. At the beginning I only though of the people are training the same muscle group can have same color show on the mirror or on the equipment. And later I think it's great that people can see their training statues in the mirror so they can talk about more about the training. And the information should have more to do with the balance training statues. Because if you want to keep the right training it has less to do with how much weight you lift. It's more about you using the right muscle and putting balance force on both hands. And also not do too much than you normal schedule. So it will be very interesting when you see a big guy and a thin guy walk in at the same time but the balance statues in the mirror shows the opposite statues. Then the conversation they have must be very interesting. So on the next stage, I role play the situation. I draw the balance graph on the paper and stick it on the mirror. And I think only show the graph is not enough. It will be more fun if they can see the color on their reflection will be much clear and have more trigger for interaction.

Therefore in the second role play I find four people and two are the people from the gym and another two played their reflection in the mirror. And the reflections need to have color on the muscle they train. So the people playing reflection need to wear the paper doll I draw before hand and imitate the movement of the people in front of the mirror.

At the first round the reflections only imitate people's movement and show the detail of people's training statues. And the interaction is still low. So in the second round the reflection figures start to act little interaction in the mirror. And the people in front of the mirror start the conversation more quickly. For example, the two reflections will look at each other or make a posture to check each other out. So the people see their reflection is making interaction and it will become an interaction trigger.

In the play the two people actually start talking about their training and how they do it. I think this interaction pretty much like the Peter Pan's shadow. That the reflection has their own will. It is playful and the reflection will also give information about your training so it is also give more secure and confident feeling. And it can really affect people's behavior. Originally the reflections always follow what people do. And now it starts to influence people. In the two modeling process I always start with a rough idea and improve the quality by trying it again and again. And the interaction quality also getting better and better. And right now I think I still need to work more on the interaction in front of the mirror because I think there are still a lot different possibilities on how the information should be presented. Right now I visualize the information into simple shape to indicate the statues of balance.

After touching the screen you can see the balance of your right and left hand and the rapes you should do. And in the right you can see the total balance percentage. So people can compare. And there are colors that related to the muscle you train.

8. Overall Concept Scenario

All the testing I did are only some sections in the whole system. So I tried to connect them together and form a complete scenario as below.

So first, I start to look through the things people will carry inside the training room. And I found out that sports card is a perfect thing that I can focus on because the card represents the user and it can also carry your personal training record. So people can use their card to remember all the different load on different machine. And when users start to do the exercises they can see their balance with the monitor and sound and adjust it. And when they do too much the equipment will make weir sound and everybody can hear it. And the awkwardness will force people to stop. And when they are in the changing room they can see their training balance in the reflection. And the reflection will interact with other people's reflection to ask for help tried to make people talk.

9. Technology
In the electronic prototyping I already test the program and all the sensor on the barbell. So only attach the motion sensor and small monitor on the barbell and the sensor will record the movement and make sound at the same time.

And for the reflection on the mirror, I can use the motion sensing input device from Kinect and have a display wall behind the sputter mirror. So it the monitor doesn't show anything, it is a normal mirror. But if the monitor lights up people will see the display.

Conclusion
To this stage I have form the ideal interaction vision in my design. And I already done many testing to approach that. But there are still a distance between the interaction I test and the ideal interaction. For example, in the mirror prototyping, because the reflections were actually real people, so the feeling is quite different from the display in the mirror. Participants will get distracted and the interaction still is not that natural. That's the thing I will keep on improving. For the overall concept I think becoming a big system. And the interaction is complicated. Right now I mainly focus on two relationships. One is the interaction between the user and the equipment. Another one is between users in the changing room. But there are still a lot of potential in other detail of the process.