Designing Interaction for Outdoor Sports Performance Analysis

Abstract

This paper addresses the design process of the interactive features required by the users of an application to support athletes and coaches engaged in outdoor sports in analyzing sports performance other than pure fitness. Devices recording position and heartbeat rate allow raw data acquisition for this analysis, but existing software functionality is limited. The paper addresses the collection of interaction requirements for the application to develop that followed a user centred approach with role-playing, interviews, focus groups, scenarios and usability experiments with users involved in outdoor sports practice and competition. The work assessed issues relating to data acquisition, correction, analysis and presentation as well as data persistency and user profiles. A comprehensive set of interaction requirements are then identified and analyzed. Candidate solutions currently being implemented and tested in a full-scale prototype are presented.