INF5261: Development of mobile information systems and services

Midterm

TimeRun

Niclas Hammer Halvorsen

Simon Lysne Hyenes

Johan Steinberg

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Introduction of topic The combination of physical workout with mobile technologies is proving to be more and more common nowadays, possibly because of all the new and evolving technologies. We look at new innovating ways of doing cardio workout, i.e. running, paddling, skiing and cycling, together with friends or acquaintances “anytime­anywhere”. This way the application encourages through competitions and the socialness of keeping in touch with friends all around the world. To achieve this we have envisaged a timeline where you can see each participant's position in the course. The smartphone GPS feature will be crucial to pinpoint the distance and position. The aim is to also encourage physical activity through interplay with friends and gamification elements. The timeline is here meant to show progression compared with friends. Instead of using pure data points we want to explore the possibilities of using graphical elements such as topography and characters to make the timeline come alive. Different activities could be represented in different fashions: such as lakes for swimming, hills for running and country ski trails for skiing. The application will require a smartphone for tracking, data metrics and visualization, but it will also have the option to connect to Android wearable devices.

Background

Mobility concept In the article ‘Expanding the mobility concept’ Kakihara and Sørensen (2001) expands and specifies ‘mobility’ beyond just enabling a more nomadic lifestyle. They look at three distinct dimensions: spatial mobility, temporal mobility and contextual mobility (see Table 1). The first dimension is spatial mobility, referring not only to the movement of people, but to the movement of objects, symbols and space itself (ibid). Facebook can be used as an example: it being available as an ‘app’ for your phone — Facebook itself is mobile; it is a global phenomenon and enables users to share media with ‘friends’ all over the world, this way it can ‘move’ symbols, and; additionally, with its communication capabilities — it moves space — users can ‘chat’ in real­time while being a globe apart from each other. The second dimension, temporal mobility, is further related to how interaction has changed. Kakihara and Sørensen explains “the temporality of human interaction can no longer be explained from a linear ‘clock­time’ perspective” leading to a more complex human interaction pattern (p. 35). To expand upon the Facebook example, people can communicate through Facebook in different ways: a user can comment a post, answer a comment or ‘chat’ (with multiple people at once) and answer a chat. With asynchronous capabilities multiple interactions can be had in the same time period. Contextual mobility refers to how this content can be answered and continued at any time, ‘resurrecting’ old content with its context, which is the third dimension Kakihara and Sørensen (ibid) uses to define mobility.

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Table 1: Three dimensions of mobility and those extended perspectives (Kakihara and Sørensen, 2002, p.3). A major part of our plans is to attempt to utilize spatial mobility to enable collaboration and awareness. We wish to look at virtual races, challenges, ‘streaming’ and visualizing of friends training data. Further the temporality should allow for both synchronous and asynchronous modalities but also activities to utilize both time perspectives. For contextuality we considered issues related to the obtrusive nature of wearables and arrogant nature of software recommendations based off estimations of activity levels.

Mobile context Tamminen et al (2004) looked into the challenge modern urban environments present for context­aware computers, stating that “[context aware] computers need ‘awareness’ of several contextual factors including social, psychological, physical, and the like” (p. 1). They did not concentrate on restricted areas or restricted groups of people, but gathered data by ethnographic participant observation for the majority of people (the elderly, single mothers and youngsters). Their paper describes five characteristics of mobile contexts: situational acts within planned ones; claiming personal and group spaces; social solutions to problems in navigation; temporal tensions, and; multitasking. The paper also gives suggestions to direct designer’s attention to higher­level issues in mobility and mobile and mobile contexts (ibid). Their suggestions that follows are the ones we predict might be related to our project.

Social awareness in mobile communication: Communication of context information: “context­aware technology should be

designed to consider not only one person’s doings, but also the doings of other relevant people” (ibid, p.141). In our app these context could be the system sharing data about friends training activity.

Recognition of personal and group spaces: “issues of space claiming and privacy in social interaction are important in mobile contexts” (ibid, p.141).

Representation of nearby associates: “ad hoc meetings among acquaintances could be arranged easily (also in virtual space) if people on the same route, or on

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routes close to another, were aware of each other’s movements” (ibid, p.141). Especially related to our ideas of how to raise awareness and show activity of friends.

Mixing reality with the virtual world: connecting mobile users to an online game while moving around in the real world. Ties in directly with our ideas.

General user interface issues: Modality selection: utilize modes of a device based on the activity of the user, if

s/he is walking, waiting, hurrying, navigating, or sidestepping, and choosing interaction channels according to resources that are typically free in the mode.

Wearables can distinguish between modalities and thereby allow fluid transitions between interfaces and states.

Interruption management: provide the user with information based on the predicted context s/he is in.

Wearables can also contribute in this perspective. Paradoxes of mobility Arnold argues that “the mobile phone is described as ‘Janus faced’—after the Roman deity with two faces, cursed and blessed with the necessity of facing in two directions at once” (Arnold, 2003, p.232). In his case he writes about the mobile phone in an organizational context. The one face of Janus looks in the direction where the mobile liberates its user and makes you free in a way that you can work anywhere at anytime. But Janus’ other face looks at the mobile phone as a leash, where its user constantly are at work. “The mobile phone means that potentially there is no escape from work, family, friends, or anyone else for that matter” (Arnold, 2003, p.243). It would be interesting to view our concept with the Janus perspective. We believe that to (constantly) be reminded or engaged by friends to exercise, will give you the necessary motivation to exercise more. But it might also create peer pressure and social tensions, so users might feel left out when not participating, constantly staying at the bottom of the score list or they might basically grow tired of the pressure. The intention of the application will then contradict its purpose or create social barriers instead of promoting socialness.

Problem area The problem area is still under deliberation, we are currently trying to define these borders.

Potential users We need to figure out the target group of the application. Everyone has their own relations to exercise, some like to do the workout session alone and some do not like to exercise at all. Some individuals don’t like to use technology when they exercise, but others may say they depend on it. In other words, the target group depends on each user's view of physical exercise in itself and each user's relationship to technology combined with exercise.

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Engaging participants The aim of the application is to encourage physical workout. We need to figure out why people exercise and what drives and motivates them. We have decided to look into two coherent topics, the “competing factor” and “socialness”.

Competing factor In most sport environments whether its kayak clubs or skiing teams, there is always a competing factor when they exercise together. This is also common in some friend circles where you compete just for the sake of fun or small bets. When these circles split up, i.e. when someone relocate to a new location, people might exercise less because they does not have anyone to exercise with. We need to look into how the application can create or maintain these circles of competing individuals. How can the application be realistic enough to keep the competitiveness of the participants? Look at differences between “normal” individuals and sport individuals perspectives and thoughts about the application. Will scoreboards of previous sessions motivate participants to exercise more so they can beat their friends? Do people wish to beat their friends or is awareness/acknowledgement equally important?

Socialness In a real race it easy to notice when you are behind or not. We want the application to give the same feeling to the participant. And to keep the ‘competing factor’ it is important to be able to share your thoughts. For instance, ‘Enjoy your lead, I will reach you soon!’. So we need to research what is the best practise of visualizing not only the participants positions, but also their thoughts. Will utilization of graphical elements in i.e. timelines and communication engage participants? What are possible participants thoughts of voice communication? How can a social network to collaboratively compete towards individual goals? Does gamification and sharing of data metrics help with physical motivation (in a positive perspective)? What are possible participants thoughts on sharing their workout statistics and data?

Technological challenges We need to identify possible challenges and barriers that makes the application unfeasible. In terms of social media, how complex should the application be? Should it be a new social medium or coupled directly to an existing network (for authentication and sharing), or should it use some kind of wireless authentication by Android wear.

Design Challenges The problem space we have envisioned relies on exploring a niche. It lays an uncertainty in part due to the intersection of several markets and the emerging design solutions for both wearable and socially connected artifacts. A major challenge is defining the community of practice:

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“that level of the social world at which practice is common, coordinated, and reproduced, at which significance is created, and consequently, in which the border is socially recognized and generic conventions are shared” (Brown and Duguid, 1994, p.17). In the visual design and features such as racing modes we aim to borrow and build upon the design language of platform and racing games. Building on what Brown and Duguid refers to as genres “socially constructed interpretive conventions that bridge the two sides of communication” (1994, p.7). Borrowing the spirit of ludo (term for ‘a game’) implies shifting the borders of both the genres: gaming and traditional training apps. Brown and Duguid centres this on continuity of the border and its central role in defining an artifact (1994, p.16). To maintain some continuity means we should explore the border spaces, for instance trying to build on the premises and narratives of 2D games and including a sense of play into the whole system.

Research question Does virtual presences, social­ and competing factors encourage to physical workout and make it more enjoyable?

Methods for data collection When exploring the problem space in discussions about possible avenues it became clear that we were in highly unchartered territories. Due to the high degree of uncertainty we relied on an understanding of the fuzzy front end (see Figure 1)

Figure 1: Fuzzy front end (Sanders and Stappers, p.6, 2008). The idea is that in design processes the start phase is chaotic and complicated. The design space is volatile, defined liberally and constantly renegotiated.Without the chaos the process would be limited to our current understanding and paradigms. Therefore any attempts to make the fuzzy more clear should also aim to not limit the process unnecessarily. Any certainty in this phase is dependent on a deep understanding of the users and their context. In essence the

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fuzzy front end concept both embraces chaos but also emphasises the need to ground design choices. To gain a better understanding of both the groups conceptions and our potential users we decided to use exploratory methods, primarily interviews.

Semi-structured interviews We originally wanted to use a focus group and participatory observation but it became clear that we had several divergent considerations. Therefore we prefaced the other methods with interviews. We conducted 3 interviews, we had originally made plans for 5 interviews but 2 of the interviews were cancelled due to scheduling.

Theoretical perspective The interviews where based on a phenomenological mode of understanding utilizing Kvale’s aspects as heuristics. Especially important was “specificity, sensitivity, ambiguity, deliberate naivetè” (Kvale, 2009, p.28). These aspect helped frame the interview in a specific context:

specificity: the importance of moving beyond general opinions to a “concrete level” (ibid) sensitivity: an understanding of the interviewers relation to the topic and how it enables

meaningful data deliberate naiveté: a neutral and reflexive understanding of our relation to the discussed

phenomenon and adopting a “presuppositionlessness” attitude that contrast with the sensitivity (Kvale, 2009, p.31)

ambiguity: contradictions are either faults of the interview or “reflect genuine inconsistencies, ambivalence, and contradictions” (ibid)

Ethical considerations To ensure we have a clear and consistent ethical dimension to the interviews we used the aspects, consent forms and used analogue annotations rather than recording. The interview aspects were important due to the topic of the interview. Some topics such as the subjects current training practices, sharing preferences and current use of training applications touched on potentially sore themes. The lack of a predefined taxonomy meant that we had to be careful to elicit a mutual understanding. These aspects were also used when considering questions and potential topics. We made a consent form in Norwegian where we specified all relevant aspects of the interview and the participants rights.

Plan We made a rudimentary interview plan, it allowed us the flexibility to both cover in breadth and also go in depth if necessary. Most importantly we attempted to gain a flow in the interview where we neither exhausted the interviewee or abruptly changed pursuits (see appendix 1).

Participants We wanted to get started quickly and therefore decided to invite other students we believed would be in the target group. We knew beforehand that it wouldn’t be possible (or feasible) to aim

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for a representative group. Our main concern was actually finding 5 people available; as mentioned we failed at that and only got 3 participants.

Setting All the interview were conducted at IFI Escape (student cafe) before noon, we determined to let the participant chose either the cafe or to use a meeting room we had booked. This was done on purpose to use a neutral ground to lessen the power asymmetry.

Process Introduction: Formal introduction, who we are, the course and the purpose of the

interview and signing of the consent form Questions: Semi­structured Personas: Discussed and created a persona very loosely based on the subject End phase: Ending the interview and reiterating their ethical rights. Greetings.

We used two roles, allowing one member to take both roles as necessary.

Interviewer: Asking questions and steering the interview Data collector: Taking notes

Results

Interview 1 Our interviewee does physical workouts both inside and outside. She uses an application called “Seconds” to do the type of workout she likes the best; interval exercises. The application counts down and start interval sessions, but it also has other features that she says she doesn’t care much about or understand. It also gives her a visual feedback and sounds. She says it can be a little tricky to use the app/mobile when she is running, even though its strapped to the upper arm. But she would not bother to purchase a more mobile device like a wearable, because “its not worth the money”. She used to workout with friends a lot and thinks it made the session more fun. But her friends is now spread to different cities in Norway, so she now workout alone. The interviewee is not very found of the idea of using of technology to simulate the presence of friends, she says “It would not be the same as in reality”. Regarding the socialness and sharing exercises, she feels like people only uses it to brag about their results and lifestyle. Nowadays she puts school first and is not motivated or engaged by workout requests from friends. Her motivation is guilty conscience after eating unhealthy food. She has no workout­plan and only does it when she only does it when the time is right or when she wants. She is fond of and think workout history important so she can view her progress.

Interview 2 The second interviewee was particularly interested in the project as he already used a multitude of applications to organize, motivate and track progress of training. Most notably KeepTrackPro

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for journaling, Chinup ­ app for dynamic training of chinups; and to a lesser degree enmodo sports for tracking. While he did not currently own or use any wearables he wanted to purchase one, pending disposable income and better battery time. He had to major issues with training apps, he found data in apps like RunKeeper to be unreliable. Further weight training apps had either to many interactions per datapoint or took too much effort and time to setup. He wanted the ability to track activity with gps, utilizing mobile networks to upload routes and data for storage. Further the most important function was minimal interaction, he wanted almost no interaction during exercise. He also wanted to train with friends and currently did cardio­training with friends once or twice a month. Scheduling was a major issue and most friends used different gyms (the closest to home?). Without us mentioning it he started speaking about leaderboards at workplaces where people manually entered training data to compete with colleagues. Further he strongly disliked sharing training data on social media, feeling slight contempt for friends who did this.

Interview 3 Our third interview subject was above average interested in training and running, though humble about it. She used an app on her phone while training to track the time and distance (by GPS) of her runs. She could see herself using an android wearable device, but had not acquired one yet. On training and being social she did not like to run together with friends/people, but she had planned to race (so together not meaning race opponents). Sharing of training related information was not something she did on a regular basis, except when having completed a race.

Reflection The interviews allowed us to shift focus from the all encompassing application we had discussed earlier to a leaner niche concept. It became clearer to us that we needed to work more with the competitive and gamification perspective and less on the recording and quantifying activity levels. The latter is already decently incorporated in other applications that offer much deeper integration than we envisioned.

Personas In traditional UCD personas are created as stand­in for real user participation. The personas are created either by a design team or through a cooperative process with the target group. These personas are ficticious characters that help frame discussions and create stories about use contexts. For instance allowing designers to use the personas as ‘googles’ to frame problems from different perspectives. Alan Cooper used personas as ‘hypothetical archetypes’ (Cooper, 2003). This allowed him and other designers to ask questions in the form of ‘what would X do’ and ‘would X do the same thing as Y’.

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Benefits Avoiding the “elastic user” (Cooper, p.128). The idea of designing towards a users is

clearly established. However without a clearly defined user it’s easy to define and stretch the concept of a user to fit within different scenarios.

Conversational tool. Personal allow internal considerations to be articulated using a personas perspective. Grounding reasons, goals and benefits to one persona instead of an extension of the speakers understanding.

Realistic consideration of skill levels (Cooper, p.131)

Method There are several consideration that have to be answered regarding personas and how they are developed and used in the design process. “Precision, not accuracy” (Cooper, 1999, p.129), its hard to be sure if a persona is the most correct for a project. Therefore precision meaning a clear and specific description is the main goal when making personas. This means that the personas is stronger and less elastic in application. Personas are defined by their goals and these goals are interwoven with their relation to our problem domain.

Our current personas We made the first 3 personas during the interviews and together with the interviewee discussed and tried to base the persona loosely on their traits and goals. To make the rest we decided to explore the critical dimensions and look at what personas we were missing. By plotting them on a axis of interest in wearables and interest in training we made this rough chart:

Figure 2: Sketch of target groups

The scribbled parts behind the curves are the zones of disinterest, users that would probably not be in our target group. The large circles are the three proposed personas that we had to make without interview data. This method made it clear that we should have taken more time to make

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more personas and test which apply to our problem space. However at this point we only used the personas in one exercise and haven’t yet discovered their faults and limitations.

Methods for prototyping We are currently analyzing the interviews and defining the needs and requirements of our user group. We have used the personas to frame our discussions. We made several scenarios for possible use­cases. Here it became clear that we had too many features and lacked a unified product. Therefore we brainstormed and conducted several stages of market research. Here we looked at other apps, websites, wearables and their current app­markets. We were not able to conclude this phase but used the data in a brainstorming session. Here we decided to concentrate on three features:

Training with friends in races (synchronous)

ghost mode ­ training against yourself challenges (asynchronous)

Visualizing activity sharing your current training live showing friends activities

Profiles Personal pages with the ability to share information

At this stage we are defining a set of heuristics that we can use, based upon the concepts of janus, mobility and borderline issues. Together with the personas and scenarios based on the personas we aim to make a set of needs and requirements. Further we have started sketching prototypes. The conceptual model is still being finalized, here the sketches allow us to discuss in detail without committing to a particular direction.

Future work In the coming weeks we will finish the conceptual design, heuristics, define needs and requirements and make several prototypes. Using the personas we will analyse the prototypes. If we have time we wish to do either a focus group or a participatory observation in the field. The participatory observation would be similar to Lacucci et. al’s ‘magic thing’ (2000) where we use dummy wearables during different forms of exercise to gage participants on interactions. In essence we have a lot of work left but believe we have found an interesting avenue to explore.

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Appendix

Appendix 1. - Interview Questions

1. Do you use your phone (or other mobile technology) when training? a. What works/doesn’t work/could be better/is good? b. Do you have any apps you currently use and could tell us about?

2. Or do you miss an app or wearable technology, or wish for an app or wearable

technology? a. Are there any such technologies you plan to use or are looking forward to

3. Thoughts about:

a. Running/Training with friends b. Would you consider using technology to run with you friends c. Sharing information about training

4. Our ideas:

a. “When ever, where ever, you can challenge friends/people to run!” i. “Live overview of competitors” [Niclas draws]

b. Do you have any critical opinions? c. Timeline d. Do you have any critical opinions?

5. Now we will create a persona!

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Appendix 2. - Personas

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