SweatAtoms: Materializing

Physical Activity

Rohit ashok khot, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Larissa Hjorth

Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University, Australia

About me and my lab

Exertion Games LabRMIT University, Melbourne, Australiahttp://exertiongameslab.org

Physical activity

“Key to maintain and regain personal health”- Weinberg and Gould (2006)

Personal informatics

“Self monitoring and reflection”- Li (2010)

Virtual representation

“Interactive capabilities, dynamic updates of data”- Vande Moere (2008)

Picture under the glass

“Lack of rich tactile feedback”- Victor(2001)

Material representation

“touched, explored, carried and even possessed.”- Vande Moere (2008)

Meaning beyond the data

“beyond virtual and efficiency goals”- Hassenzahl (2010)

Personal Fabrication

“Soon the 3D printers will be in everybody’s home.”- Gershenfeld (2012)

Physical – Digital - Physical

“To discover new ways of creating material artifacts through technology that embody self and past activities.”

1. Physical activity

2. Personal Informatics

3. Personal Fabrication

SweatAtoms

“3D printing of heartbeats”

The problem of representation

“Physical activity data has no natural counterpart that can be graphically reproduced.”- Vande Moere (2008)

Five Representations

Aesthetic and informative form

Representation 1: Graph

Heartbeats per minute

Representation 2: Flower

Dynamic floral pattern reflects the variations in heart rate while length of petal denotes the intensity of heart beat.

Representation 3: Frog

Size of the frog captures the amount of physical activity done in a day.

Representation 4: Dice

Each face of the die reflects the amount of time spent in each of the six heart rate zones.

Representation 5: Ring

Bubbles around the ring denotes the number of active hours and diameter of the bubbles defines the amount of physical activity during that hour.

Exploratory “in the wild” study

“Understand the impact of material artifacts on the behavior and experience of everyday physical activity.”

Engaging with the process

“great to see objects printing small big.. Like a recap of my physical activity...”

Engaging with artifacts

“We love the frog...it is like... Burning your body fats and putting them on the frog.”

Appreciating artifacts

“I would put them on the wall, to remind me that I did well.”

Relating to physical activity

“My trainer was so happy to see my progress, thanks for letting me participate.”

Reflecting on sedentary lifestyle

“it made me realize how much time I spent sitting...”

Contrasting digital with material

“[on a mobile phone] you look at your heart rate and then forget about it, here [addressing to material artifact] you cannot, it is more persistent and personal.”

Emergent themesAutotopography

Rewards

Critical design

Physical – Digital - Physical

“Giving a physical form to the ephemeral experience of physical activity can facilitate a deeper engagement with the data.”

TastyBeats: Fluidic representations

“Cocktail to match your physical activity”