thesis: wetenschappelijk paper (finale versie)

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TriaTriumph: A dashboard for triathletes to estimate physical fitness Tom De Buyser Master Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction) KU Leuven, Belgium [email protected] Abstract—Triathlon is a booming branch in the sports indus- try and is practised around the whole world. A lot of triathletes try to reach the top-level of their physical fitness at a certain point in time (e.g. a race). Because of the lack of specific triathlon tools, some thriathletes use spreadsheets to report about trainings. These spreadsheets are based on the mostly lesser knowledge of an individual triathlete, because no standards exist. This paper introduces a web-based dashboard called TriaTriumph, that tries to help triathletes gaining insights about their physical fitness and the evolution of it over time. A survey has first been taken to identify the personality and the needs of triathletes. Then the dashboard was designed by running through the iterative rapid prototyping process. Displaying all necessary information on a single screen is an important property of dashboard design. However, this introduces a major problem: a crowded impression. This issue is evaluated and tackled according to the usability of the different prototypes that were developed. The added value of the dashboard was investigated by a final evaluation where 10 triathletes used the dashboard for two weeks. I. I NTRODUCTION Triathlon is becoming popular around the whole world and the age of triathletes varies widely 1,2 . Triathlon is characterized by races that consist of the sequential completion of three endurance sport disciplines, namely swimming, cycling and running. Races can come in different formats, ranging from the Ironman distance (3.8km swimming, 180.2km cycling and 42.2km running) to the sprint distance (0.75km swimming, 20km cycling and 5km running). It is intended that triathletes try to accomplish this distance as fast as possible. In order to perform well in a race, the athletes train for every discipline. To get more professional accompaniment, triathletes have the possibility to join clubs, where they can also practise with other team mates. Most triathletes are practising triathlon in a more or less recreational way, without intervention of a personal coach. Owning a personal coach has the enormous advantage of having the knowledge on how to practise in order to be in best shape at a certain point in time (e.g. a race). But because of the entailing financial costs of personal coaches, most triathletes do not have this specific knowledge. Some questions could arise, e.g. “Am I training in a proper way?”, “When do I have to take more rest or train harder?” or “Is my physical fitness becoming better towards the next race?”. Quantified self 3 could be a way for triathletes to gain more 1 http://www.britishtriathlonmedia.org/triathlon-membership-growth 2 http://reut.rs/1jdRYtD 3 http://quantifiedself.com/ knowledge about their own body and use this knowledge to prepare for a race. Quantified self - also known as personal informatics - is a movement where people capture and record personal data about some aspects of life (e.g. sports) [1]. A better understanding of the personal health could be retrieved by analysing these numbers. With these new insights, people could change their behaviour in a positive way in order to perform better. Triathletes may already record personal and training data. A survey has been done to discover, among other things, the kinds of this data. II. SURVEY It is important to know how the target audience behaves before starting designing an application for that audience. More specifically, it’s interesting to know how they prac- tise and what personal information they already record and consider important. For this purpose, a survey was publicly available on the web 4 from 23-10-2013 until 28-10-2013 and shared through several kinds of social media like Facebook and Twitter. This survey was even retweeted 5 by Katrien Verstuyft, the only Belgian female participant at the Olympic Games in London. Some examples of the questions that were stated in the survey are: Do you use a predefined training plan for an upcoming week, or is the planning ad hoc? Which personal information do you record on a daily or weekly basis? What software do you use to store this personal information? Do you carry a smartphone while training? The survey was filled in by 66 triathletes whereby some interesting conclusions could be drawn from the answers. It seems that 65% of the participants use a predefined training plan for the upcoming week. This means that most triathletes already plan at the beginning of a week which trainings they will do during that week. It seemed that some personal information was already being recorded on a daily/weekly basis, like weight (42%), morning heart rate (17%), sleep quality (5%) and body feeling (5%). Another remarkable point is the use of Excel spreadsheets to store personal information. No less than 32% of the partic- ipants use a spreadsheet for this purpose, which leads to the 4 http://bit.ly/1t346Db 5 https://twitter.com/TDBuyser/status/392942640963911680

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Page 1: Thesis: wetenschappelijk paper (finale versie)

TriaTriumph: A dashboard for triathletesto estimate physical fitness

Tom De BuyserMaster Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction)

KU Leuven, [email protected]

Abstract—Triathlon is a booming branch in the sports indus-try and is practised around the whole world. A lot of triathletestry to reach the top-level of their physical fitness at a certainpoint in time (e.g. a race). Because of the lack of specific triathlontools, some thriathletes use spreadsheets to report about trainings.These spreadsheets are based on the mostly lesser knowledge ofan individual triathlete, because no standards exist. This paperintroduces a web-based dashboard called TriaTriumph, that triesto help triathletes gaining insights about their physical fitnessand the evolution of it over time. A survey has first been takento identify the personality and the needs of triathletes. Thenthe dashboard was designed by running through the iterativerapid prototyping process. Displaying all necessary informationon a single screen is an important property of dashboard design.However, this introduces a major problem: a crowded impression.This issue is evaluated and tackled according to the usability ofthe different prototypes that were developed. The added value ofthe dashboard was investigated by a final evaluation where 10triathletes used the dashboard for two weeks.

I. INTRODUCTION

Triathlon is becoming popular around the whole world andthe age of triathletes varies widely1,2. Triathlon is characterizedby races that consist of the sequential completion of threeendurance sport disciplines, namely swimming, cycling andrunning. Races can come in different formats, ranging fromthe Ironman distance (3.8km swimming, 180.2km cycling and42.2km running) to the sprint distance (0.75km swimming,20km cycling and 5km running). It is intended that triathletestry to accomplish this distance as fast as possible. In order toperform well in a race, the athletes train for every discipline.To get more professional accompaniment, triathletes have thepossibility to join clubs, where they can also practise withother team mates.

Most triathletes are practising triathlon in a more or lessrecreational way, without intervention of a personal coach.Owning a personal coach has the enormous advantage ofhaving the knowledge on how to practise in order to be in bestshape at a certain point in time (e.g. a race). But because of theentailing financial costs of personal coaches, most triathletesdo not have this specific knowledge. Some questions couldarise, e.g. “Am I training in a proper way?”, “When do I haveto take more rest or train harder?” or “Is my physical fitnessbecoming better towards the next race?”.

Quantified self3 could be a way for triathletes to gain more

1http://www.britishtriathlonmedia.org/triathlon-membership-growth2http://reut.rs/1jdRYtD3http://quantifiedself.com/

knowledge about their own body and use this knowledge toprepare for a race. Quantified self - also known as personalinformatics - is a movement where people capture and recordpersonal data about some aspects of life (e.g. sports) [1]. Abetter understanding of the personal health could be retrievedby analysing these numbers. With these new insights, peoplecould change their behaviour in a positive way in order toperform better. Triathletes may already record personal andtraining data. A survey has been done to discover, among otherthings, the kinds of this data.

II. SURVEY

It is important to know how the target audience behavesbefore starting designing an application for that audience.More specifically, it’s interesting to know how they prac-tise and what personal information they already record andconsider important. For this purpose, a survey was publiclyavailable on the web4 from 23-10-2013 until 28-10-2013 andshared through several kinds of social media like Facebook andTwitter. This survey was even retweeted5 by Katrien Verstuyft,the only Belgian female participant at the Olympic Games inLondon. Some examples of the questions that were stated inthe survey are:

• Do you use a predefined training plan for an upcomingweek, or is the planning ad hoc?

• Which personal information do you record on a dailyor weekly basis?

• What software do you use to store this personalinformation?

• Do you carry a smartphone while training?

The survey was filled in by 66 triathletes whereby someinteresting conclusions could be drawn from the answers. Itseems that 65% of the participants use a predefined trainingplan for the upcoming week. This means that most triathletesalready plan at the beginning of a week which trainingsthey will do during that week. It seemed that some personalinformation was already being recorded on a daily/weeklybasis, like weight (42%), morning heart rate (17%), sleepquality (5%) and body feeling (5%).

Another remarkable point is the use of Excel spreadsheetsto store personal information. No less than 32% of the partic-ipants use a spreadsheet for this purpose, which leads to the

4http://bit.ly/1t346Db5https://twitter.com/TDBuyser/status/392942640963911680

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impression that triathletes do not know the existence specifiedtriathlon applications, or there are currently no suitable appli-cations available. Sport watches seems to be popular as well:35% uses Garmin and its software6, while 17% uses Polar andits software7.

Only 24% of the participants carry a smartphone whilepractising. The reason for this is not clear, but 6% of theparticipants noted that the smartphone is too cumbersometo carry. Therefore, we decided to not build a smartphoneapplication that could be used while training for a discipline.

III. RELATED WORK

Human computer interaction research has not been done sofar in this domain. There also doesn’t exist many value-addingapplications which are specialised to triathlon. The applicationwith the highest amount of users is TrainingPeaks. It is a web-based application that focusses on triathlon and has around500,000 registered users8. It offers an enormous wide rangeof functionality. Users have the possibility to plan workouts,add the results of each workout, set goals, keep up with dailyfood intake, join training and feeding plans and so on. Theresults of a workout can be added in high detail, wherebyTrainingPeaks offers the possibility to upload files that aregenerated by technical devices that are carried while training.

Besides a calendar, TrainingPeaks also comes with a dash-board that shows a summary of all results in an adjustable timeperiod. These results are visualised with pie charts, on whichit is difficult to compare two equally sized pieces. Addingpercentages only acknowledges this problem [2]. Therefore,our dashboard can bring added value to the sports industry interms of dashboard design.

IV. OUR CONTRIBUTIONS

In order to be at best shape for a race, triathletes should beable to gain insights about their own body and their physicalfitness. TriaTriumph tries to display specific information insuch a way that they are able to gain these insights. By usingthe rapid prototyping process, a dashboard was built throughseveral stages. The final version was subjected to a biggerevaluation, where it was used for two weeks by ten triathletes.We found that the dashboard gives added value to the actionsthat are taken concerning the contents of the dashboard.

V. DESIGN

The information that was gained from the survey was usedas a basis for the information that is displayed in the design.By listening to the needs of the triathletes, a tool can be builtthat could be useful for them. It was chosen to develop a toolthat visualizes the physical fitness over time by using charts.Because smartphones seems not so popular, the applicationdoesn’t have to be mobile. We took advantage of this by usinga bigger screen to show the graphs on a web-based dashboard.

Before the start of the design phase, some design criteriawere considered important. These criteria should be fulfilled inthe future design in order to achieve the goal of this research.

6http://connect.garmin.com/7http://www.polar.com/8http://home.trainingpeaks.com/

• Data capture: In order to show the evolution ofphysical fitness over time, there must be data availableabout the trainings of the user. This could be accom-plished by providing the possibility to plan practicalsessions and provide these sessions with a detailedresult afterwards. Also keeping a diary of personalspecifications is a possible way of getting insightsabout the physical fitness.

• Simplicity: Because a dashboard displays a lot ofinformation, it should have a simplistic design. Usersshould not get overwhelmed with the way in whichinformation is provided. The use of less colors couldbe a first step towards a simplistic design [3].

• Consistency: Choosing for consistency gives the usersmore confidence in using the dashboard, wherebysimplicity comes up.

• Interactivity: One of the things that can bring moredetail in a simplistic design is interactivity. By inter-acting with the dashboard, more detailed and neces-sary information can be shown on demand, while stillmeeting simplicity. In order to analyse physical fitness,it should be possible to adapt the time period in whichthe evolution of the physical fitness is displayed.

There are some other important properties of a gooddashboard design, as stated by Stephen Few [3]. A firstproperty is that the user should not have to scroll throughthe dashboard to perceive all the information. When relatedinformation cannot be captured in a single view, there is therisk that some relationships between numbers is not noticed,while gaining insights is the goal of this dashboard. Puttinga lot of information on one screen can lead to a crowdedand overwhelming impression. This is a major challenge indesigning dashboards [4] and therefore evaluated and tackledthrough the different prototypes.

A second property of a good dashboard design is placingthe most important information in the region where the em-phasis is the largest, namely at the top left and the middle ofthe screen. A bad strategy would be to put a big company logoat the top left of the dashboard, because it doesn’t show themost important information.

VI. METHODOLOGY (RAPID PROTOTYPING)

An iterative design process is used to reach the final designof the dashboard. In each iteration or phase, a prototype isdeveloped that tries to solve the problems that came up in theprevious prototype. The first two prototypes were designed onpaper, called paper prototyping [5]. By designing on paper,the foundations of the dashboard can first be defined. Whenproblems occur, the prototype can easily be redrawn, withoutloosing time and money in the technical implementation ofthese changes. When a paper prototype has more or less nobig issues, time is spent in digitalizing this prototype.

Throughout the individual evaluations, commonly usedevaluation techniques have been used. These techniques areused in such a way that the quality of the different designcriteria is evaluated. A first technique is the think aloudmethod [6]. It is used to let people explain what they perceiveby seeing a part of the dashboard. In this way, it can be tested

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Fig. 1: The first paper prototype

whether the users do get the message that the dashboard triesto express. If not, there is probably a problem in its design.Another approach of think aloud is to give the users a taskthat has to be completed by interacting with the dashboard.Users have to explain which steps they should untertake tofulfil the task. This approach gives insights on the usability ofthe design, more concrete whether tasks are fulfilled in a waythat they were intended to do.

At the end of each evaluation, some specific questions wereasked about the content of the dashboard. Because limiting acrowded impression is a major challenge, one of this questionswas about giving an opinion about this issue. After theindividual evaluation, a SUS questionnaire [7] was filled in bythe participant. This questionnaire gives an indication whetherthere are big usability issues in the design, like inconsistency.The SUS score also makes it possible to compare applicationswith each other. A score above 85% could for example berated as excellent [8].

VII. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTIONS

In this section, the different prototypes are described incombination with their evaluation results. Two paper proto-types were followed by two digital prototypes, where thesecond digital prototype is considered as the final version ofTriaTriumph. The main focus of the usability in this paper willbe on limiting a crowded impression. However, there were stillother issues solved throughout the different prototypes.

A. First paper prototype

The design of the first paper prototype is made up of levelsand is shown in Figure 1. The dashboard starts with a header

on top because it holds a button that thriatletes can use to adda finished activity. An activity could be a training or a race.The dashboard logo was kept rather small because it doesn’tadd very important information. Below the header, a calendarof the current week is shown in combination with its progress.The planning is built up of three rows, each serving one ofthe three disciplines. Users can plan an activity by clicking onthe desired square in the calendar. This concept is introducedbecause 65% of the responders of the survey said to use apredefined planning.

The next concept are the personal things of a triathlete.Users are encouraged to daily save their weight, morning heartrate, hours of sleep and body feeling. These properties werederived from the results of the survey. By hitting the graphbutton, a user is able to see the evolution of these propertiesover time and how they relate to each other. The goal ofthis graph is to gain more knowledge about your own body.One example could be that the user’s body feels fitter whensleeping more. Another example is when the morning heartrate is increasing for a few days, the user is probably gettingsick and needs more rest. On the right of the personal thingsis a region where users can set goals and earn badges. Thepurpose of this concept is to motivate the users to keep usingthe dashboard.

The level below contains three boxes. The dashboard triesto show the training intensity in a user-defined time period.This is done by calculating the average value for the amountof calories burned, the intensity, the heart rate while trainingand the total time of activity. These averages can be comparedwith the average of all the triathletes that use the dashboard.The time period can be changed by using the slider and theevolution of the average values can be shown by clickingon the graph button. The next concept, the physical fitness,tries to show whether the physical fitness of the athlete isgetting better. The average velocities of two time periods canbe compared to each other, but also to the average velocity ofall users of the dashboard. The results of an activity can beconsulted at the right of this level.

The bottom level provides information about races and thecomparison of them. The duration of the races that were donein the user-defined time period are shown on a graph.

This prototype does not satisfy the property of fitting com-pletely on one screen without scrolling. A lot of informationis displayed because it was not clear which information isconsidered as most important by triathletes. Therefore, themajor goal of the evaluation was to define the most importantconcepts of the dashboard, so that the less important conceptscould be omitted in the next prototype. Participants were askedto give the four most important boxes of the dashboard.

The prototype was evaluated for one hour with nine sportspeople, including seven triathletes. Seven participants (78%)indicated that the design had a very crowded impression, aswas expected. All participants agreed that the planning and itsprogress is the most important information. Therefore, it was agood decision to put this on top. Six of the seven triathletes didnot like the content of the physical fitness box. A preparationfor a race consists of intensive weeks and weeks of rest. Usingthe average velocity will give the impression that the physicalfitness is getting worse in a week of rest, while this is not

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Fig. 2: The second paper prototype

true. Three of these six triathletes suggested another approachto estimate the increase in physical fitness. For each discipline,a contest is done around every two weeks, where triathletes tryto accomplish a distance as fast as possible. It could be veryuseful to plot these timings on a graph. This interpretation isused and evaluated in the next prototype.

Setting goals and earning badges was only consideredimportant by one triathlete. Afterthought, this concept doesn’thelp to reach the goal of this research. The main goal of thedashboard is not to motivate triathletes to get a better physicalfitness, but it tries to give information about the evolution ofthe physical fitness over time. This concept will therefore beomitted. The concept of comparing races was also not popular,because comparing them is very difficult. Each race has adifferent distance, different weather and a different trail. Theconcept of races also won’t be included in the next prototype.Despite the crowded impression, the design received a SUSscore of 83.6.

B. Second paper prototype

The goal of the evaluation of the previous prototype wasachieved. Some concepts are omitted, whereby all the infor-mation in this prototype perfectly fits on one screen withoutthe need of scrolling. This second paper prototype is shownin Figure 2. Another change with respect to the previousprototype is the positioning of the header. It now becamea footer, as the button to add an activity disappeared andtherefore the header doesn’t carry very important informationanymore. Now, triathletes can add the results of a scheduledtraining by clicking on the training in the calendar. Trainingcategories are also introduced in order to get a glimpse of theload of the week. One last addition is the possibility to filterthe users that are included in the calculation of the averagetraining intensity values. Triathletes can now compare thesevalues against users with the same sex, the same age categoryand the same skill.

Next to keeping only the most important concepts, someother strategies were used to limit the crowded impression.The first strategy is combining a symbol with its value, whichshould make the design less detailed and more simplistic.Another strategy is using less colors: a threefold color schemeconsisting of dark gray, light gray and orange is used.

Fig. 3: The first digital prototype

This prototype was evaluated for 45 minutes with eighttriathletes. Only one triathlete (12.5%) indicated that the designhad a too crowded impression. This is much better than the78% from the previous prototype. This gives an indication thatthe design was going in the right direction. The SUS score alsoincreased to 86.3, which can be considered as excellent.

C. First digital prototype

For the second paper prototype, it was difficult to findtriathletes that wanted to spend time in evaluating it. As thisresearch is limited in time, it wasn’t possible to just waitfor more triathletes to evaluate the prototype. Therefore, thedecision was made to start the implementation of a digital pro-totype. This means that the design of this first digital prototypeis practically the same as the second paper prototype, whichentails that probably the results of the previous prototypeevaluation would recur in the evaluation of this prototype.

In order to get as many new things from this evalua-tion, another audience was contacted. It is common that thedigitalization of a paper prototype introduces some technicalmistakes and therefore this evaluation was done with computerscientists. These participants evaluate the dashboard from amore technical viewpoint, whereby this evaluation can still givea great added value.

A screenshot of the first digital prototype is shown inFigure 3. All the functionality that is displayed on this imagewas already implemented, except for adding a training resultand the interaction with the graphs. The shown visualisationswas also based on dummy data, because of the absence ofan implemented backend with a database. This design scalesdynamically on every wide screen, no matter its size.

The evaluation was done with 12 computer scientists andlasted 35 minutes. This evaluation was completely focussed onusability. Questions about the content were not asked, as noneof the 12 computer scientists was a triathlete. With this moretechnical audience, it was also interesting to get an opinionabout the crowded impression of the dashboard. Next to someusability issues resulting from the digitalization, four of the 12participants (25%) indicated that the design had a too crowdedimpression. Remarkable is that three of these four participantssaid that this crowded impression was owing by the right upperpart of the dashboard. This part shows the details of a trainingin a very small space with the personal notes attracting the

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Fig. 4: Final version of the dashboard with flipped graphs

attention, whereby it looks very crammed. The next prototypewill therefore add a “notes”-tab, so that more space is availableto show the details and the personal notes of a training. TheSUS score of 84.6 is also a little lower - but still a great SUSscore - in comparison with the SUS score of the triathletes.

D. Final version

The final version of the dashboard is shown in Figure 4.In comparison with the previous prototypes, some time wasspent in implementing a backend. A database was introducedto load and store real data. This implies that the dashboard isnow fully interactive. Adding the result of a physical contestwill trigger a change in other elements of the dashboard: theprogress in the planning is updated, the training intensity willbe recalculated and the contest will be added to the graph ofphysical contests.

Also the graphs were implemented, as shown in the screen-shot. The graphs for both personal specifications and trainingintensity show the evolution of the four values on top of eachother, so that a comparison on a daily basis is possible. In thisway, the values can be related to each other more easily. Thegraph of physical contests shows all the times of contests thatwere done in the selected time period. A trendline and averageline were added to more quickly observe the global trend.

A last big addition in functionality is the managementof users. A landing page is shown when a user visits thedashboard. This page informs triathletes about the key featuresof the dashboard. This page also gives to possibility to createan account and to access the personal dashboard.

VIII. SOFTWARE DESIGN

We decided to develop a web-based dashboard becauseit does not require the use of a specific operating sys-tem to access it. The dashboard can be accessed throughwww.TriaTriumph.com. For the implementation of thedashboard, a REST architecture was used. The REST archi-tecture gives developers the possibility to create a REST APIthat acts as the contact point or controller between the frontendand the backend. Therefore, our application consists of threelayers: a UI layer, a REST API layer and a Database layer.

The UI layer is implemented with a combination ofHTLM5, CSS3, JavaScript and jQuery. HTML5 and CSS3 areused to define and style the structure of the dashboard layout.

Fig. 5: Sequence diagram showing the steps that are executedto load a personal dashboard

As described earlier, the dashboard scales on every widescreen, no matter its size. This is done by using JavaScript,more concrete by calculating the maximum size of eachHTML-element. jQuery is a JavaScript library that is usedfor several plug-ins, like the sliders to select a time period.It is also used to communicate with the REST API layer.This REST API layer is implemented in node.js, which isa JavaScript-based software platform for building scalablenetwork applications. An advantage of node.js is that it offerspackages that can be installed to plug-in existing functionality.We used Mongoose to communicate with the database andPassport to handle user management. We also used Express,which is a framework on top of node.js to create an initialstructure for the node application. The Database layer consistsof a MongoDB which gets accessed by Mongoose.

Figure 5 shows a sequence diagram which shows the com-munication between the three layers when loading a personaldashboard. The UI layer contacts the REST API with an AJAXcall initiated by jQuery. The REST API will handle the calland hand it to the Database layer, which sends back a result.

IX. FINAL EVALUATION

The final version of the dashboard was subjected to afinal evaluation in order to examine the added value of thedashboard. This evaluation consisted of two parts: a trial periodwhere the dashboard was used for two weeks and using GoogleAnalytics9 to track which actions the users are performing.

A. Trial period

The trial period took place from 01-05-2014 until 15-05-2014. In this two weeks, the dashboard was used by tentriathletes. To examine the added value of the dashboardagainst the existing applications, we used a questionnaire. Atthe first day of the trial period, each participant had to fillout a first questionnaire. This questionnaire consisted of 16assignments that had to be solved by using the applicationsthat the participants were currently using for storing their data.Each assignment relates to one of the design criteria that wereintroduced. For each assignments, the participant had to give

9http://www.google.com/analytics/

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an indication of both the ease and the time needed to performthe assignment. Also five theorems were included that theparticipant had to grade at a 10-point scale.

After filling out the first questionnaire, the participantcreated an account on www.TriaTriumph.com and startedusing the dashboard. At the end of this period, the samequestionnaire was presented again. Now, the triathletes hadto fill out the questionnaire based on the information they hadstored in the dashboard for the last two weeks. By comparingthe answers of both questionnaires, the improvement for eachquestion and person was calculated.

The participants had to indicate which applications theyused at the start of the trial period. It seemed that theparticipants could be divided into groups: four participantsused software of sports watches, four people used Excelspreadsheets and two people used smartphone applications.We found that for each assignment, as well the ease as thetime needed to perform the assignment improved by usingthe dashboard in the second questionnaire. On average, thedashboard showed an improvement for each participant, exceptone, for both ease and needed time. Using the dashboardshowed a very little decline in ease for one of the persons ofthe sports watches group. Afterwards, we asked that person togive some more feedback on his results. He said that he didn’tlike the manual logging, whereby he only filled in the durationand distance of each training. Thereby, only a little percentageof the functionality was used, so that not all the assignmentscould be solved because of the lack of information.

The SUS questionnaire that was included in the lastquestionnaire somewhat proved this cumbersome approach ofmanual logging. This is tested in the eighth question of theSUS questionnaire. This question had an average of 3 out of5, where 5 means very cumbersome. This issue probably alsoaffected some other questions of the SUS, because the averageSUS score was dropped to 78.8.

B. User tracking with Google Analytics

The second approach of the final evaluation was user track-ing with Google Analytics (GA). This tool captures generalinformation like the amount of users, the average duration of avisit, which browsers that are used to access the dashboard, etc.GA also offers the option to track events where it records everyaction a user takes, from clicking a button to changing thevalue of an input field. This information was used to examinewhich actions were performed frequently or almost never.

The more general information showed that the landing pageof the website had a total of 91 unique users in the sameperiod of the trial period. From these 91 users, 13 activeaccounts were created. The average duration on the websitewas 5 minutes and 55 seconds, for the dashboard it was 3minutes and 40 seconds.

The event tracking showed that in total 6637 actions wereperformed on the dashboard. Saving personal specificationswas the most performed action with 39% of the total amount,followed by 28% for adding trainings to the calendar and 24%for specifying the results of a training. So these aspects take91% of all actions on their behalf, which was expected becausethese actions are related to the design criterion data capture.

Only one action was only performed twice, namely addingtraining categories in the profile page. Hence, it was probablynot found by the users.

X. CRITICISMS & FUTURE WORK

Because of the limited time of this research, the dashboardis only fully tested on Google Chrome and Safari. It alsocompiles on tablets because the dashboard is web-based. Toreach all triathletes without any limits, the dashboard shouldalso be compatible with other browsers, which is future work.

Because of the cumbersome manual logging, the dashboardcould give the possibility to upload the files that are generatedby sports watches. Hereby, a limited form of automatic loggingis introduced, limiting the effort to add the details of a training.Also the personal specifications could be logged automatically.Some devices that track weight, heart rate and sleeping hoursare available on the market and offer a public API, e.g. theFitbit Flex or the Withings scale. If some triathletes alreadyuse these devices, then the effort to log data again reduces.

Another approach for introducing automatic logging is theuse of smart watches. The survey showed that the smartphonewas only used by 24% of the responders while training.However, 55% of the responders said to use a sports watch.This opens the door to develop a smart watch applicationwhich automatically tracks training details en sends them to thedashboard. The disadvantage of this approach is that triathletesshould do a financial effort to buy such a smart watch.

XI. CONCLUSION

This paper explained the developing process of a dash-boards for triathletes to estimate their current level of physicalfitness and the evolution of it over time. It also tries togive the triathletes more insight in the operation of theirown body, which could help them to prepare for races. Twopaper prototypes and two digital prototypes were developedby running through the iterative rapid prototyping process.We subjected the final version of the dashboard to a finalevaluation. We showed that the developed dashboard gives anadded value to triathletes for both ease and needed time insolving assignments that relate to the goals of the dashboard.

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