Paper Reading #9: Jogging Over a Distance Between Europe and Australia

Authors: Florian Mueller, Frank Vetere, Martin Gibbs, Darren Edge, Stefan Agamanolis, Jennifer Sheridan

occupation:

Florian Mueller is currently researching interactive technology as a Fullbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford University

Frank Vetere is a senior lecturer in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne

Martin Gibbs is also a lecturer in the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne

Darren Edge is currently a researcher in the HCI group for Microsoft Research

Stefan Agamanolis is currently Associate Director of the Rebecca D. Considine Research Institute at Akron Children's Hospital.

 Jennifer Sheridan is currently the Senior User Experience Consultant and Director of User Experience at BigDog Interactive

Location: UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23rd annual ACM

Summary:

Hypothesis:

Jogging with other people will be more enjoyable when one is able to communicate with other people while doing so

Method/result: The participants ran from 25-45 minutes and communicated with someone during that time. Such people included friends, siblings, relatives, etc. The participants interviewed for about two hours afterward and responded to open ended questions regarding their experience. (17 participants, 14 runs)

The findings showed that Jogging Over a Distance was a great success. Joggers were able to experience more motivation to run especially due to the virtual mapping system that allowed the Joggers to feel ahead, behind, or right with their partner that was jogging with them. (This was done by using volume to give a illusion of where the two runners were while the heart rate gave the position of where the runner would be → virtual spacial environment) This attribute also promoted the spirit of competition greatly amongst some people allowing the participants to exert more on exercising.

Content:

The paper attempts to promote running into to a more social activity by allowing easy communication amongst different people and also allows people to enjoy running even when two people have a great disparity in fitness due to its measurement of heart rate system. It is important to note that the paper itself does not attempt to build running as a daily habit and also does not focus on performance. The paper instead focuses on a implementation done to increase social enjoyability of running itself.

Discussion:

As a occasional runner I thought that this product was a great way to promote social enjoyability of running. This is because in my personal experience running is very tiresome and music is not enough to keep me enthusiastic. But by using such a product one will feel more motivated as they realize that you are not alone in the suffering of running. It also makes for interesting competitions when doing this with a friend. I personally don't think that this product will be very effective in motivating people that usually do not run however. This is because motivating oneself to run is actually quite difficult even if one was to have something to talk to.