Paper Reading #9: Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia

• Title:
• Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia
• Reference Information:
• Florian Mueller, Frank Vetere, Martin R. Gibbs, Darren Edge, Stefan Agamanolis, and Jennifer G. Sheridan. 2010. Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia.  In <em>Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology</em> (UIST '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA,  189-198. DOI=10.1145/1866029.1866062 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1866029.1866062
• UIST 2010 New York, New York.
• Author Bios:
• Floyd Mueller is a worldwide expert in exertion games, games which require intense physical effort from the users. Floyd has 18 years of experience across 4 continents.
• Frank Vetere is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne.  Vetere's interests are in utilizing emerging communication technologies in helpful applications.
• Martin Gibbs is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne.  Gibbs is currently conducting research on people who play the MMORPG World of Warcraft.
• Darren Edge is a researcher in the Human-Computer Interaction group at Microsoft Research Asia.  Edge got his undergraduate degree as well as his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.
• Stefan Panayiotis Agamanolis is associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Agamanolis has been publishing articles since 1997 and has 29 through the ACM.
• Jennifer Sheridan is the Senior User Experience Consultant and Director of User Experience at BigDog Interactive.  Sheridan has published more than 40 research papers. 
• Summary
• Hypothesis:
• The researchers hypothesized that there are certain design elements that should be taken into consideration when building an exertion activity program.  The researchers were NOT attempting to prove that there is a social aspect to exercising.  The three aspects to take into consideration when designing a social experience are communication integration, virtual mapping, effort comprehension.
• Methods
• The researchers developed a system to test their hypothesis.  The system they designed was one that utilized a cellphone, heart rate sensor, mini computer and headset.  Each of the two runners were equipped with these devices.  Researchers then asked their friends to pair up and determine running times.  Whether the users were in the same city or continents apart, the users would be able to communicate using their headset.  Additionally, participants could fall behind their partners if their heart rate fell to a lower percentage of their set guideline than their partner's.
• Results
• The researchers determined that the three aspects (communication integration, virtual mapping and effort comprehension) all need to be considered when designing a exertion system.  Each of the three aspects have benefits as well as consequences depending on what the developers are attempting to produce.  For example, more competitive users consider absolute distance/time a better measurement of winning as opposed to perceived effort.
• Contents
•   The researchers would ultimately like to determine whether or not adding a social aspect to exercising has any impact on the motivation to exercise or performance.  One theory is that users are just excited by the new technology but that excitement will eventually fade and the systems will not help overall.  This will require a longer study than the one performed for this research paper. For the casual users, the experience of being able to run 'with' someone of a different skill level was quite a novel and useful idea.
• Discussion
• This paper was of particular interest to me since I actively use one of the systems they mentioned (the Nike+ system).  The motivation behind the Nike+ system is to gain motivation by making running a social event.  Personally, I love the post-event feedback given from the Nike+ system, and I am encouraged by the findings of this research paper about making it real-time feedback.  The audience feature they mentioned in future research is something I think would work well for people in different time zones.  I don't feel as if the researchers accomplished very much in this paper though.  For me, it seems as if they developed a system that should be used for further research papers but nothing more.

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