Designing for Stimulating Social Interaction in
Outdoor Gym
Xiwen Zhang
Uppsala, Sweden
xiwen.zhang.9056@student.uu.se
ABSTRACTIn the world where the Internet has nearly linked people in every corner, for some people, the nearby places seem to disappear. It might also lead to the alienation of friends and neighbours. For addressing the disadvantages of the change, this study aims to design for stimulating social interaction in outdoor gyms that are distributed in most communities and parks. Towards this goal, I engaged in designing and evaluating a movement-based interaction project. I invited 5 participants to work as designers for generating design ideas, using reflecting somaesthetics and bodystorming design methods. The bodystorming braid was used for depicting how design ideas generated and evolved. Design ideas were packaged into 3 types of design solutions -- cooperative play, competition and just talking. The most practical solutions for each kind were selected for building prototypes. These prototypes were evaluated with Wizard-of-Oz techniques by 4 participants, followed by a focus group. The qualitative analysis surfaced the important factors that impacted social interaction and major users, including the target users, usage, interaction, and maintenance.
Author Keywords
Social interaction; outdoor gym; movement-based interaction.
INTRODUCTION
With the advancement of informational globalisation, it is easier to reach people around the world and build relationships. We spend more time immersed in the virtual world. In the real world, people who live nearby turn away from each other. The nearby places seem to disappear, which means that even though people lived in the same community and shared the same library, bars, parks and many places, they nearly had no chance to interact with each other and also could not build social networks.
However, the nearby places are important for humans. The sociologist Ray Oldenburg [22] coined the term “third place” which depicted public open space used for informal social interaction. In these places, people can put aside the mixture of activities in workplaces and at home, and hang out merely for pleasures. Opponents might disagree that chatting online or playing computer
games plays the same role when people want to escape from intense work or family issues. Even some researchers referred to the concept “third place” to build a virtual third place on the world wide web [26]. The advantage of the virtual third place could not be denied. But, in the virtual world, people cannot have bodily contact, cannot read gestures or facial expressions when sending messages, and also cannot show proximity or orientation easily like what people used to do in the third place. These social behaviours form the most important types of human behaviour that happen between two or more humans for engagement or exchange -- social interaction [3, 5]. Social interaction could leverage the sedentary lifestyles [13], provide an alternative for playing digital games [28], and bring positive mood change [3, 5]. Considering the essentiality of social interaction, the paper attempted to design for stimulating social interaction.
Parks, bars, churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries and outdoor gyms are parts of the example of the third place. Compared with these places, outdoor gyms are widely distributed. According to the data from the General Administration of Sport of China, nearly each park and each community in Chinese cities have installed outdoor gym equipment. Outdoor gyms are built on public open space to encourage structured physical activities [20] and social interaction [4,11]. Outdoor fitness equipment in outdoor gyms supports various levels and types of physical activities. According to the research of reviewing outdoor gyms around the world, the number and type are not unified standards [18,20]. The number of equipment in outdoor gyms ranges from around 5 to 20, like air walker, running machine, horizontal bar, leg press, ski machine, waist twister, and waist/back massage. These activities target aerobic, muscle-strengthening, balance, or flexibility training, and relaxing.
Therefore, outdoor gyms were selected as the environment to stimulate social interaction in the paper. The research question:
What design solutions can stimulate social interaction in outdoor gyms?
BACKGROUND
Designing for social interaction in outdoor gyms, there are 2 aspects of knowledge involved. Related design factors were introduced for inspiring participants to generate ideas, and the embodied interaction design methods were used for guiding the ideation process.
Factors for Stimulating Social Interaction
Some researchers designed products in their studies and concluded design factors for stimulating social This work was submitted in partial fulfilment for the master ’s degree in Human –
Computer Interaction at Uppsala University, Sweden, on 7th September, 2020. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author must be honored.
interaction [1, 2, 6, 17]. Firstly, the collective focus or mood link people, triggering their enthusiasm or initiative to take action [6]. For example, in Bekker and his colleagues ’ research, they designed an external stimulus called ColorFlare. It is a flashlight-shape object that can be lighted with several colours. Rolling the ColorFlare changes colour, and shaking makes it begin to flash. When the object is in flash mode, if the user makes it get close to the second ColorFlare, the colour of the first object can be transmitted to the second one. With the features of ColorFlare, users can develop their own play goals and rules, for instance, a group of players transmits colour within a period, or two groups of players compete who can transfer colour faster [1].
This example also shows the other three factors. They are “motivating feedback”, “open-ended play”, and “social player interaction patterns ” [1,17]. Motivating feedback indicates that players get immediate feedback from objects when they do a physical movement. In the example, the feedback means that the colour changes immediately when the rolling action occurs or the colour flashes once users start to shake. Secondly, the “open-end play” aims to provide interaction opportunities to build a game goal and some rules by themselves through negotiating with other players when playing with an object. For example, ColorFlare players can decide to play cooperatively or competitively. The last factor shows the structure of interaction among players and between players and games [10], in which cooperative play and team competition can provoke a high level of social interaction [17]. These suggestions were introduced to participants who join the ideation process for inspiring them to come up with or modified design ideas.
In space, the distance and position are also essential factors for igniting a social interaction. Hall distinguished four kinds of spacing between people [14]: intimate (< 0.5m), personal (0.5m-1.2m), social (1.2m-3.6m), and public (> 3.6m). The commonly chosen distance for strangers is between 0.8 to 3.6m in which contact is possible [14, 27]. Less than 0.5m is “taboo to relax and enjoy bodily contact with strangers,” and more than 3.6m is too far away to expect to contact among strangers [7]. In some kinds of equipment, like triple waist twisters, the distance between users is very close, less than 0.5 meters. So sometimes, if there is a user, strangers will not use it. How to make strangers want to use the equipment together and feel more relaxed should be considered in the ideation process.
There are 3 kinds of relative positions between two persons. The face-to-face position makes people feel threatened that it is unsuitable to start a conversation [27]. The side-by-side (lateral) position makes people more inclined to talk with strangers [12] because it blurs the boundaries between people [27]. And the diagonal position is a desirable position for people who know each other to conduct conversation [14, 29]. For outdoor fitness equipment, the structures of them are in a forced setting, so when designing for a piece of certain
equipment, the position and orientation of exercisers should be taken into account.
Embodied Interaction Design
The design theory embodied interaction design “involved one’s physical body in interaction with technology in a natural way” [15,p.329]. Doing exercise is the primary purpose for most people who go to an outdoor gym [21]. When social interaction occurs in an outdoor gym, people are probably doing exercise at the same time. So designing for stimulating social interaction in outdoor gyms must consider users’ physical movement. Comparing with other design theories, embodied design is concerned about users exercise actions. Furthermore, according to Paul Dourish [9], embodied interaction design depicts “an approach to design and analysis of interaction that takes embodiment to be central to, even constitutive of, the whole phenomenon”, like bodystorming. It is “an embodied ideation method involving a group of designers who are physically and socially active in thinking and experiencing together for possible future designs” [23, p.102]. Artefacts, props, technologies, and spaces would be used for supporting designers to generate ideas in the very early design process. Embodied interaction is suitable for designing the users’ movement in outdoor gyms.
When implementing embodied interaction design methods, designers are required to physically and socially immerse in a design context. They involve their hands, eyes, other parts of the body, and their mind or perceptions when experiencing, thinking and discussing. One research shows that before applying the embodied interaction design method, bodystorming, reflecting somaesthetics supports designers in understanding the nature of the body more deeply, like the coordination among different parts of bodies. It also enables designers to experience their feelings sensitively [21]. These understand, and experiences are useful for using the body to design and make decisions [21, 24]. Reflecting somaesthetics derived from somaesthetics discipline, which indicates the vital role of the body’s experience. Soma emphasizes “a living, feeling, sentient body” and esthetic depicts “soma’s perceptual role and its aesthetic use”[24,p.1].
METHODOLOGY AND METHOD
The study consists of 2 main processes, the ideation process, and the evaluation process. In the ideation process, I introduced the purpose of the research and the expectation to participants firstly (Appendix A). It helped them to understand the design process and to be more confident toward following sections. Then the somaesthetic reflection took place for raising participants’ body awareness. After that, the bodystorming part applied for generating design ideas, iterating these ideas, and concluding final solutions. After the ideation process, those practical solutions were selected for making prototypes. These prototypes were evaluated by real users to get more design suggestions in the evaluation process. Qualitative methods were used in the research.
Data Collection
Ideation Process
In this process, participants were expected to work as designers whose professional knowledge enabled them to generate creative and practical design solutions. For example, those people whose major is design or whose work is concerned about the health of civilians were invited prior as they could generate ideas from the design perspective or they are more concerned about public welfare. These participants are more possible to generate practical and meaningful design solutions. Participants were made up of people of all ages and gender so that they could represent different groups of users. In order to invite appropriate participants, judgmental sampling was applied to get more familiar with people’s educational background, work experiences, age, and gender. Totally 5 participants joined the ideation process, including me. Their demographic data are shown in the table below.
Table 1 Demographic data of participants in the ideation process
The ideation process worked for generating potential design solutions. It consists of 2 parts: somaesthetic reflection and bodystorming.
Somaesthetic reflection started when participants lay down on yoga mats and close their eyes in a room. Light music helped them to relax, and soft voices guided them to scan their bodies from the head, torso, limbs to fingers and toes, frequently asked questions based on reflection strategies. (The script of the reflection, see Appendix B). Bodystorming is arranged in a community in a Chinese city, Shaoguan. The outdoor gym is located in the center of the community. There are six types of fitness equipment, including two double air walkers, a triple waist twister, a waist/back massage, an arm wheel, two running machines, and a double leg press (Figure 1). Previous studies show that the waist twister, air walker, ski machine, and the waist/back massage are most popular in outdoor gyms [4, 6]. Considering the time constraint and the equipment in the selected outdoor gym, the triple waist twister and the double air walker were chosen to design in the research.
Figure 1 Bodystorming took place in this outdoor gym
Bodystorming part consists of seven steps, starting from doing exercise in an outdoor gym with somatic sensibility, then introducing props to participants (prop list see Appendix C). These props include home gym equipment, a speaker, a light, strings, cloth, and so on, which were combined or separated by participants for simulating objects in design ideas. In the third step, participants generated design ideas individually by exploring outdoor fitness equipment with props. After that, participants shared their ideas, and I was responsible for writing them down. The fifth step was introducing the design factors that summarized from previous research, including collective focus or mood, motivating feedback, open-ended play, social player interaction patterns and the effect of distance and position between people. The next step was discussing these design ideas and modifying them one by one. The last step was packaging design solutions in which participants were encouraged to describe and show their solutions in front of a camera. For ethical reasons, participants were asked to sign a consent form before joined the ideation process. With the form, participants agreed to use a camera for recording the bodystorming, and they knew that all information only used in the research and their name or any other identification remained strictly confidential. For respecting participants, they have the rights to withdraw their consent to the experiment and stop participation at any time.
The bodystorming took about two hours in the outdoor gym. It might affect other users’ exercise. In order not to disturb other users, bodystorming was organized from 1 pm to 3.30 pm when fewer people exercise there. Although the bodystorming did not be interrupted, several measures listed below. If other users want to exercise there, I am responsible for asking the person to allow the ideation process to continue without interruption. If the bodystorming is broken, I will lead participants to go to another outdoor gym five-minute away. When the bodystorming start again, I recall what participants had done and to encourage participants to ignore those disruptive factors and focus on the design process.
Evaluation Process
It is hard to invite people who do exercise in the outdoor gym randomly because the evaluation process cost at least 45 minutes. Considering these prototypes were designed for stimulating social interaction, those people who have not interacted with other people in public open space in the community were target users. Thus, judgmental sampling was implemented when inviting participants. 4 participants were invited. They formed 2 groups. In the first group, 2 participants worked in the same company and have seen each other for several times, but they barely know each other. Participants in group two were strangers.
No. Age Gender Frequency(Time/per week)
1 28 M <1
2 25 F 1-3
3 38 F 1-3
4 56 F 4-6
Table 2 Demographic data of participants in the evaluation process
In the evaluation process, prototypes were installed on the fitness equipment. These prototypes played with the Wizard of Oz (WOz) technique. The WOz is an approach supporting users to focus on the interaction with a automatic prototype during user tests [8]. The semi-automatic prototype cannot give feedback to users automatically. Instead, I remotely controlled the prototype when I saw users operate the prototype and it should react. The reason for performing with WOz techniques is that it enables me to spend more time in addressing the research question, designing for social interaction rather than programming a full-completed product.
Participants did exercises with fitness equipment and prototypes firstly. After experiencing all the functions of prototypes, a focus group took place for understanding their attitude toward the prototypes. Three aspects of questions will be asked (Appendix D), including:
● How do the prototypes stimulate you to interact with other users?
● What degree do you feel satisfied? ● Do you have some design suggestions?
Considering ethical reasons, before participants joined the research, they were asked to sign a consent form. The form clarifies that a mobile phone was used for recording the discussion in the focus group; the audio material was only used for research purposes; all their private information remained strictly confidential. The evaluation also took place at noon from 1 pm to 2 pm, as the reason in the ideation process.
As for the impact of the evaluation on the environment, only scotch tapes were used to fix prototypes in outdoor fitness equipment for avoiding breaking equipment. After completing the evaluation in the outdoor gym, the prototypes were unwrapped immediately.
Data Analysis
Data From Ideation
In the bodystorming, details were coded using the video-audio material for coding the process of idea generation. A coding framework (actions that participants performed, props that they used, envision techniques that are mentioned, and the WOz they played) was applied to each design idea. The framework summarised from the analysis method in Segura’s research about bodystorming [23].
For describing the relationship between design ideas and depicting the iteration, the analysis method, bodystorming braid were implemented. The bodystorming braid depicts the process of how a design idea is built on previous ideas and how actions, props, envision technique, and WOz “appear, change or linger from idea to idea”[23, p.208].
Data From Evaluation
Grounded theory was implemented for analysing these unstructured data found in the text. The analysing process consists of four stages, including open coding, development of concepts, grouping concepts into categories, the formation of theory [19].
RESULT AND ANALYSIS Design Solution
Design ideas were packaged into design solutions that could be sorted into three types. They are “cooperative play”, “competition”, and “Just talking”. These design solutions consist of initial ideas and their variation. Below, the “cooperative play” was described in detail, showing how the bodystorming was implemented and how the bodystorming braid depicted the evolution of design ideas. The other two kinds of design solutions were described briefly.
Cooperative Play
The first kind of solution is cooperative play (Figure 2). It consists of two initial ideas and their variations, designing for the triple waist twister. One initial idea is following beats. When more than 2 users are standing on the twister discs, the beat of a drum plays automatically, which guides users to twist following the beat. To encourage them to keep moving, when users move, the sound of an instrument occurs as feedback. In this way, they synthesized music cooperatively.
At the beginning of the ideation process, three participants stood in twister discs, and one participant who did not use the equipment clapped his hand regularly to simulate a beat of a drum. When those three participants began to twist, they used their mouth, lips, tongue, and voice to mimic other instruments. They just used simple sounds and keys, like “Doe”, “Far”, and “La”. The speed of their singing should represent their movement, for instance, twisting in a clockwise direction, the designer sang “Doe” while twisting in a counterclockwise direction, sang “Far”.
However, it was hard for those three participants because they had to move, sing, listen to the clap, and listen to other users’ voices at the same time. Besides, the sample keys sounded boring, so the next additional idea was created. The beatboxing replaced those simple keys. Two participants (P1, P2) stood in the discs, and another two participants (P3, P4) simulated the soundbox. When P1 changed direction, P3 began to perform a short beatbox, like “b-ts-k-ts” (“b” approximates the sound of the bass drum; “ts” approximates the sound of the hi-hat; “k” approximates the sound of the snare drum). P4 also performs a short beatbox when P2 turns to a different direction. The last participant (P5) clapped her hand regularly.
P2 wanted to move faster, so she asked P5 to clap quicker. It raised a new additional idea that users can control the speed of the beat. This idea made users interact more
because they had to negotiate the pace of the beat. Participant 3 worried that the sound of beat or beatbox might annoy other users in the outdoor gym, so she proposed a new idea. Users’ movement of twisting their waist controls a claw crane machine. Through cooperating, users can catch the toy in the machine. The rotation of three discs controls the movement of the claw in three dimensions, respectively -- forward-backwards, left-right, and up-down. When the user who controlled the left-right dimension held the handrail in a left touch button, the twisting movement made the claw move toward the left. When holding the right touch button, the twisting movement makes the claw move toward the right. One of the participants held a string and moved it by hand to mimic the crane. We also tied colourful elastic bands to act as touch buttons.
Competition
The initial design idea for the second design solution is reaching a beat (Figure 3). Users competed for matching their speed of changing twisting direction with the beat. A beat played when users begin to use the triple waist twister. The user who can match ten times first is the winner. Clapping hand mimicked playing a beat. Two users twisted their waist for hitting the beat. Another two participants were responsible for counting how many times users reach the beat and show the numbers with their hand.
However, the sound might make noise to others, so the sound of the beat was replaced by the shining light. We tied a bike light to the handrail, turning on and turning off to simulate lighting automatically. This idea was expanded into the air walker that the user whose pace of changing the direction of two pedals can reach more the beats is the winner.
However, two participants felt that sometimes the speed or frequency of striding does not match their ability, so they changed direction suddenly and unconsciously, which was possible to cause sports injuries. So another additional idea developed. There are two double air walkers. Two users in one double air walker as a group. The competition occurred between the two groups. The team which can keep moving at the same frequency is the winner no matter how striding slowly or fast. A digital interface shows the score of each team and competition time.
Just talking
The third kind of solution can be applied both on triple waist twisters and air walkers. A piece of news would be shown near fitness equipment on a screen so that users can read and discuss it. The first additional idea is that quizzes can replace news. The problem with these ideas is that these external stimuli also distracts users’ attention. Thus, for forcing people to grasp the handrail, a pressure sensor touch button can be installed on the handrail. Holding the handrail firmer could make the news or quizzes show clearer (Figure 4).
Prototype with Wizard-of-Oz
Three prototypes were made based on three kinds of design solution with WoZ.
Synthesize Music
The first types of solution, cooperative play, contain two different initial ideas. The prototype, called Synthesize
Music, was made according to the first initial idea and its additional ideas because the second idea is not practical. It enables users to synthesize music cooperatively. The prototype consists of two parts. The cover on the stick is the major interaction part (Figure 5). Pressing the cover downward is turning on or turning off the prototype. When the prototype is activated, an orange light shows how many users stand on twister discs. The cover also is a knob. The scale on the bottom depicts the speed of the beat. The further to the right side, the faster the speed of the beat. In contrast, when the knob is rotated to the far-left side, the prototype is turned off. Right means faster and left means slower or off. It is a metaphor for unscrewing or screwing a bottle cap. Rotating toward the right is to unscrew, which means the cap is looser and we could unscrew easier and faster. Under the handrail, it is a speaker, playing the sound of beat and instruments. The cover was made of cardboard. The orange light was stuck in the cardboard. A BlueTooth speaker was stuck on the stick (Figure 6) and was connected to an iPad. When there are two users on the twister discs, I played a sound of kick and snare that I recorded as the beat. Following the movement of users ， my assistant and I mimicked that the waist twister played the sound of instruments automatically through playing the sound of guitar and maraca on an application, called GarageBand on iPad.
Figure 5. The cover of Synthesize Music prototype
Figure 6. The Bluetooth speaker was stuck on the stick
Reaching Competition
Users had experienced playing the sound of the beat. In order to allow them to compare different sensory stimulation, the second prototype based on the second design solution, competition, is reaching the vibration competition in a double air walker, named Reaching Competition. Although nearly all the outdoor gyms installed the double air walker, there is only one double air walker in most communities. So the group competition is hard to spread in many communities. In this case, I gave up the last design additional idea shown in the bodystorming braid of competition, called keep the same frequency.
The vibration is on the handrail, near the position where users are used to grasping. On the left side, a button that could be pressed by the left thumb is a safety lock. Only when pressing it, the right knob could be rotated forward or backwards to change the frequency of the vibration (Figure 7). A screen in front of the air walker works for showing the score.
For mimicking the vibration devices, two fitness bands were worn by participants. They were connected to two smartphones (Figure 8). In this way, I could make the band vibrate at the same time by pressing buttons on an application. Users were asked to touch the band when
they held the handrail. When competition started, I pressed buttons on two smartphones while nudging my assistant so that he could judge who reached the vibration. My assistant remotely controlled the screen to show how many times users hit the vibration for two users. When one of the users won, the screen showed “Congratulations！Winner!”.
Figure 7. The safety lock button and the knob
Figure 8. Participants wore fitness bands
Reading Together
The third kind of solution based on the third design solution, just talking, is about sharing interests through reading, named Reading Together. The prototype is a screen showing news, jokes, and quizzes, placed in front of the double air walker (Figure 9). The action that two users twist their wrists forward or backwards when holding the handrail at the same time can switch to the
next or last picture. If one of the users does not grip the handrail tightly, the picture will become blurry. For turning on or off the screen, there is a button on the middle of the handrail.
I used a picture-by-picture function on my laptop and split my screen in two. The screen in front of the air walker is the second screen of my laptop, presenting news, jokes in a slide. When I saw users releasing the handrail, I played the blurry picture.
Figure 9. A screen placed in front of the air walker Evaluation
What participants said in the focus group was coded, analyzed and categorized into four concepts: target users, usage, interaction, and maintenance.
Target users
● Children and elderly people are target users
Three young adults said that they are too busy to do exercise in the outdoor gym. They also indicated that although they need social interaction and build up their social network, using this way to interact with people is ineffective. But “it might be a good way for children to meet other children in the same communities then play together,” said by one participant who is a ten-year-old children’s mother. Other participants agreed that it is easier for children to become playmates through simply interacting with each other. The 56-year-old participants said “I moved here and lived with my son. In the new environment, if these prototypes could attract many elderly people to do exercise here, it would help me fit in.” She also suggested that older people prefer to read the news or other texts on paper rather than on a screen. It would be good that there is a bulletin board near fitness equipment.
Usage
● Improving learnability for purposeful actions
All the participants felt the second prototype, Reaching Competition and the third prototype, Reading Together, are easy to learn how to use. “I learned to turn on the screen by understanding the meaning of the icon on the
button. It is a common icon on many electrical appliances.” One participant said and other participants agreed when we compared the difference between what I designed and users’ mental models. But the first prototype, Synthesize Music, is too complex to understand without instruments. “After I found that my movement triggered playing the sounds, I was curious about what sounds other discs will cause. Yes, I interacted with the other user and stopped to listen to hers, but I did not guess your design.” According to the analysis of these cases, learnability is essential for purposeful and straightforward actions, like turning on or off, changing the speed of vibration. Using more common icons on digital interfaces or electrical appliances supports improving learnability of prototypes. ● Keeping curious for exploring actions
Although the first prototypes is complex, it is also so interesting that making users curious. As long as users are curious about it, they would like to keep exploring the prototypes as participants said. It stimulates interacting with other users and even enables users to create their own play rules.
Interaction
● Operating prototypes only requires basic ability
In terms of interaction, when using the first prototype, Synthesize Music, users raised questions, explored together, then discovered how to play or created their play rules. But for some participants who have no rhythm, when they found that they were expected to synthesize music, they felt embarrassed and bored and left quickly. Compared with the first prototype, the second prototype, Reaching Competition, attracts all the participants to play and interact because it requires less skill and users understood the rules and goals of the game quickly as what participants said.
These cases show that operating prototypes with basic ability rather than those skills that need practice makes users comfortable and might encourage them to keep using the prototypes in the future so that it creates more opportunities to interact with other users. Building a rule or goal and sharing a common interest are stimulating social interaction.
● Prototypes work for breaking the ice between strangers During using the prototypes, participants mainly talk about the usage of prototypes, their states for cooperation, and their preference. Sometimes, they just laughed when completing a competition or reading jokes. It shows that these prototypes are more comfortable to break the ice between strangers but did not trigger an in-depth conversation in these cases.
Maintenance
● Make users maintain freshness
“I will try these prototypes if they update regularly.” One participant said. For example, for the Synthesize Music prototype, replacing the sound of beats by popular songs so that the songs could be updated according to the
time of festivals. On Moon Cake Festival, the song could be about the moon, and on Christmas, the song could be Jingle Bells. Using this way makes people curious about these prototypes and motivates them to use frequently.
DISCUSSION
Safe Use for Target Users
The result shows that the target users of prototypes are children and older people. The introduction of usage of fitness equipment emphasizes that guardians should protect their children when using the equipment. Older adults should take care of themselves and avoid doing vigorous exercises.
In this case, the following two issues might need to be considered. Firstly, the outdoor gym is a public open space and prototypes can be got access by children any time without parents’ surveillance. So the design for safe playing with other children in the place is the priority. Secondly, for elderly people, the information about the exercise level should be noticed markedly, even when they are interacting with other people. In addition, because it requires children to play with fitness equipment with parents’ monitoring, outdoor gyms can become the places for parent-child exercises. They do exercise together as well as interact with other families.
Types of usage
The fitness equipment with prototypes could be categorized into 2 types based on their usages. The first type supports open-ended play, like the first prototype, Synthesize Music. The interaction mainly occurs when users are exploring and discussing how to play. This kind of prototype encourages people to use it by making users curious and also through allowing users to create many ways to play.
However, as the Synthesize Music prototype, it requires users to have a good sense of rhythm. In this case, more prototypes which require different kinds of ability needed to be designed for helping people to find his/her best one and build confidence.
Another type of usage requires basic ability. Nearly all people can operate it, as the second prototype, Reaching Competition and the third prototype, Reading Together. The interaction triggered by this type of prototypes happens after users operating prototypes. Therefore, increase the efficiency of operating prototypes through improving the learnability is essential in this case.
Factors for stimulating social interaction
In the background, several factors summarized from previous studies showed how to stimulate social interaction, including collective focus or mood, motivating feedback, open-end play, social interaction patterns, and position and distance. The prototypes in the research also showed these factors. For example, the Synthesize Music prototype allows users to create their rules in the open-end play; the side-by-side position in Reaching Competition prototype reduces the feeling of threatening in the competition and encourage two users to talk with each other; the Reading Together prototype makes users focus on the content in a screen.
Besides, the result in the research also shows that improve the efficiency of simple and purposeful actions, users’ confidence of using prototypes with abilities, updating prototype for making users keep freshness also stimulate social interaction indirectly.
Limitation
Generating design solution and evaluating relied on the participants. Their educational background and experience impact the result of the research. Although I invited participants with various backgrounds, there are multiple design possibilities.
In the ideation process, reflecting somaesthetics emphasizes being aware of different parts of the body because the increasing sensitivity supports participants to experience deeply. However, the spontaneity and unreflective perceptual awareness always serve us in daily life, and most people perform well [16]. In contrast, somatic reflection interrupts the process of smooth functioning for ordinary people, which makes it unnecessary. It is the reason for some researchers to discuss the value of somaesthetic reflection, like Richard Shusterman [25]. Because of the disadvantages of somaesthetic reflection, there might be a risk when involving it in the ideation process.
The prototypes made by hardboard, paper, and form plastic and they worked with WOz. The handmade prototypes, the imprecise responses caused by remote control and manual measurement might make users unable to immerse into the real situation of doing exercise with prototypes. It might influence their performances and experience, which may impact their attitude and opinions expressed in the focus group.
CONCLUSION
In this study, I explored how to stimulate social interaction in an outdoor gym by modifying fitness equipment. I designed three prototypes -- Synthesize Music, Reaching Competition, and Reading Together, wherein users experience cooperating, competing, and sharing views with other users respectively.
I summarized two aspects of knowledge from related research. Research about designing for social interaction depicted many factors that impact or encourage people to interact, which inspired participants to come up with
ideas. I also described design theories and design methods according to previous research for guiding the design process.
In the ideation process, the reflecting somaesthetics was applied indoor for increasing participants bodies’ awareness, followed by doing bodystorming in an outdoor gym. Participants generated design ideas, modified them and packaged design solutions at the end of the process. I used bodystorming braid to depict the evolution of design ideas and grouped design ideas into three types -- cooperative play, competition, and just talk. According to these design solutions, three prototypes with WOz were built and used in the evaluation process. Four participants joined the evaluation. They experienced prototypes and attended the focus group for describing their attitude and feeling about the prototypes in terms of social interaction.
By implementing grounded theory, the case qualitative data from the evaluation process were coded to 4 well-defined phases -- target users, usage, interaction, and maintenance. The meaning of them is shown with the following 6 points.
● Children and elderly people are target users.
● One usage of prototypes needs to improve learnability for purposeful actions.
● Another usage of prototypes needs to make users curious for keeping exploring.
● When interacting, prototypes that only requires users’ basic ability to operate can avoid some users being embarrassed.
● Prototypes work for breaking the ice between strangers. ● Updating prototype for making users maintain freshness.
REFERENCE
[1] Tilde Bekker, Janienke Sturm, and Berry Eggen. 2010. Designing playful interactions for social interaction and physical play. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 14, 5 (July 2010), 385. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-009-0264-1 [2] Zuzanna Bocian. 2015. Outdoor Gym as Platform
for Social Interactions: Appling the Concept of Play to Three Case Studies in Warsaw. Ph.D.
Dissertation. NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences.
[3] Hsueh-wen Chow. 2012. Need assessment and health evaluation of seniors use of local parks. Taibei: National. Science Council
[4] Hsueh-wen Chow. 2013. Outdoor fitness equipment in parks: a qualitative study from older adults’ perceptions. BMC Public Health 13, 1 (Dec. 2013), 1216. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-1216
[5] Hsueh-wen Chow, Andrew J. Mowen, and Guan-lin Wu. 2017. Who Is Using Outdoor Fitness
Equipment and How? The Case of Xihu Park. Int. J.
Environ. Res. Public. Health 14, 4 (April 2017). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14040448 [6] Randall Collins. 2004. Interaction ritual chains.
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. [7] Leonie Cranney, Philayrath Phongsavan, Maina
Kariuki, Vicki Stride, Ashleigh Scott, Myna Hua, and Adrian Bauman. 2016. Impact of an outdoor gym on park users’ physical activity: A natural experiment. Health Place 37 (Jan. 2016), 26–34. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2015.11.002 [8] Nils Dahlbäck, Arne Jönsson, and Lars Ahrenberg.
1993. Wizard of Oz studies — why and how. Knowl.-Based Syst. 6, 4 (Feb. 1993), 258–266. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0950-7051(93)90017-N [9] Paul Dourish. 2004. Where the Action Is - The
Foundations of Embodied Interaction. The MIT Press.
[10] Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Swain, and Steven Hoffman. 2004. Game design workshop: designing, prototyping and playtesting games. CMP Books, San Francisco, Calif.
[11] Susan Furber, Hayden Pomroy, Samantha Grego, and Karen Tavener-Smith. 2014. People’s experiences of using outdoor gym equipment in parks. Health Promot. J. Austr. 25, 3 (Dec. 2014), 211–211. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1071/HE14038 [12] Jan Gehl. 1987. Life between buildings: using public
space. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
[13] Kathrin Gerling, Ian Livingston, Lennart Nacke, and Regan Mandryk. 2012. Full-body motion-based game interaction for older adults. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), Association for Computing Machinery, Austin, Texas, USA, 1873– 1882. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208324 [14] Edmund T. Hall. 1969. The hidden dimension
(Anchor books ed.). Garden City, N.Y. [15] Rex Hartson and Pardha S. Pyla. 2012. The UX
Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience. Elsevier Science & Technology, San Francisco, USA.
[16] William James and Frederick Burkhardt. 1981. The works of William James: The principles of
psychology. Harvard University Press
[17] Martijn Jansen and Tilde Bekker. 2009. Swinxsbee: A Shared Interactive Play Object to Stimulate Children’s Social Play Behaviour and Physical Exercise. In Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 9), Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 90–101. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02315-6_9 [18] Anna K. Jansson, David R. Lubans, Jordan J. Smith,
Mitch J. Duncan, Rebecca Haslam, and Ronald C. Plotnikoff. 2019. A systematic review of outdoor
gym use: Current evidence and future directions. J. Sci. Med. Sport 22, 12 (Dec. 2019), 1335–1343. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2019.08.003 [19] Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, and Harry
Hochheiser. 2017. Research methods in human-computer interaction. Morgan Kaufmann. [20] Janet Lok Chun Lee, Temmy Lee Ting Lo, and
Rainbow Tin Hung Ho. 2018. Understanding Outdoor Gyms in Public Open Spaces: A Systematic Review and Integrative Synthesis of Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public. Health 15, 4 (April 2018), 590. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15040590 [21] Wonjun Lee, Youn-kyung Lim, and Richard
Shusterman. 2014. Practicing somaesthetics: exploring its impact on interactive product design ideation. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ’14),
Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1055–1064.
https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.259856
[22] Ray Oldenburg. 1999. The great good place: cafés, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community. Marlowe, New York.
[23] Elena Márquez Segura, Laia Turmo Vidal, and Asreen Rostami. 2016. Bodystorming for
movement-based interaction design. Hum. Technol. 12, 2 (Nov. 2016), 193–251. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.201611174655 [24] Richard Shusterman. 2008. Body Consciousness: A
Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics. Cambridge University Press
[25] Richard Shusterman. 2009. Body consciousness and performance: somaesthetics east and west. J. Aesthet. Art Crit. 67, 2 133–145. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40206398 [26] Charles Soukup. 2006. Computer-mediated
communication as a virtual third place: building Oldenburg’s great good places on the world wide web. New Media Soc. 8, 3 (June 2006), 421–440. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444806061953 [27] Quentin Stevens. 2007. The Ludic city: exploring the potential of public spaces. Routledge, London. [28] Janienke Sturm, Tilde Bekker, Bas Groenendaal,
Rik Wesselink, and Berry Eggen. 2008. Key issues for the successful design of an intelligent,
interactive playground. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Interaction design and children (IDC ’08), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 258–265. https://doi.org/10.1145/1463689.1463764 [29] O. Michael Watson. 1970. GENERAL: Personal
Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design. Robert Sommer. Am. Anthropol. 72, 3 (June 1970), 625– 626. DOI:
APPENDIX A
Welcome and Introduction
Welcome!
Welcome and thanks for taking the time to help my research!
The research aims to design for stimulating social interaction in outdoor gyms. Outdoor gyms are
built on public open space to encourage structured physical activities and social interaction. It
became more essential as an increasing number of people live a sedentary lifestyle and addict to
digital games. So I expect to stimulate and maintain the interaction between users in outdoor gyms
by redesigning outdoor fitness equipment.
Today, we are going to generate design solutions with your physical movement and body
experiences as well as the assistance of props. It consists of two parts: the somaesthetics reflection
and the bodystorming.
Somaesthetics Reflection Session
The purpose of this session is to help you to understand the nature of the body more deeply, and
also help to conscious the motions and coordination among different parts of bodies. You are
expected to lie down in yoga mats in the room and relax. I will guide you to scan your body with
light music. There is no correct or incorrect way to do things or to feel. It will take about 8 minutes.
Bodystorming Session
In this part, we will go to an outdoor gym, exploring the double air walker and the triple waist twister.
We will discuss design ideas and generate design solutions together.
You are expected to use your feeling and ideas from in-the-moment activities with your professional
knowledge and previous experiences. There is no correct or incorrect way to do things or to feel.
Feel free to explore and use props. If you feel stuck, please let me know, I will help you. Remember
to be careful when doing exercise and designing at the same time！
Steps of Bodystorming
No. What to do
Goal
Duration
1
Use outdoor fitness equipment with somatic
sensibility
Get familiar with the air
walker and the waist twister
3 min
2
Introduce and explore props
Get familiar with props
10 min
3
Exercise in the equipment and think about how to
stimulate social interaction (use props to simulate
other devices)
Come up with at least one
design idea
20 min
4
Share design ideas (it will be better to show idea with
props, instead of just using verbal description)
Give suggestion or come
up with additional ideas
10 min
5
Introduce those factors that can stimulate social
interaction
Help participants to
generate more ideas
3 min
6
Discuss and modify these design ideas one by one
Generate design solutions
60 min
APPENDIX B
Script for Somaesthetics Reflection
The structure of the script referred to Script for Feeling Sensations and Script for Body Awareness on LoveToKnow website written by yoga instructor Shoshana Hebshi-Holt. The content of the script based on reflection strategies.
Script for Somaesthetic Reflection
Purpose
Script
Relax
Associative
interests
Good afternoon, welcome to the world of somaesthetic reflection.
I holp my voice could help you to relax and be more sensitive.
Close your eyes.
Find awareness of your breath. Total awareness in your breathing. Feel the belly
rise and fall. Feel the chest rise and fall.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Contrasts
of
feeling
Now, feel the connection between your body and the floor.
Notice each point that connects your body to the floor.
Begin to feel the heaviness of the body sinking into the floor.
Which part of your body feels heaviest? Is it the heel, the leg, the hip, the lower
back, the shoulder, or your hand?
Does the part feel lighter or heavier as your exhaling or inhaling?
Now, begin to feel the lightness of the body as you bring awareness to your
breath. The body is completely relaxed. The mind is completely aware. The body
is feeling light.
Division
into
parts
Avoiding
distracting
interests
Bring awareness to the toes. Feel the toes on the right foot.
Envision your toes attached to your left foot. Left big toe, fourth toe, third toe,
second toe, pinkie toe. The left foot. The heel. The sole of the foot. The ankle.
The whole of the left foot.
The right foot. The right big toe, fourth toe, third toe, second toe, pinkie toe. The
right foot. The heel. The sole of the foot. The ankle. The whole of the right foot.
Both feet together.
(Pause)
The left leg. The shin. The calf muscle. The knee. The thigh. The left buttock. The
whole of the left leg.
The right leg. The shin. The calf muscle. The knee. The thigh. The right buttock.
The whole of the right leg.
Both legs together.
(Pause)
The hip. The lower back. The middle back. The upper back. The whole back. The
whole back. The whole back.
Left shoulder blade. Right shoulder blade. Left shoulder. Left upper arm. Left
elbow. Left lower arm. Left wrist. Left hand. Right shoulder. Right upper arm.
Right elbow. Right lower arm. Right wrist. Right hand. Both arms together.
The chest. The ribs. The belly. The whole of the front body. The whole of the front
body. The whole of the front body.
The neck. The back of the head. The forehead. The left eyebrow. The right
eyebrow. The space in between the eyebrows. The left eye. The right eye. The
left cheek. The right cheek. The jaw. The tongue. The lips. The chin. The throat.
The whole of the head. The whole head together. The whole body together.
room? Could you hear a songbird's whistle？
Feeling sensitively using your sense of hearing, smelling, and touch.
Relax
Relax and feel heavy. Sink into the floor. Relax the whole body.
Contrasts
of
feeling
Division
into
parts
Now we start to move slowly.
Extend your ankle slowly feeling the link at the joints and the action of muscles.
Move your ankles back slowly.
(Pause)
Flex your shoulder like swimming stroke and feeling the coordination among your
shoulders, upper arms, elbows, your lower arms, wrists and your hands.
Relax
Now move your shoulder and arm back and sink them into the floor. Relax the
whole body
Contrasts
of
feeling
Bent the knee and feet flat on the floor.
Put your hand on the front thigh. Trying to touch your knee. Raise your head, your
shoulder, your back. Could you touch? It does no matter not to touch the knee.
Just feel the muscle contracts and how one muscle forces other.
Relax
Lie down and move you knee, head, shoulder, back, and hand back slowly. Feel
the body connected to the floor again.
Now come to notice the breath. Feel the belly rise and fall. Feel the chest rise and
fall.
(Pause)
APPENDIX C Props List
Name
Features
Number
resistance band
light, elastic, with five level of strength
5
rope
long, strong
2
string
long, thin
1
hard board
-
1
Hard Foam Blocks
-
1
ball pump
movable forward and backward, generate air flow
1
wrist/ankle weight
a pair of, ajustable, 1kg
1
hand mobility
rehabilitation
small, 4 different shape
4
buzzer
-
1
fitness bands
track heart rate, vibrate, digital interface
2
bike light
light and flash light with sound
2
reflective strips
short, curve
2
watering can
small
1
cloth
with different materials (fur, synthetic leather, plastic, cotton,
linen)
5
LED light
with different color (red, green, blue)
30
830 bread board
LED light can be plugged in
1
scissor and knife
-
2
paper and pen
-
2
APPENDIX D Questions
How do the prototypes stimulate you to interact with other users? 1. Do these prototypes encourage you to interact with other users? 2. How do these prototypes stimulate you to interact with other users?
3. Comparing these three prototypes, which one is the best to push you to interact more? why? 4. Which prototype is your favorite? why?
What degree do you feel satisfied? (1-5 scales, score for each prototype) 1. If you are free, would you like to use these prototypes frequently? 2. Do you think these prototypes are easy to use?
3. Could you imagine whether many people with different ages like to use these prototypes? (children, housewife/househusband, elderly people)
Could they learn to use it very quickly? What problem will they meet?
