Critique 02: Assisting Individual Body Training through Haptics

Problem

When training our body and build muscles at a gym, it is really important to maintain the accurate and balanced pose and gestures – not only for not being injured but also for maximizing effects and keeping muscles balanced. However, when we go to the gym by ourselves, it is sometimes really difficult to reflect ourselves whether we are using the tools in the right way or not.

Solution

I thought about a device – that could be a smartphone with an armband or a smartwatch or the other devices that are attached to our arms – that provides haptic feedback to us so that we can keep the right pose.

For example, when we are doing push up on the ground, when we go down, the device checks the degree of our arms and time. After we go up and go down again, the device provides haptic feedback (various intensities of vibration) to signal to us that we have to go down a bit further to reach the right degree. When we reach that, it vibrates shortly, to let us know we did well.

Proof of Concept

I tried to code through Swift and use the gyro sensors in the iPhone. I believe I could develop this idea much further – it could check various degrees of our bodies when we are doing exercise, even stretching to increase our flexibility. Also, if it could keep collect data throughout the time, it will understand our capabilities of a certain exercise or part of our muscles, so that it could guide us to eventually increase our capabilities with the appropriate tempo without harming our bodies.

Videos and Codes

degreeChecker – code

 

Author: jaeyeonh@andrew.cmu.edu

Hi, I am a Master of Design candidate in an Interaction design program. I have an industrial design background.

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