Gamification twist on exercise, creating a more engaging and entertaining experience
My impression of exercising using cardio equipment is a boring and uninvolving process, with little motivation and no competition element. At the moment ways that gyms and users overcome this is by listening to music or watching television. I wanted to create a system that would engage users to a point where their senses are tricked, driving increased motivation to push themselves beyond their limits when working out, without fully realising they were doing it.
Built upon Arduino and Processing to create a speed detector to output speed data and combine this with video playback, produces the connection between user action and visualisations.
The Arduino works by collecting data from the 'on' state of a magnetic reed switch and transforming this data with calculations to output a number. This number is sent to Processing and combined with calculations to alter the playback speed of a video. This enabled faster peddling to play faster video speeds, and slower speeds for minimal cycling.
Constructed from stud-work beams and surface protection material, along with a 100inch projector screen saw the assembly of my display. All of this was calculated to extreme precision to ensure a flawless and convincing immersion. This creating an valued intensified impact on the user.
A main feature of the Immersercise system is the custom modes, allowing me to bring something new to the interactive exercise market. By allowing users to race against a unknown person in a random location. This allows for a more engaged experience with a sense of challenge, however if you loose there is no embarrassment or shame of losing due to not knowing the person.
Achievements
The Immersercise interface is amalgamated with the Apple Activity application, fetching in users achievements and updating them as they are obtained.
The achievements section also has an inclusion of some of our very own medals, which users can acquire from completing various exercises.
Each trophy can be viewed independently and spun around revealing a personalised award engraved with the users name and date awarded.
Modes
A main feature of the Immersercise system is our custom modes, allowing us to bring something new to the interactive exercise market.
Allowing users to race against a unknown person in a random location. This allows for a more engaged experience with a sense of challenge, however if you loose there is no embarrassment or shame of losing due to not knowing the person.
Racing with friends allows users to keep in touch with people whilst also keeping fit.
Our tailored personal training gives users a custom coaching regime. Users are able to activate this feature and use it across the whole platform. Setting up this feature with a goal, our personal trainer will help you reach your aim through various challenges and notifications.
The interface comes pre-loaded with a vast number of simulated events, live recordings of well known occurrences. Within this feature users are able to cycle the Tour de France and feel as if they are actually there. Users receive a time upon completion and a position as if they were in last years race. This incorporated with our personal training, allows a user to train for the actual event.
With random locations brings locations that are impossible to visit in real life. Allowing users to be able to cycle on the Moon or around the ring of Saturn. We are able to immerse users in new worlds beyond your imagination. Enjoy riding through a land of candy, or by a chocolate river.
For those reader lovers, I have incorporated an amazing new technology, Spritz. This mode allows a user to read whilst exercising, this reading technology displays one word at a time allowing the user to only focus on one position but be able to take in information just the same.
Home Screen
The home page utilises the screen size with a full page image with an overlay of a time changing welcome message.
Following this is a brief description of what Immersercise is, and the three products created as concepts for the project. ImmerserciseCycle can be viewed further, acting as the rest of the website. ImmerserciseRun and ImmerserciseRow are featured as coming soon.
About & Gym Page
The about page encompasses the research behind the creation of the project which details the reasoning behind the creation of the product.
The Gym/Home pages contains information centred around the use case in each environment. The gym page shows the product in a full unit, whereas the home section shows the parts of the product and how these can be combined with existing household items.
Interface & Partners
The interface page exhibits the Apple TV application interface built specifically to work with ImmerserciseCycle. It goes through each of the elements in the interface, allowing users to see the full features built in.
The partners section acts as a thank you and reference to third party software, applications and hardware that are built into the product in some form. Without these the project would not have been as successful as it was.
