StretchArms: Promoting Stretching Exercise with a Smartwatch

ABSTRACT

A smartwatch is a wearable computer equipped with sensors. It can be used to provide fitness- or healthcare-related functionalities. This article presents three versions of a smartwatch application for prompting a user to stretch during the user’s daily life. The first version just reminds periodically the user that it is time to stretch and then guides the stretching motion. In contrast, the second version evaluates how correctly the stretching motion is made and provides success/fail feedback for the user. The third version adds gamification elements to the second version. With these three versions, an elaborate user study was performed with 42 participants. The results show that the reminders were effective in relaxing the mental/muscular tension of the users and the motion evaluation feedback encouraged the users to stretch more. In contrast, the effectiveness of gamification was not proven. This is the first study to prompt stretching exercise and evaluate it with a smartwatch. It can help develop effective healthcare applications on wearable devices.

Notes

¹ http://developer.samsung.com/gear/design/principle#wearable.

² http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/gear-s2/.

³ https://developer.tizen.org/development/api-tutorials/native-application.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIP) (No. NRF-2016R1A2B3014319).

Notes on contributors

SangBin Kim

Sangbin Kim is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University, where he obtained his B.S. degree in Computer Science and Physical Therapy in 2015. His research interests lie in motion recognition and user experience.

SinJae Lee

SinJae Lee is a senior engineer at Mobile Communication in Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. He got his M.S. degree in Computer Science at Korea University and B.S. degree in Computer Science at the Hanyang University. He is engaged in developing 3D graphics and user interface solutions for mobile devices.

JungHyun Han

JungHyun Han is a professor in Computer Science Department at Korea University. He received a B.S. degree from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. degree from University of Southern California. Prior to joining Korea University, he worked at the US Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology.