Using positive and negative social feedback to promote energy conservation behavior in the home

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Runners' experience of implicit coaching through music

In this paper we evaluate a music-based coaching system for runners, the SportsCoach. It measures the runner’s heart rate and increases music tempo when, for an optimal workout, the runner should speed up. Coaching is implicit, since the runner only needs to keep in sync with the music and no explicit instructions are given. We performed 2 experiments to evaluate how this implicit coaching was experienced in the actual context of running. The first experiment investigated how natural it is to keep running in sync with the music when the music tempo changes. We find that although runners are not naturally inclined to do so, a band of 10% below one’s natural tempo is mostly easily followed, especially by dancers. The second experiment evaluated the SportsCoach and contrasted its implicit form of coaching and synchronized music to explicit and absent forms of coaching and fixed tempo music. We find that the SportCoach concept scores well on most aspects, especially because of the synchronicity of music and running tempos