“Dear IOC” Considerations for the Governance, Valuation, and Evaluation of Trends and Developments in eSports

In 2021, the International Olympic Committee ventured virtual space by launching their first ever Olympic Virtual Series – featuring virtual baseball, cycling, rowing, sailing and motor racing. Interestingly, all these virtual events take strongly after their physical counterparts. Which begs the question: Where are the massively popular esports games like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Dota?–What do the Olympic Virtual Series have that these popular video games do not? Here, we argue for the inclusion of esports within the Olympic program. In many respects, esports “act” and “behave” just like traditional sports. We argue that esports and traditional sports share many of the same values, like the values of meritocracy, competition, fair play, and the value of having a “level playing field”. Yet, in esports, many of these values remain underappreciated, losing out to negative values such as physical inactivity and game-addiction. To preserve what is worth preserving, we borrow from Value Sensitive Design to ameliorate the design-tensions that are foregrounded in esports. Thereby, paving possible ways toward the inclusion of esports in the Olympic program. Ultimately, the question for the IOC should not be “does it look like ‘real sport’, as we know it?”, but rather: are they sporting, rule-led, and fair activities worth preserving and setting an example for a new digitally savvy generation

Comparing a playful interactive product to watching television an exploratory study for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities

Background: New technologies could broaden activities for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD). This study compared watching television with a newly-developed interactive ball. Method: The ball responded with sounds, lights, and wiggling to the player’s voice and movements. Five control sessions (watching television) were compared to five experimental sessions (interactive ball). Observations were evaluated with 10s-partial-interval recording focussed on indicators of alertness and affect, yielding 900 measurements/participant. Data were analysed with Nonoverlap-of-All-Pairs analyses and visual inspection. Results: Four out of nine participants responded positively to the ball regarding alertness. Three of them also showed positive changes regarding affective behaviour. For three participants, responses were comparable to television sessions. Finally, responses of two participants appeared difficult to observe. Conclusions: Responses to the ball varied widely, which fits the heterogeneous character of the targetgroup. Results are reasonably encouraging when it comes to the development and implications of interactive technologies for people with PIMD

Objective Quantification of In-Hospital Patient Mobilization after Cardiac Surgery Using Accelerometers: Selection, Use, and Analysis

Cardiac surgery patients infrequently mobilize during their hospital stay. It is unclear for patients why mobilization is important, and exact progress of mobilization activities is not available. The aim of this study was to select and evaluate accelerometers for objective qualification of in-hospital mobilization after cardiac surgery. Six static and dynamic patient activities were defined to measure patient mobilization during the postoperative hospital stay. Device requirements were formulated, and the available devices reviewed. A triaxial accelerometer (AX3, Axivity) was selected for a clinical pilot in a heart surgery ward and placed on both the upper arm and upper leg. An artificial neural network algorithm was applied to classify lying in bed, sitting in a chair, standing, walking, cycling on an exercise bike, and walking the stairs. The primary endpoint was the daily amount of each activity performed between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. The secondary endpoints were length of intensive care unit stay and surgical ward stay. A subgroup analysis for male and female patients was planned. In total, 29 patients were classified after cardiac surgery with an intensive care unit stay of 1 (1 to 2) night and surgical ward stay of 5 (3 to 6) nights. Patients spent 41 (20 to 62) min less time in bed for each consecutive hospital day, as determined by a mixed‐model analysis (p < 0.001). Standing, walking, and walking the stairs increased during the hospital stay. No differences between men (n = 22) and women (n = 7) were observed for all endpoints in this study. The approach presented in this study is applicable for measuring all six activities and for monitoring postoperative recovery of cardiac surgery patients. A next step is to provide feedback to patients and healthcare professionals, to speed up recovery

A Design Space of Sports Interaction Technology

With this monograph we introduce a new, systematic taxonomy of Sports Interaction Technology (Sports ITech) that defines a design space of existing and future work in this domain. We set the taxonomy in a context of our view on sport science and sports practice, target outcomes of sports and the underlying factors influencing them, and the role that sports technology plays to support sports science and practice. In that setting we systematically build and illustrate a taxonomy for the design space for Sports ITech as a sub-area of sports technologies, with specific attention for the adequate inclusion of knowledge from the sports sciences. We build on the basis of existing taxonomies and a vast body of literature from multiple domains of HCI, technology, sports science, and related work in Sports ITech, complemented with what we identified as obvious gaps in the literature. We finally share the conclusions after a discussion of the limitations of our work. The contributions of this monograph are as follows. First, we offer a description of a design space, exemplified through existing work in a way suitable to support designers, technologists, and sports people with a design mindset to design, deploy, and adapt Sports ITech. Second, we see this as a call to action to bring HCI and the sports sciences closer together in the new field of Sports Interaction Technology, to set a shared agenda for future developments. Third, we offer this as the collation of a reading guide and wayfinding support in the literature from the many underlying disciplines of Sports Interaction Technology

Considerations for (Teaching) Facilitator Roles for Movement-Based Design

Given the emergence of many new movement-based design methods, our work explores the problem of facilitating the activities and sessions that are part of these methods. We look at literature as well as our own experiences with facilitating movement-based design sessions, draw lessons regarding the various important facets of this facilitation, and present first thoughts regarding how to make competencies in that type of facilitation transferable in teaching