moBeat: Using Interactive Music to Guide and Motivate Users During Aerobic Exercising

An increasing number of people are having trouble staying fit and maintaining a healthy bodyweight because of lack of physical activity. Getting people to exercise is crucial. However, many struggle with developing healthy exercising habits, due to hurdles like having to leave the house and the boring character of endurance exercising. In this paper, we report on a design project that explores the use of audio to motivate and provide feedback and guidance during exercising in a home environment. We developed moBeat, a system that provides intensity-based coaching while exercising, giving real-time feedback on training pace and intensity by means of interactive music. We conducted a within-subject comparison between our moBeat system and a commercially available heart rate watch. With moBeat, we achieved a comparable success rate: our system has a significant, positive influence on intrinsic motivation and attentional focus, but we did not see significant differences with regard to either perceived exertion or effectiveness. Although promising, future research is needed

Using game elements to motivate environmentally reponsible behaviour

\u3cp\u3eThis paper describes the application of game elements in improving environmentally responsible behaviour in domestic energy consumption. A product that implements game elements was designed for families with children. The product is based on a EU founded project called SOFIA that aims to connect the physical world to the information world through smart objects. A short evaluation was done on the relevance of applying game elements to improve environmentally responsible behaviour. The evaluation showed that the design had a positive effect on raising the awareness of children about their ERB.\u3c/p\u3

Learning from Internet of Things for Improving Environmentally Responsible Behavior

Abstract. We present two designs in the area of Internet of Things, utilizing an ontology-driven platform, namely Smart-M3, to connect domestic objects in the physical world to the information world, for coaching the behavior or raising the awareness in domestic energy consumption. The concept and architecture of Smart-M3 are introduced, in which the domestic objects are knowledge processors connected to the semantic information broker that contains the ontologies, using a blackboard design pattern and semantic web technologies, enabling the interoperability among both digital and physical entities. Two designs based on Smart-M3 are presented, as examples for coaching with and learning from the Internet of Things. Although both designs are in the area of domestic energy consumption, they can be seen as good starting points towards broader areas of ubiquitous learning with the Internet of Things

From events to goals: supporting semantic interaction in smart environments

When we connect smart devices to one another we open up many new possibilities. One interesting possibility is to support high-level semantic interaction without requiring multiple steps on multiple devices. In this paper we investigate how ontologies, runtime task models, Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) models, and the blackboard architectural pattern may be used to enable semantic interaction for pervasive computing. An initial demonstrator was developed to visualize and manipulate semantic connections between devices in a smart home environment. The demonstrator provides a way for users to physically interact with devices on a high level of semantic abstraction without being bothered with the low-level details