Juuso Näsi: Utilizing Vibrotactile Feedback in Heart Rate Monitoring

Heart rate monitors are becoming increasingly popular among athletes eager to gauge their performance and balance their training. Physical exercise requires concentration and usually puts our sight and hearing in use. Meanwhile, touch remains underutilized. Due to the extensive work-load of sight and hearing, heart rate monitors suffer from usability problems especially in motion. This thesis reports a study investigating the possibility to utilize touch in conveying information between the device and the user during exercise. This idea brings up three major questions: can people detect vibrations effectively in motion, how does activity level affect recognition performance, and could touch-based interaction improve the usability of heart rate monitors? Since these kinds of questions require empirical research to be answered, a method of utilizing vibrotactile feedback in guiding interval training has been developed in this thesis. The method bases on a 20-minute interval training program implementation. The hardware produces different kinds of vibration sequences which guide the user to catch up certain activity levels