28 Jul 2020
The Digital Business Center of HEG-FR and HEIA collaborated with Technogym SPA to study the ergonomics of gestural interfaces with fitness equipment and won the Best paper award at the 11th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2020).
This paper presents a comparison of different interaction modalities, including gestures, on a treadmill. Controls on treadmills are typically made by pressing buttons or via a touchscreen. However, this requires the user to touch the frontal dashboard of the treadmill while running. In doing so, the runner needs to break her/his running form to reach the interface. These additional movements also require additional energy from the runner and cause a possible impact on performance. Current technologies make it possible to find a better solution for the runner, such as gesture-based interaction.
The goal of the study was to analyze the ergonomics of gestural interfaces and evaluate specifically tailored gestures, which are perceived to be more natural and easier to perform while doing another activity; thus significantly improving the user experience.
Congratulations to Matthieu Vallat, HEIA student, who worked on this project and who is the first author of this paper.
2th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2021)
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