MSc Thesis - Interactive Pose Tracking for Climbing

Climbing is a rapidly growing and evolving discipline, for which there is room for interactive technology-based interventions. Mapping out existing work reveals opportunities for motion-tracking technologies, but also a trend towards engagement focussed or out-of-action solutions, leaving a gap for in-action training tools to explore.

Using a participatory, possibility-driven ideation process, design spaces for problems, possibilities, and solutions were iterated upon, resulting in four concepts. The most promising, according to end-users and experts, is a gamified on-the-wall warmup routine, derived from the discovered problem of climbers tending to skip conventional warm-up exercises. A prototype three-phase warm-up game was implemented on an interactive projection-based climbing wall, supported by an inertial motion tracking suit.

Using a repeated measures experiment (n=12), engagement was found to be significantly higher in the prototype compared to a conventional warmup sequence, on all metrics except perceived usability. Overall, gamified warm-up is promising and should be considered to increase warm-up frequency, thereby preventing chronic and acute injuries.