Interactions - March/April 2015

Advancements in wearable and ubiquitous computing have exposed the interaction design community to a new perspective on sports. As a result, increasing effort has been directed toward creating technology-enhanced systems that can improve sports experiences. So far these technologies have focused primarily on gathering data on a single user’s performance, for example through individual activity tracking, or on encouraging general physical activity, for example through exertion games. In contrast, only a few examples focus on improving the training experience for team sports [ 1, 2].

While most players recognize the importance of training, they would

Areadily agree that playing the actual sport is significantly more engaging than training for it. Consequently, our vision is to design engaging yet ransferable training experiences, realized through interactive spaces that use sensors, actuators, and game lements. We call these interactive sports-training games. Here, we present an interactive soccer-training system called Football Lab, together with three related games that explore the possibilities of combining technology and training. We discuss the design process and evaluation of the system, highlighting opportunities as well as challenges we encountered.

TRAINING BALL HANDLING,
FIELD SURVEYING,
AND MICRO TACTICS

Football Lab [ 1] is a public interactive soccer-training system created in cooperation with a Danish soccer academy and Munin Sports, a company that manufactures soccer-training equipment. It is an enclosed, 12x12 meter soccer field.

Four rebounding surfaces, called M-stations, each measuring 2. 7 x

2. 7 meters, are positioned at the center of each of the four sides of the playing field. The M-stations consist of a large frame strung with wire, similar to a tennis racquet, capable of returning a ball with 95 percent of its