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.

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Abstract. In the era of distributed digital media, technology is moving to the background and interoperability between devices increases. The handles for users to explore, make and break connections between devices seem to disappear in overly complex menu structures displayed on small screens. Two prototypes have been developed that introduce a tangible approach towards exploring, making and breaking connections between devices in a home environment. Findings suggest that users are better able to project their mental model of how the system works on decentralized representations and that a tangible solution is not necessarily a better one.

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.