Paper Reading #9- Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia

Title: Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia
Reference Information:
Frank Vetere, Martin Gibbs, Darren Edge, Stefan Agamanolis, and Jennifer Sheridan, "Jogging over a distance between Europe and Australia". UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology ACM New York, NY, USA ©2010 ISBN: 978-1-4503-0271-5.
Author Bios:
Frank Vetere- Frank is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. He has a Ph.D and is involved in the Interaction Design Group.
Martin Gibbs- Martin is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. He is conducting Ph.D research in the social aspects of technology.
Darren Edge- Darren is a researcher in the Human-Computer Interaction Group at Microsoft Research Asia, based in Beijing, China. Darren spent seven years at the University of Cambridge, first obtaining his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Management Studies, before completing his PhD dissertation in the Rainbow Group at the Computer Laboratory, under the supervision of Alan Blackwell.
Stefan Agamanolis- Stefan is currently Associate Director of the Rebecca D. Considine Research Institute at Akron Children's Hospital.
Jennifer Sheridan-Senior User Experience Consultant and Director of User Experience at BigDog Interactive with over 20 years experience in functional prototyping and design for global clients ranging from Nokia and the Technology Strategy Board to the Science Museum London. PhD in Computer Science, MSc in Human-Computer Interaction, and BA in Rhetoric and Professional Writing with a Computer Graphics specialization.
Summary:

• Hypothesis: "Jogging over a distance" aims to spread out the exertion activity over a broader spectrum than just at the end (to have the activity be engaging between users DURING the activity versus just a post-activity interaction), integrating networks to allow spatially-separated users to exercise together, and to analyze the data for sociological comparison.
• Methods: For the actual "Jogging over a distance" device design, users wear a headset, wireless heart rate monitor across their chest, and a small 'fanny pack' containing a minicomputer and a cell phone to store data and transmit audio. The target heart rate entered by the user is essential because "sound transmission" is focused on how fast the users heart is pumping. For example, if one user's heart was beating at 110BPM and another user's was beating at 150BPM (made up numbers), then the second user's "sound" would be heard by the first user as being "ahead" or "in front" of them. As far as testing their device goes, the authors rounded up volunteers to participate in test runs to rate the experience rather than how well it gauged their performance. There were 17 volunteers who had previous relationships with each other and were all social joggers. 
• Results: The data supported a claim that a social experience can be made from this technology. As a quote from the paper directly states, "Participants remarked on how the system facilitated a social experience similar to that experienced in co-located jogging: 'It was great, because we jogged together', 'This was almost as good as jogging together', 'I felt like he was there with me…' ". These quotes speak for themselves in terms of the success of the social aspect of the device. Users also commented positively about how they liked using this device because they could continue running at their pace rather than having to slow down to wait for their partner and maintain a light conversation. The authors also found that the device's audio support encouraged users to keep running and not to give up. It also made some users run harder. When their partner's voice was "in front", it made them want to run faster to keep up or pass their partner. This device also maps interactions by effort, not pace. This was attractive to users because people who ran at different paces could now interact with each other throughout the exercise via this device. 
• Contents: These authors set out to test and show off their work that they created. They designed this device in order to allow users to see their heart rate and effort they put forth into the activity and interact with others while engaging in this activity throughout the duration of the activity. The authors recruited some qualified volunteers to try out their device during test runs, and the participants were interviewed post-trial. Along with these interviews, data was collected from the runs in the minicomputers stored in the 'fanny packs'.

Discussion:
This device is really cool. I wholeheartedly support technologies like this. These types of devices allow users from very spatially-different places to interact in different ways than social medias online like facebook. This device integrates networking, audio transmission, heart rate comparison, spatial relationships, and data computation all in a single device. I could definitely see this device being a springboard for future technologies. I could even see a release in this type of device after a while (if this was v1.0, then I would imagine a '2.0' to be the release version). I believe the authors were very satisfied with their feedback and with the success of their device technologically. In my opinion, this was definitely a success and I am sure the authors look to build on this technology for a future publication.