Displaying Data-Driven Feedback during Mass Events

This research involves the design and implementation of a novel feedback system for the communication of hyperlocal data in public space, with the goal to inform and encourage physical activity at large. Through a process of design-oriented research, we explore how new kinds of feedback systems can provide sporters with custom socially-driven as well as performance-based insights on their ‘performance’.

Through an iterative process of design and evaluation, we analyze the specific design factors that impact the insight generation and the user experience when exploring data in the public. Among other aspects, we are interested in the added value of encountering data in its actual context and together with other users, as opposed to becoming informed individually and well after the sensed activity itself. We therefore contextualize the research during and immediately after mass events, such as urban trails, running and cycling competitions and other sports events. In addition, we consider how such feedback systems can become a motivational catalyst of physical activity itself, such as via the facilitating a data-driven urban game that records and manifests various performance statistics.