Designing for bouldering: supporting kinesthetic learning of action sport enthusiasts

Abstract

In recent years, there have been increased attention from HCI research towards action sports. Results of these studies are mainly artifacts with a focused view on performance and technology. It is argued that an approach focusing on the unique interaction possibilities between users' physicality, users' cognitive processes and environment is still missing in the field. Whilst some previous work outlined these unique interaction possibilities, such as mental and emotional load from various action sports and how these translate to users' learning processes, dedicated works for understanding user needs and addressing them are lacking. During my PhD, I'm focus on bouldering, a branch of rock climbing. Using a RtD approach, I'll be looking into learning processes of novices. User insights and I aim to address cases of bodily learning in action sports, which is very important in terms of understanding the users and having long-term impact on their practices.