Visualization Techniques for Climbing Self-Assessment

Abstract 

In this design study, the aim was to develop a system for climbers which gives insights to training data and provides assessments of climbing training. Data of wrist-worn sensors developed by ClimbAX formed the basis. A concept and prototype implemented in D3.js, based on a mobile web application and a desktop tool for presentation and analysis, were created. Various quantified-self applications for tracking daily activities such as running, cycling or strength training are available on the market. By analyzing different devices, a lack of self- assessment tools for climbers especially for indoor and outdoor tours is identified.
A contextual semi-structured interview, an expert review, as well as a usability study were conducted to identify the requirements of climbers. To evaluate and improve the developed concept an expert review and a usability study were performed. The results of these interviews showed the importance of providing manual input possibilities besides the automatically detected data of the wrist- worn device. Therefore, the mobile web application, developed in the course of this thesis, provides possibilities to add data manually. Visualization techniques, integrated into the applications, give users an overview of their training data. The web application is a tool to analyse data in more detail and allows the user to react to changes in the climbing training. The implementation provides visualizations, such as bar charts, line plots or donut charts, which were identified as well known. According to the findings of the interview, the system should be easy to use and avoid visualizations showing data of a long training periode.
These findings have significant implications for the understanding of how climbers will interact with quantified self-applications and what are the individual requirements for such a system are.

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