TriaTriumph: A dashboard for triathletesto estimate physical fitness

Tom De BuyserMaster Computer Science (Human Computer Interaction)

KU Leuven, Belgiumtom.debuyser@student.kuleuven.be

Abstract—Triathlon is a booming branch in the sports indus-try and is practised around the whole world. A lot of triathletestry to reach the top-level of their physical fitness at a certainpoint in time (e.g. a race). Because of the lack of specific triathlontools, most thriathletes use spreadsheets to report about trainings,TODO: nadeel. This paper introduces a web-based dashboardcalled TriaTriumph, that tries to help triathletes gaining insightsabout their physical fitness and the evolution of it in time. Asurvey has first been taken to identify the personality and theneeds of triathletes. Then the dashboard was designed throughsome phases with paper and digital prototypes. Displaying allnecessary information on a single screen introduces a majorproblem: a crowded impression. This issue is evaluated andtackled through the different prototypes that were developed.

I. INTRODUCTION

Triathlon is becoming popular around the whole world andthe age of triathletes is varied widely [1], [2]. Triathlon is char-acterized by races that consist of the sequential completion ofthree endurance sport disciplines, namely swimming, cyclingand running. Races can come in different formats, rangingfrom the Ironman distance (3.8km swimming, 180.2km cyclingand 42.2km running) to the sprint distance (0.75km swimming,20km cycling and 5km running). It is intended that triathletestry to accomplish this distance as fast as possible. In order toperform well in a race, the athletes train for every discipline.To get more professional accompaniment, triathletes have thepossibility to join clubs, where they can also practise withother team mates.

Most triathletes are practising triathlon in a more or lessrecreational way, without intervention of a personal coach.Having a personal coach has the enormous advantage of havingthe knowledge on how to practise in order to be in best shapeat a certain point in time (e.g. a race). But because of theentailing financial costs of personal coaches, most triathletesdo not have this specific knowledge. Some questions couldarise, e.g. “Am I training in a proper way?”, “When do I haveto take more rest or train harder?” or “Is my physical fitnessbecoming better towards the next race?”.

Quantified self [3] could be a way for recreational triath-letes to gain more knowledge about their own body and usethis knowledge to prepare for a race. Quantified self - alsoknown as personal informatics - is a movement where peoplecapture and record personal data about some aspects of life(e.g. sports) [4]. A better understanding of the personal healthcould be retrieved by analysing these numbers. With thesenew insights, people could change their behaviour in a positive

way in order to perform better. Triathletes may already recordpersonal data. A survey has been done to discover, amongother things, the kinds of this data.

II. SURVEY

It is important to know how the target audience behaves be-fore starting designing an application for that audience. Morespecifically, it’s interesting to know how they practise andwhat personal information they already record and considerimportant. For this purpose, a survey has been published onthe web [5] and shared through several kinds of social medialike Facebook and Twitter. Some examples of the questionsthat were stated in the survey are:

• Do you use a predefined training plan for an upcomingweek, or is the planning ad hoc?

• Which personal information do you record on a dailyor weekly basis?

• What software do you use to store this personalinformation?

• Do you carry a smartphone while training?

The survey was filled in by 66 triathletes whereby someinteresting conclusions could be drawn from the answers. Itseems that 65% of the participants use a predefined trainingplan for the upcoming week. This means that most triathletesalready plan at the beginning of a week which trainingsthey will do during that week. It seemed that some personalinformation was already being recorded on a daily/weeklybasis, like weight (42%), morning heart rate (17%), sleepquality (5%) and body feeling (5%).

Another remarkable point is the use of Excel spreadsheetsto store personal information. No less than 32% of the partic-ipants use a spreadsheet for this purpose, which leads to theexpression that triathletes do not know the existence specifiedtriathlon applications, or there are currently no suitable appli-cations available. Sport watches seems to be popular as well:35% uses Garmin and its software [6], while 17% uses Polarand its software [7].

Only 24% of the participants carry a smartphone whilepractising. Therefore, it does not seem recommended to builda smartphone application that could be used while training fora discipline.

III. RELATED WORK

Human computer interaction research has not been done sofar in this domain. There also doesn’t exist many value-addingapplications which are specialised to triathlon. The applicationwith the highest amount of users is TrainingPeaks. It is a web-based application that focusses on triathlon and has around500,000 registered users [8]. It offers an enormous wide rangeof functionality. Users have the possibility to plan workouts,add the results of each workout, set goals, keep up with dailyfood intake, join training and feeding plans and so on. Theresults of a workout can be added in high detail, wherebyTrainingPeaks offers the possibility to upload files that aregenerated by technical devices that are carried while training.

Besides a calendar, TrainingPeaks also comes with a dash-board that shows a summary of all results in an adjustable timeperiod. All the information that is saved by the athlete, can beshown on this dashboard in the form of bar charts, pie chartsand line charts. Most of these visualisations are only providedto the premium members of TrainingPeaks.

Because of the enormous functionality, most people prob-ably can’t see the wood for the trees. They are overwhelmedwith the combination of much information and an unattractivedesign, where TrainingPeaks probably looses a lot of potentialusers.

IV. AIM

In order to be at best shape for a race, triathletes should beable to gain insights about their own body and their physicalfitness. TriaTriumph aims to display specific information insuch a way that they are able to gain these insights. It isimportant what information is displayed and how this is done.The tool should give a higher added value than spreadsheetsin terms of time of gaining insights, but also in attractivenessof using it.

V. DESIGN

The information that was gained from the survey was usedas a basis for the information that is displayed in the design.By listening to the needs of the triathletes, a tool can be builtthat could be very useful for them. The survey pointed out thatonly 24% of the responders carry a smartphone while training.For this reason, a tool has been developed that could be usedbefore and after practical sessions. Visualizing the physicalfitness over time requires the use of charts, and these chartsshould be large enough in order to analyse them. Therefore, aweb-based dashboard has been developed that is intended forscreens larger than smartphones.

Before the start of the design phase, some design criteriawere considered important. These criteria should be fulfilled inthe future design in order to achieve the goal of this research.This list shows a short explanation and motivation of eachcriteria.

• Data capture: In order to show the evolution ofphysical fitness over time, there must be data availableabout the trainings of the user. This could be accom-plished by providing the possibility to plan practicalsessions and provide these sessions with a detailedresult afterwards. Also keeping a diary of personal

Fig. 1: Some regions of a dashboard get more emphasized thanother regions, which should be kept in mind while positioninginformation [9]

specifications is a possible way of getting insightsabout the physical fitness.

• Simplicity and consistency: Because a dashboard dis-plays a lot of information, it should have a simplisticdesign. Users should not get overwhelmed with theway in which information is provided. The use ofless colors could be a first step towards a simplis-tic design [9]. Also choosing for consistency givesthe users more confidence in using the dashboard,whereby simplicity comes up.

• Interactivity and adaptability: One of the things thatcan bring more detail in a simplistic design is in-teractivity. By interacting with the dashboard, moredetailed and necessary information can be shown ondemand, while still meeting simplicity. In order toanalyse physical fitness, it should be possible to adaptthe time period in which the evolution of the physicalfitness is displayed.

There are some other important properties of a gooddashboard design, as stated by Stephen Few [9]. A firstproperty is that the user should not have to scroll throughthe dashboard to perceive all the information. When relatedinformation cannot be captured in a single view, there is therisk that some relationships between numbers is not noticed,while gaining insights is the goal of this dashboard. Putting alot of information on one screen can lead to a crowded andoverwhelming impression. This is major challenge in designingdashboards and therefore evaluated and tackled through thedifferent prototypes.

A second property of a good dashboard design is placingthe most important information in the region where the em-phasis is the largest. The degree of emphasis of all regionsis shown in figure 1. A bad strategy could be to put a bigcompany logo at the top left of the dashboard, because itdoesn’t show the most important information.

VI. METHODOLOGY (RAPID PROTOTYPING)

An iterative design process is used to reach the final designof the dashboard. In each iteration or phase, a prototype isdeveloped that tries to solve the problems that came up in theprevious prototype. The first two prototypes were designed onpaper, called paper prototyping [10]. By designing on paper,

the foundations of the dashboard can first be defined. Whenproblems occur, the prototype can easily be redrawn, withoutloosing time and money in the technical implementation ofthese changes. When a paper prototype has more or less nobig problems, time is spent in digitalizing this prototype.

Throughout the individual evaluations, commonly usedevaluation techniques have been used. These techniques areused in such a way that the quality of the different designcriteria is evaluated. A first technique is the think aloudmethod [11]. It is used to let people explain what they perceiveby seeing a part of the dashboard. In this way, it can be testedwhether the users do get the message that the dashboard triesto express. If not, there is probably a problem in its design.Another approach of think aloud is to give the users a taskthat has to be completed by interacting with the dashboard.Users have to explain which steps they should untertake tofulfil the task. This approach gives insights on the usability ofthe design, more concrete whether tasks are fulfilled in a waythat they were intended to do.

At the end of each evaluation, some specific questions wereasked about the content of the dashboard. Because limiting acrowded impression is a major challenge, one of this questionswas about giving an opinion about this issue. After theindividual evaluation, a SUS questionnaire [12] was filled in bythe participant. This questionnaire gives an indication whetherthere are big usability issues in the design, like inconsistency.The SUS score also makes it possible to compare applicationswith each other. A score above 85% could for example berated as excellent [13].

VII. PROTOTYPE EVOLUTIONS

In this section, the different prototypes are described incombination with their evaluation results. Two paper proto-types were followed by two digital prototypes. The seconddigital prototype is also the final version of the dashboard.The main focus will be on limiting a crowded impression, asit is a major challenge in dashboard design.

A. First paper prototype

The design of the first paper prototype is made up of levelsand is shown in figure 2. The dashboard starts with a headeron top because it holds a button that thriatletes can use to adda finished activity. An activity could be a training or a race.The dashboard logo was kept rather small because it doesn’tadd very important information. Below the header, a calendarof the current week is shown in combination with its progress.The planning is built up of three rows, each serving one ofthe three disciplines. Users can plan an activity by clicking onthe desired square in the calendar. This concept is introducedbecause 65% of the responders of the survey said to use apredefined planning.

The next concept are the personal things of a triathlete.Users are encouraged to daily save their weight, morning heartrate, hours of sleep and body feeling. These properties werederived from the results of the survey. By hitting the graphbutton, a user is able to see the evolution of these propertiesover time and how they relate to each other. The goal ofthis graph is to gain more knowledge about your own body.One example could be that the user’s body feels fitter when

Fig. 2: The first paper prototype

sleeping more. Another example is when the morning heartrate is increasing for a few days, the user is probably gettingsick and needs more rest. On the right of the personal thingsis a region where users can set goals and earn badges. Thepurpose of this concept is to motivate the users to keep usingthe dashboard.

The level below contains three boxes. The dashboard triesto show the training intensity in a user-defined time period.This is done by calculating the average value for the amountof calories burned, the intensity, the heart rate while trainingand the total time of activity. These averages can be comparedwith the average of all the triathletes that use the dashboard.The time period can be changed by using the slider and theevolution of the average values can be shown by clickingon the graph button. The next concept, the physical fitness,tries to show whether the physical fitness of the athlete isgetting better. The average velocities of two time periods canbe compared to each other, but also to the average velocity ofall users of the dashboard. The results of an activity can beconsulted at the right of this level.

The bottom level provides information about races and thecomparison of them. The duration of the races that were donein the user-defined time period are shown on a graph.

This prototype does not satisfy the property of fitting com-pletely on one screen without scrolling. A lot of informationis displayed because it was not clear which information isconsidered as most important by triathletes. Therefore, themajor goal of the evaluation was to define the most importantconcepts of the dashboard, so that the less important conceptscould be omitted in the next prototype. Participants were askedto give the four most important boxes of the dashboard.

Fig. 3: The second paper prototype

The prototype was evaluated for one hour with nine sportspeople, including seven triathletes. Seven participants (78%)indicated that the design had a very crowded impression, aswas expected. All participants agreed that the planning and itsprogress is the most important information. Therefore, it was agood decision to put this on top. Six of the seven triathletes didnot like the content of the physical fitness box. A preparationfor a race consists of intensive weeks and weeks of rest. Usingthe average velocity will give the impression that the physicalfitness is getting worse in a week of rest, while this is nottrue. Three of these six triathletes suggested another approachto estimate the increase in physical fitness. For each discipline,a contest is done around every two weeks, where triathletes tryto accomplish a distance as fast as possible. It could be veryuseful to plot these timings on a graph. This interpretation isused and evaluated in the next prototype.

Setting goals and earning badges was only consideredimportant by one triathlete. Afterthought, this concept doesn’thelp to reach the goal of this research. The dashboard doesnot try to motivate triathletes to get a better physical fitness,but it tries to show the evolution of the physical fitness overtime. This concept will therefore be omitted. The concept ofcomparing races was also not popular, because comparingthem is very difficult. Each race has a different distance,different weather and a different trail. The concept of raceswon’t be included in the next prototype.

Despite the crowded impression, the design received a SUSscore of 83.6%.

B. Second paper prototype

The goal of the evaluation of the previous prototype wasachieved. Some concepts are omitted, whereby all the infor-mation in this prototype perfectly fits on one screen withoutthe need of scrolling. This second paper prototype is shown infigure 3. Another change with respect to the previous prototypeis the positioning of the header. It now became a footer,as the button to add an activity disappeared and thereforethe header doesn’t carry very important information anymore.Now, triathletes can add the results of a scheduled training byclicking on the training in the calendar. Training categories arealso introduced in order to get a glimpse of the load of theweek. One last addition is the possibility to filter the users thatare included in the calculation of the average training intensity

Fig. 4: The first digital prototype

values. Triathletes can now compare these values against userswith the same sex, the same age category and the same skill.

Next to keeping only the most important concepts, someother strategies were used to limit the crowded impression.The first strategy is the combination of a symbol and its value,which should make the design less detailed and thus look moresimplistic. Another strategy using less colors: a threefold colorscheme consisting of dark gray, light gray and orange is used.

This prototype was evaluated for 45 minutes with eighttriathletes. Only one triathlete (12.5%) indicated that the designhad a too crowded impression. This is much better than the78% from the previous prototype. This gives an indication thatthe design was going in the right direction. The SUS score alsoincreased to 86.3%.

C. First digital prototype

For the second paper prototype, it was difficult to findtriathletes that wanted to spend time in evaluating it. As thisresearch is limited in time, it wasn’t possible to just waitfor more triathletes to evaluate the prototype. Therefore, thedecision was made to start the implementation of a digital pro-totype. This means that the design of this first digital prototypeis practically the same as the second paper prototype, whichentails that probably the results of the previous prototypeevaluation would recur in the evaluation of this prototype.

In order to get as many new things from this evalua-tion, another audience was contacted. It is common that thedigitalization of a paper prototype introduces some technicalmistakes and therefore this evaluation was done with computerscientists. These participants evaluate the dashboard from amore technical viewpoint, whereby this evaluation can still givea great added value.

A screenshot of the first digital prototype is shown in figure4. All the functionality that is displayed on this image wasalready implemented, except for adding of a training result andthe interaction with the graphs. This design scales dynamicallyon every screen, no matter its size.

This evaluation was completely focussed on usability.Questions about the content were not asked, as computerscientists are mostly no triathletes. With this more technicalaudience, it was also interesting to get an opinion about thecrowded impression of the dashboard. The evaluation was done

Fig. 5: The final version of the dashboard

with 12 computer scientists and lasted 35 minutes. Next tosome usability issues resulting from the digitalization, four ofthe 12 participants (25%) indicated that the design had a toocrowded impression. Remarkable is that three of these fourparticipants said that this crowded impression was owing bythe right upper part of the dashboard. This part shows thedetails of a training in a very small space with the personalnotes attracting the attention, whereby it looks very crammed.

The next prototype will therefore change the “map”-tab to a“notes”-tab, so that more space is available to show the detailsand the personal notes of a training. Displaying the travelledroute on a map was considered less important for the goal ofthe dashboard. The SUS score of 84.6% is also a little lower -but still a great SUS score - in comparison with the SUS scoreof the triathletes.

D. Final version

TODO: zeggen wat er allemaal is bijgekomen: 1) toevoegenvan resultaten 2) grafieken 3) backend

VIII. SOFTWARE DESIGN

TODO: hier een mooi schema zetten hoe het dashboardin elkaar zit. Dit ook een beetje uitleggen op een redelijktechnisch niveau, maar toch bondig genoeg.

IX. EVALUATION

TODO: Er zijn 2 scenarios die beiden kunnen wordenuitgevoerd om het resultaat van die onderzoek te evalueren.

Een aantal personen dienen het dashboard een tijdje tegebruiken en hun mening geven. We gaan moeten evaluerenof de gebruikers hun conditie goed kunnen inschatten wanneerze het dashboard voor een tijdje gebruiken. Dus een aantalpersonen vinden die het dashboard voor bv 2 weken willengebruiken en dan hun mening en ondervindingen moeten ken-baar maken door middel van een vragenlijst of een persoonlijkgesprek. Een nadeel met deze korte periode is natuurlijk dateen aantal concepten eerder op langere termijn moeten wordengezien vooraleer ze echt relevant zijn. Hiervoor is geen tijd endaarom is het moeilijker om de meningen die er uit komen alsvolwaardig onderzoeksresultaat op te nemen.

Vergelijking maken met spreadsheet op basis van ge-bruiksgemak/kwaliteit/snelheid. Een andere manier om de

Fig. 6: Abstract overview of the software design

added value te testen tov van de dingen die nu wordengebruikt (meer bepaald excel spreadsheets). Dit kunnen wedoen door ook weer een aantal proefpersonen te nemen diebeide concepten gebruiken en dan zien welke de voorkeurkrijgt. Het lijkt ook belangrijk om hier kwantitatieve data vante hebben: de tijd die nodig is om een aantal dingen te bepalenetc. Dus testen op makkelijker/beter/sneller

X. CRITICISMS & FUTURE WORK

A very important remark is that the dashboard is only testedcompletely in the Google Chrome web browser and this on anon multi touch wide screen. However, the dashboard is alsoable to compile on tablets, as it is a web-based dashboard. Toreach all triathletes without any limits, the dashboard should befully compatible with multi touch screens and other browsers,but this is left as future work.

One point of critique could be that users have to man-ually add results of trainings. At this moment, the dashboardcompletely trusts on the engagement of the triathlete. However,introducing a way to add results in a more automatic way couldbe a very nice addition to the dashboard. As the survey pointedout, more than 50% of the responders carry a sport watchwhile training. Garmin provides the Garmin CommunicatorPlugin [14] with an open API to upload the information thatis stored on the watch directly to a website. Other brands likePolar do not have this open API. Therefore the specific filesthat are stored on these watches should first be downloadedand then be uploaded to the website. These files should thenbe parsed by the website.

Another concept where automatic data capturing can beprovided is the logging of the personal specifications. Theseproperties (except for the body feeling) are also captured bythe Fitbit bracelet [15], while they also provide an open API.Withings [16] is another example of a scale that measures theweight and heart rate, also with an open API.

Because more than 50% of the people that responded tothe survey used a sport watch, developing an application for asmart watch could probably have a future in triathlon. Triath-letes might be more interested in carrying a smart watch whiletraining in comparison with a smartphone, because it is verysimilar to a sport watch. However, some big companies likeGarmin and Polar already produce qualitative products withthe integration of smart coaching. Detailed charts about the

recorded properties of the training are also already provided.This is the reason why this research does not focus too hardon displaying specific training results.

XI. CONCLUSION

TODO: Schrijven aan het einde van het onderzoek. Hierinzullen de belangrijkste bevindingen komen die met het dash-board zijn bereikt, dus eigenlijk kort herhalen wat de resultatenvan de evaluatie zijn.

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