Exertion Trainer: Smartphone Exergame Design to Support Children’s Kinesthetic Learning Through Playful Feedback

Learning Apps have come a long way; nevertheless, Apps focused on physical education are underrepresented. This research explores exertion games that enable smartphone users to playfully learn the correct execution of target physical activities, as it is the straight punch in boxing. By implementing the sensors and actuators commonly found on modern smartphones, the proposed exertion game measures the movement of the user’s punching hand while performing a straight punch. The Exertion Trainer uses the resulting smartphone accelerometer data to evaluate the users’ techniques and provides sensory feedback to correct them. A graphic user interface was developed to convey the example movement that the user should replicate. A vital feature of this research is the user-centered design approach, which aims to generate new human-computer interactions by exploiting existing and pervasive mobile devices. So far, an expert user performance has been assessed to define a data baseline of the correct technique of the straight punch. Preliminary tests were done with two users. An A/B comparative experiment is proposed to validate this research. The control group, a traditional video-based tutorial, will be compared to the experimental group, a gamified interaction with the proposed exertion game. Participants will engage in a quantitative experiment (performance) and a qualitative questionnaire (experience). This study aims to transform the time users spend on the screen from visual content consumption to physical activation.