The Design Space of Wearables for Sports and Fitness Practices

The growing interest in wearables for sports and fitness calls for design knowledge and conceptualizations that can help shape future designs. Towards that end, we present and discuss a design space of wearables for these practices, based on a survey of previous work. Through a thematic analysis of 47 research publications in the domain, we surface core design decisions concerning wearability, technology design, and wearable use in practice. Building on these, we show how the design space takes into account the goals of introducing technology, that design decisions can be either directly designed, or left open for appropriation by end-users; and the social organization of the practice. We characterize prior work based on the design space elements, which yields trends and opportunities for design. Our contributions can help designers think about key design decisions, exploit trends and explore new areas in the domain of wearables for sports and fitness practices.