Snap, Sweat, and Sketch: Designing Home Exercise Experiences for Augmented Reality Head-mounted Displays

Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) offer potential for more inclusive and immersive exercising and exergaming experiences at home. Previous work found that augmenting home objects can create more engaging exercise experiences and identified various home objects that can be augmented to facilitate different exercises. However, it is unclear how these objects can be augmented to enhance exercising and tailored based on the exercise. We conducted a multi-part study involving a design activity using Snapchat and focus group discussion with 28 participants. We present five themes relating to participants' preferences for the augmentation of home objects for exercising, and identify and discuss key guidelines that designers and researchers should consider when augmenting home objects. Our results provide designers with guidelines and ideas for the augmentation of four different exercises, and advance the foundation for future work developing home-based exergaming through AR HMDs to increase people's physical activity levels.