Improving at-home workouts

As part of my master’s thesis, I led a project aimed at improving at‑home workouts. With the pandemic forcing so many people to train at home by following someone on a screen, I set out to explore what challenges or improvements users really needed.

The result? A workout mat that sends signals to the user when they exercise: if an exercise is performed incorrectly, the mat delivers gentle pulsations and verbal feedback to guide them back into proper form.

This design is guided by a Somaesthetic approach (enhancing inward bodily awareness with minimal external disruption). The purpose is to provide users with a personalized platform, adjusted to their body measurements, allowing them to firstly self-reflect on their posture, and only correct through sensors when needed to prevent injuries and give real-time feedback.

After the research, the challenge was clear

After doing some literature research, I identified a few emerging themes around at‑home workout frustrations: injuries from incorrect posture, an overwhelming amount of content leading to decision fatigue, and a lack of equipment.

I launched a survey to narrow down the problem, followed by interviews to have a deeper understanding and ideate potential solutions based on the answers.

People mentioned having trouble following the instructor on screen and knowing if they were doing an exercise correctly without someone to cue their posture, some even had minor injuries. Others said they simply didn’t have the right equipment or struggled to keep up with the instructor.

The Process

I chose Research Through Design (RtD) as a process since it lets me generate knowledge through design iterations and user feedback in usability tests.
While designing this device, I worked within the constraints of available hardware and exploring how to integrate haptics into exercise techniques while keeping comfort and ergonomics a priority while getting real‑time posture feedback.

Identifying Problems through Research

To inform the design direction, I ran a series of studies to gather people’s opinions, habits, and sentiments about their current at‑home workout experiences:

Survey: Collected 174 responses, surfacing the main challenges people face when exercising at home and their typical routines.

Semi-Structured Interviews: Conducted to gain deeper reflection following the survey responses. One interviewee was new to home workouts; the other was an experienced trainer.

Pilot Test: Using a low‑fidelity Wizard of Oz technique (mimic the interactions of the intended design through simpler means) I hid an Apple Watch under cloth to simulate mat vibrations when detecting incorrect technique.

Usability Test: After iterating on the pilot test, I tested a design with seven participants with a more complex prototype.

The research questions for this usability test are:

What is their understanding of symbols on the mat?
- How are they interpreted?
- Which symbols are easy or hard to interpret before the explanation of the mat?
How do the symbols and vibrations aid the participant in their technique?
How does the technique change when the participant tests the mat without symbols compared to when symbols are present?
What improvements need to be made to the prototype based on the participant’s feedback?

The Product: Interactive Mat + Workout App

The design process for the interactive mat incorporated insights from research and user feedback on current exercise experiences, as well as available technology suited to the intended design.

I designed a system composed of elements that address user's challenges and working with their current mental models of existing workout applications.

Thought process behind the mat

After the initial research and the start of the design phase, my objective was to help people understand how an exercise should feel by linking the physical mat with what they see on screen, using an embodied interaction approach.

The usability‑test findings were incredibly useful for guiding the design, everything from which symbols to use to how they should register under hands and feet during the exercise.

What does it do?

This mat gives users clear visual cues for hand placement, foot positioning and overall body alignment during an online exercise routine. While the mat itself senses only touchpoints, an overhead Somaesthetic lighting and camera that provide a holistic view of body posture.

The mat has standard yoga‑mat dimensions to stay compatible with common equipment and to fit into smaller spaces. The surface is divided into four numbered corner quadrants, plus three zones corresponding to upper body, core and lower body so users can target specific movements in sync with the video’s spatial guidance.

The app is designed to link a workout routine with on‑screen instructions, breaking down each exercise into sets and repetitions.

Based on the research collected, users want to adjust the tempo to match their abilities; increase or decrease repetitions and sets; receive video and audio feedback on proper form; and get gentle nudges when their posture isn’t correct.

Next steps & What I learned

With this project I learned that people will adapt technology to suit their own needs. Even though I designed the mat with a specific structure in mind, users found ways to adjust it because those changes felt right to them.

I discovered the mat must fit different heights, offer distinct vibrational cues, and stay perfectly in sync with the app during a workout.

Another big takeaway is that for embodied experiences, it’s valuable to be a user yourself. As a researcher, I usually don’t consider myself an end user but here I needed to test the mat firsthand to understand sensations participants found hard to describe.

Last but not least, I learned that research informs design far better than a 'design gut' alone. Several ideas I assumed were intuitive actually caused confusion in usability tests. Embracing feedback, setting aside biases, and blending user needs with design principles is a skill – and it leads to much stronger results.

If you’d like to learn more about my thesis or the details, please get in touch – I’d be happy to share!

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