Impact of Tactile and Visual Feedback on Breathing Rhythm and User Experience in VR Exergaming

Combining interconnected wearables provides fascinating opportunities like augmenting exergaming with virtual coaches, feedback on the execution of sports activities, or how to improve on them. Breathing rhythm is a particularly interesting physiological dimension since it is easy and unobtrusive to measure and gained data provide valuable insights regarding the correct execution of movements, especially when analyzed together with additional movement data in real-time. In this work, we focus on indoor rowing since it is a popular sport that's often done alone without extensive instructions. We compare a visual breathing indication with haptic guidance in order for athletes to maintain a correct, efficient, and healthy breathing-movement-synchronicity (BMS) while working out. Also, user experience and acceptance of the different modalities were measured. The results show a positive and statistically significant impact of purely verbal instructions and purely tactile feedback on BMS and no significant impact of visual feedback. Interestingly, the subjective ratings indicate a strong preference for the visual modality and even an aversion for the haptic feedback, although objectively the performance benefited most from using the latter.