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Designing Digital Climbing Experiences through
Understanding Rock Climbing Motivation
Richard Byrne and Florian 'Floyd' Mueller
Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
{rich,floyd}@exertiongameslab.org
Abstract.
Interactive systems have been used successfully in sports to
assist people in achieving their performance goals, however, we believe
that some aspects are often overlooked. In this paper we focus on rock
climbing and we examine existing work on climbing from varying fields,
including sports science, psychology, and climbing literary works, in order
to identify recurring motivational themes. In total we identify and de-
scribe five key themes from these works: “risk as a measure of progress”,
“maintaining challenge”, “social engagement”, “experiencing beauty and
nature”, and “documenting and reliving the experience”. We then exam-
ine how existing digital climbing experiences address these themes and
suggest ways in which these interactive climbing designs could embrace
the themes they do not yet address. We believe this work will be im-
portant not only when designing digital climbing experiences, but also
digital experiences for other extreme sports.
1
Introduction
Using technology to assist with or to encourage improvement in sporting perfor-
mance is an emerging field of research and development. In recent years jogging,
for example, has seen numerous devices or applications aimed at improving the
performance of professionals and beginners alike (for example: Nike Plus [19]
and Run Keeper [21]). These systems often aim at improving and monitoring
an individual's performance by recording their activity and reporting how well
they achieved the task. Other sports have also been investigated, such as: cycling
[26], swimming [2], rowing [1], and rock climbing [11]. Recent research in rock
climbing has focused on interactive climbing designs that provide new ways of
interacting with the rock climbing wall. One caveat, we believe, when designing
climbing experiences currently is that the technology often takes the focus, with
designers asking first 'what can we do with the technology?'. However, we believe
that what is overlooked is obtaining an understanding into
why
rock climbers
choose to climb before developing the design. We believe this is an important
consideration and something of a missed opportunity since it will allow for the
development of digital climbing experiences that cater to climbers' needs and
motivations, i.e. supporting the core of the extreme sport experience.
