Visual Heart Rate Intensity Application

The app's user interface showing a stoplight-striped mountain, users and their heartrates, and a countdown timer.

Team Members

Dr. Melissa Bittner, Adapted Physical Education, California State University, Long Beach
Dr. Bo Fu, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, California State University Long Beach
Dennis Lo, Data Semantics & Human Data Interaction (D2) Research Lab at California State University Long Beach
Katrina Orevillo, Data Semantics & Human Data Interaction (D2) Research Lab at California State University Long Beach

Focused Challenge We're Addressing

Engaging individuals with disabilities in sustained physical activity, with a focus on increasing heart rate.

Overall Idea Description

Fitness centers offer programs that encourage individuals to exercise in a “colored zones” (e.g., yellow, orange) associated with intensity level as measured by heart rate. Colored zones are displayed during exercise providing individuals with visual feedback of their relative intensity or effort level. This feedback can then be used to make adjustments to the level of effort and potentially maximize the benefits of the exercise program. While working out in colored zones may be a popular fitness method for neurotypical individuals, this is a very abstract concept that individuals with disabilities may not understand. Our research team has worked to take the concept of exercising in “colored zones” and developed a new computer-based tablet application that may be more developmentally appropriate for this population (i.e., Visual Heart Rate Intensity Application). The Visual Heart Rate Intensity Application uses several evidence-based practices that are specific to individuals with disabilities (National Professional Development Center on Autism Spectrum Disorder, 2015).

How Our Submission Meets the 3 Judging Criteria

Creativity and Innovation: The Heart Rate Intensity App uses the concept of climbing a stop-light striped mountain to encourage users to work harder when performing physical activity. Each colored section of the mountain represents a percentage of the user’s maximum heart rate: red = 55% or less, yellow = 56% to 65%, and green = 66% to 80%. The user’s self-chosen avatar moves up and down the colored zones depending on their heart rate. A visual counter shows the remaining workout time, and music is added if 55% of the max. heart rate is reached (music can be toggled off in case of sensory issues).
Impact on Identified Challenge: Physical activity has a positive effect on health (e.g., weight management, muscle strength) and can provide individuals with disabilities the opportunity to lead a healthy lifestyle (Datka, 2015). However, individuals with disabilities are almost 1.5 times more likely to be overweight or obese compared to neurotypical peers (Healy et al., 2018). This could potentially limit the health-related benefits derived from physical activity. Because individuals with disabilities do not engage in physical activity at a vigorous level as frequently as their peers, they may be at greater risk for developing obesity and Type II diabetes, and in later years, cardiovascular, pulmonary, or metabolic diseases.
Implementation Feasibility: To evaluate the technical feasibility of engaging individuals with disabilities in sustained physical activities, we have developed an open-source prototype of the Heart Rate Intensity app under the Apache 2.0 and MIT licenses, that uses NativeScript and NodeJS to create cross-platform mobile applications to support multiple operating systems including Android and iOS devices. This prototype utilizes the Model-View-ViewModel architecture to enable model transformation for different views in the application, reduce code redundancy, and facilitate application extensibility and scalability as new views and logic can be added without affecting other views.

Idea Development Stage

Tested and Piloted

Supporting Documentation

Previous Pilot Study Bo Fu, Jimmy Chao, Melissa Bittner, Wenlu Zhang, Mehrdad Aliasgari, Improving Fitness Levels of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Preliminary Evaluation of Real-Time Interactive Heart Rate Visualization to Motivate Engagement in Physical Activity. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP 2020), 81-89. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_10 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_10