While learning new motor skills, we often rely on feedback from a trainer. Auditive feedback and demonstrations are used most frequently, but in many domains they are inappropriate or impractical. We introduce tactile instructions as an alternative to assist in correcting wrong posture during physical activities, and present a set of full-body vibrotactile patterns. An initial study informed the design of our tactile patterns, and determined appropriate locations for feedback on the body. A second experiment showed that users perceived and correctly classified our tactile instruction patterns in a relaxed setting and during a cognitively and physically demanding task. In a final experiment, snowboarders on the slope compared their perception of tactile instructions with audio instructions under real-world conditions. Tactile instructions achieved overall high recognition accuracy similar to audio instructions. Moreover, participants responded quicker to instructions delivered over the tactile channel than to instructions presented over the audio channel. Our findings suggest that these full-body tactile feedback patterns can replace audio instructions during physical activities.

In many sports, athletes are spatially separated from their coach while practicing an exercise. This spatial separation makes learning new skills arduous because the coach cannot give instructions or feedback on performance. We present the findings of an in the wild study that demonstrate the potential for teaching sport skills with realtime tactile instructions. We focused on snowboard training. Ten amateurs learned a riding technique with a wearable system that automatically provided tactile instructions during descents. These instructions were in sync with the movements of the snowboard and signaled how to move the body. We found that tactile instructions could help snowboarders to improve their skills. We report insights into the snowboarders' opinion and give recommendations for teaching sport skills with tactile instructions. Our findings help to identify the conditions under which tactile instructions can support athletes in sports training.