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Exercising with others, such as jogging in pairs, can be socially engaging. However, if exercise partners have different fitness levels then the activity can be too strenuous for one and not challenging enough for the other, compromising engagement and health benefits. Our system, Jogging over a Distance, uses heart rate data and spatialized sound to create an equitable, balanced experience between joggers of different fitness levels who are geographically distributed. We extend this prior work by analyzing the experience of 32 joggers to detail how specific design features facilitated, and hindered, an engaging and balanced exertion experience. With this knowledge, we derive four dimensions that describe a design space for balancing exertion experiences: Measurement, Adjustment, Presentation and Control. We also present six design tactics for creating balanced exertion experiences described by these dimensions. By aiding designers in supporting participants of different physical abilities, we hope to increase participation and engagement with physical activity and facilitate the many benefits it brings about.

____________________________________________________________________________________________Computer games lack the social bonding and collective physical exercise benefits that sports provide. To overcome these limitations, we have been investigating how to apply the benefits of sport, in particular the workout and social bonding effect, in a distributed setting. We designed, developed, and evaluated Breakout for Two, which allows people who are miles apart to play a physically exhausting ball game together. We had over a thousand players who interacted through a life-size video-conference screen using a regular soccer ball as an input device. In an evaluative study, 56 players were interviewed and said that they got to know the other player better, had more fun, became better friends, and were happier with the transmitted audio and video quality in comparison to those who played the same game using a nonexertion keyboard interface. These results suggest that sports over a distance is an exciting new field with an "exertion interface" that encourages remote interaction, where players can achieve both a work-out and socializing.

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