Embedding a crowd inside a relay baton : a case study in a non-competitive sporting activity

Abstract

This paper presents a digital relay baton that connects longdistance runners with distributed online spectators. The baton broadcasts athletes’ live locative data to a social network and communicates back remote-crowd support through haptic and audible cheers. Our work takes an exploratory design approach to bring new insights into the design of real-time techno-mediated social support. The prototype was deployed during a 170-mile charity relay race across the UK with 13 participants, 261 on-line supporters, and gathered a total of 3,153 ‘cheers’. We report on the insights collected during the design and deployment process and identify three fundamental design considerations: the degree of spectator expression that the design affords, the context applicability, and the data flow within the social network.