CC Assignment 3 : Experimental Clock

Description

Hello, this is my third assignment for Critical Computation. I created a clock that would be used during aerobic and anaerobic training specifically when the information of the heart rate is available either through a monitor or user input. Depending on the heart rate number, the time will pass as normal or slow down during anaerobic conditions. Slowing down would enable the athlete to have more time to complete the exercise and therefore have more time to recover. This would be particularly important during strength and functional exercises when it is not optimal for the heart rate to be anaerobic. Time slows down when you are moving fast!

Clock Instructions : The clock works by the conditional of whether the heart rate is above 180 beats per min (bpm) or in a definite anaerobic state. A heart rate monitor would be needed to measure the bpm. When the heart rate is above 180 bpm, the user would change the timer by moving the mouse past half-way towards the right of the screen. This would set a new timer that moves slower than a second, giving a recovery period to the athlete who can finish the exercise under an accomodating time limit. Once the athlete has recovered and resumed aerobic threshold, moving the mouse towards the left of the screen will resume the timer as real time of seconds, minutes and hour.

Design Process

For the learning of how to code for a clock in p5js, I decided to choose one of the three brainstorm ideas that I shared in my recitation class. The other ideas were a clock based on tired levels and a clock that functions on happiness level. The idea that I chose was to build a countdown or timer to use during aerobic and anaerobic activities during training. I chose this idea because it would have the most application in my daily life. Ideally, the clock would require a heart rate monitor to detect or to receive input to either resume time as normal or to slow it down. Slowing down the time would be beneficial for trying to recover when the heart is beating at anaerobic levels. I included image screenshots from an app that tracks my workouts and records my heart rate (hr) during training to give some context for the idea of this assignment.

Reflection

I thought this assignment was interesting because it emphasised the potential application of what we create in p5js. I thought more about usability during this work than the other assignments. If this assignment were to go further, I would like to include other variables that are important for training as well - amount of sleep, heart rate variability (which detects if the body is still recovering from the day before) and more. This would help the clock be more calibrated to the user.