ComVis-Sail: Comparative Sailing Performance Visualization for Coaching

Abstract

During training sessions, sailors rely on feedback provided by the coaches to reinforce their skills and improve their performance. Nowadays, the incorporation of sensors on the boats enables coaches to potentially provide more informed feedback to the sailors. A common exercise during practice sessions, consists of two boats of the same class, sailing side by side in a straight line with different boat handling techniques. Coaches try to understand which techniques are that make one boat go faster than the other. The analysis of the obtained data from the boats is challenging given its multi-dimensional, time-varying and spatial nature. At present, coaches only rely on aggregated statistics reducing the complexity of the data, hereby losing local and temporal information. We describe a new domain characterization and present a visualization design that allows coaches to analyse the data, structuring their analysis and explore the data from different perspectives. A central element of the tool is the glyph design to intuitively represent and aggregate multiple aspects of the sensor data. We have conducted multiple user studies with naive users, sailors and coaches to evaluate the design and potential of the overall tool. (Figure presented.).