Maximising the Usefulness of Wearable Data for Athletes

Athletes can and do use wearables and personal devices to track multiple aspects of personal information about their performance, but it is currently difficult for them to gain an integrated and useful picture of their long-term information. We designed a questionnaire to investigate whether athletes value and track four important factors (physical health, mental health, nutrition, and sleep) in relation to their performance using wearables and current athlete management systems. Sixteen athletes from various sports completed the questionnaire. Key results show the mismatch between perceived value versus actual nutrition, sleep, and mental health tracking but consistency on physical health. There also seems to be a divide on the perceived usefulness of athlete management systems. These results point to challenges for collecting and interpreting data that athletes want and also inform the design of athlete management systems, especially those that integrate both self-reported and wearable data.