Physical inactivity has become a growing issue in working adults, who spend most of their time in sedentary office jobs. This project presented Hooky, a home-based exercise companion that engaged users in casual physical exercise. Hooky adopted a dumbbell-shaped form factor, designed to perform interactions such as rolling, wiggling and bouncing, and playing encouraging sounds. Its ability to interact with users throughout their exercise routine could improve the exercise experience and enhance intrinsic motivation for physical activities. The project utilized the “Research through Design”[GA1] method in our iterative design process, focusing specifically on scenario-based and movement-centric design to understand users’ perceptions of Hooky’s movement in several imaginary scenarios. We found Hooky to be the most effective when it included three characteristics: companionship, emotional expressiveness, and coaching. On the other hand, characteristics like negative consequences and repetitions were unfavored. The current work explored portable and affordable exercise robots focused on young working individuals. This laid the design foundations for future studies when making design decisions in contexts like this.
