Subtletee: Augmenting Posture Awareness for Beginner Golfers

Abstract

While the sport of golf offers unique opportunities for people of all ages to be active, it also requires mastering complex movements before it can be fully enjoyed. Extensive training is required to begin achieving any success, which may demotivate prospective players away from the sport. To aid beginner golfers and enable them to practice without supervision, we designed Subtletee---a system that enhances the bodily awareness of golfers by providing feedback on the position of their feet and elbows. We first identified key problems golf beginners face through expert interviews. We then evaluated different feedback modalities for Subtletee---visual, tactile and auditory in an experiment with 20 beginner golfers. We found that providing proprioception feedback increased the users' performance on the driving range, with tactile feedback providing the most benefits. Our work provides insights on delivering feedback during physical activity that requires high precision movements.