FlowAR: How Different Augmented Reality Visualizations of Online Fitness Videos Support Flow for At-Home Yoga Exercises

Online fitness video tutorials are an increasingly popular way to stay fit at home without a personal trainer. However, to keep the screen playing the video in view, users typically disrupt their balance and break the motion flow — two main pillars for the correct execution of yoga poses. While past research partially addressed this problem, these approaches supported only a limited view of the instructor and simple movements. To enable the fluid execution of complex full-body yoga exercises, we propose FlowAR, an augmented reality system for home workouts that shows training video tutorials as always-present virtual static and dynamic overlays around the user. We tested different overlay layouts in a study with 16 participants, using motion capture equipment for baseline performance. Then, we iterated the prototype and tested it in a furnished lab simulating home settings with 12 users. Our results highlight the advantages of different visualizations and the system’s general applicability.