Design for Sport

Design for Sport shows how socially responsible design can contribute to make sport practice widespread in the general population including disadvantaged and hard-to-reach groups, and those that have been traditionally excluded such as the elderly, disabled people, those living in deprived areas and from lower socioeconomic strata plus certain minority ethnic and religious groups. Contributions from around the world provide compelling case studies and an international perspective. While the main benefit from expanding sports practice in developed societies would be reduction of chronic disease rates and social inclusion, in the developing world where political instability and conflict are more common, the authors look at how sport can have other functions, such as a means of post-disaster relief. They discuss how Participatory Design (PD) techniques and appropriate ethnographies can be implemented in order to better understand users' needs and requirements as in the case of Paralympic sport where the increased sophistication of equipment used has evolved to meet the demands of the athletes. Reflecting the multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary nature of design for sport, the book also features case studies that look at environmental design to improve sport accessibility, social wellbeing, economic development and environmental sustainability.

Dr Anxo Cereijo Roibás is User Experience Research consultant. He was UX Research Manager at Vodafone Group and Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, Visiting Lecturer at Westminster University, at the Politecnico di Milano and the National Institute of Design (India). His expertise resides in the user experience in pervasive communication systems. Dr Emmanuel Stamatakis is a Senior Research Associate at University College London. He has a background of Exercise and Health, Physical Activity Epidemiology and Sport Science. He has been a consultant for Sport England, The English Department of Health, the National Obesity Observatory and a member in a number of government-coordinated boards on sports and physical activity policy. Ken Black is an independent advisor on inclusive physical activity and disability sport following a lifetime working in the field. He has developed numerous educational resource and workshop materials on inclusive physical activity, including the TOP Sportsability and Elements programmes for the Youth Sport Trust (UK) and the Sportsability and Pacific Sport Ability programmes for the Australian Sports Commission.

Contents: Foreword; Part I Introduction, History and Future: Introduction: the case for socially responsible design for sports, Anxo Roibás, Emmanuel Stamatakis and Ken Black; Artificially natural: a brief history of modern sport, Malcolm MacLean; Interaction design in sports, Florian 'Floyd' Mueller and Stefan Agamanolis. Part II Better Places and Spaces: It's all about the process! Sustainable sports site planning in regions of transition, Jens Koberstein and Alexander Bergmann; Case study 3.1: Activemobs, Antonia Ward; Sport and the city: the role of sport and recreation in planning and urban design, Katharine A. Martindale. Part III Accessibility and Inclusivity: Equipment design in inclusive physical activity and disability sport, George Torrens and Ken Black; Case study 5.1: accessibility for visitors to sporting events: how technology can help, John Gill; Case study 5.2: the inclusive fitness initiative, Dawn Hughes and Ken Black; Designing inclusive physical activities and games, Ken Black and Doug Williamson; Case study 6.1 participatory design: describing an undergraduate interactive inclusive design project, George Torrens and Ken Black. Part IV Research for Sport Design: Ethnography in support of capturing the user experience in sport practice, Robert Sands; Case study 7.1: designing a personal rite of passage as a pathway to healthful fitness; an ethnographic case study and the case for ethnography, Inga Treitler; Sports' biomechanical data capture and analysis, James Shippen; Case studies for Chapter 8. Part V Policy and Design for Sport: The sporting legacy of the Olympic games and major sporting events: reality reconsidered, Gary Armstrong, Emmanuel Stamatakis and Natalie Campbell; Building bridges: programme design for sport in post-disaster intervention, Katrin Koenen; Case study 10.1: the international platform on sport and development: an information portal and online community for the field of sport and development, Usha Selvaraju; Case study 10.2: Kgatelopele: creating a safe space for girls through sport in rural Botswana, Sara Nicholls and Seodhna Keown; Case study 10.3: football policy and paranoia in 'post conflict' Liberia, West Africa, Gary Armstrong and James Rosbrook-Thompson; Design for living? Sporting policy and the United Nations, Gary Armstrong and Holly Collison; Case study 11.1: meeting the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals: the contribution of women and girls through the United Nations volunteers programme, Alex Dupont; Part VI Conclusions: Epilogue; Index.