Study information, data protection information and

statement of agreement
1) General information

The following study is a part of the research work within the master's thesis “Investigating
Game Elements in a Virtual Reality High-Intensity Circuit Training Exergame” at Saarland
University, Department of Computer Science.

Study: “Investigating Game Elements in a Virtual Reality High-Intensity Circuit Training Exergame”

Purpose of the study:

There are many non interactive apps for home workouts. Our goal was to create an interactive
home workout inside Virtual Reality. The developed exercise application features a High-Intensity
Circuit Training with gamified Elements. The purpose of the study is to conduct a test of the
developed system, to compare the effects of different game features.

Form of participation:
In this experiment, you will experience a workout in Virtual Reality. For the study you will
train for 2 rounds with 5 exercises each.

Procedure:

The experiment takes about 20 minutes. For the experiment you need a computer and a VR
Headset with 2 motion controllers. During the experiment the computer must be connected to the
internet.

For this experiment it is recommended to have room scale tracking. During the experiment you
should stay near the green arrow on the ground. Depending on your setup the default orientation
of the world may not be optimal. On the right controller is a marked orientation button. Press it to
reorient the scene to your current view direction.

Furthermore, it is necessary to listen to the sound effects which assist during training.

The experiment will begin with calibration by following the information on the floating Billboard.
This step is necessary so that the system can better track your progress during exercising.

After this step you need to complete a questionnaire to determine basic demographic data and
your Player Type. You can interact with the questionnaire by pointing the right controller on the
panel and pressing the trigger button.

You may need to place various objects in the world to customize your scene. With the right
controller you need to point at the ground and then you can place objects with the trigger buttons.
By pressing the left/right buttons on the controller, you can switch the object. (HTC Vive: Touchpad
Left/Right, Oculus: Joystick Left/Right)
The experiment will proceed with a tutorial round, where you get familiar with the exercises. During
the process follow the instructions on the info panel and complete 2 repetitions for each exercise
to continue.

Finally the training will begin and you can train the before experienced exercises for 2 rounds. You
have 60 seconds for each exercise and you see how many repetitions you currently have. When
staying inactive for a time the timer will be highlighted red and soon after the training will continue.
So you don’t need to train for the whole 60 seconds if not wanted. After each exercise there will be
a short pause.

Finally after completing the 2 rounds of exercising the final questionnaires will measure your
perceived level of physical exhaustion and your player experience. Subsequently you can train for
another round or finish the experiment.

The system stores your completion status so if wanted you can train again with the system on
another day. Since the game stores that you have completed the study you will not need to
complete the questionnaires again for subsequent training.

Uses and risks of participation:

Your participation will help to evaluate our developed exergame.

A very small percentage of individuals may experience epileptic seizures when exposed to
certain light patterns or flashing lights. Exposure to certain patterns or backgrounds on a
computer screen, or while playing video games, may induce an epileptic seizure in these
individuals. Certain conditions may induce previously undetected epileptic symptoms even in
persons who have no history of prior seizures or epilepsy. If you, or anyone in your family, have
an epileptic condition, do not participate in this study.

If you experience any of the following symptoms while playing a video or computer game
-dizziness, altered vision, eye or muscle twitches, loss of awareness, disorientation, any
involuntary movement, or convulsions - IMMEDIATELY discontinue use and consult your
physician.

Furthermore you should assure that you have enough free space in your tracking setup for the
exercises. The boundary provided by the VR systems should be correctly calibrated to see your
available space.

Your participation in this study is not expected to carry any other significant risks beyond those
mentioned above.
2) Voluntary participation and freely given consent

Participation in the study is voluntary. Consent to participate in this study can be revoked at any
time and without giving reasons until the end of the data collection by pressing the escape key on
the keyboard and confirming with the appearing prompt. After the end of data collection, the legal
rights of revocation, disclosure, rectification, blocking and erasure of anonymous data, as
described in Section 3, can no longer be applied because the data can no longer be assigned to a
concerned person.

3) What data do we collect and process?

Once you have consented to the collection of data, the following data will be collected and
processed in an exclusively anonymous form (as described in Section 5):

● Demographic data (age, gender)

● Answers to the survey questions
● Logs of game interactions.
● Manufacturer and Name of your Virtual Reality Headset
● Demographic data about your system
● Used Operating System
● Used Processor and Processor frequency
● Installed Memory Size
● Used Graphics Card and Graphics Memory Size
● Average Frame Rate

To send the collected data to our database, your computer needs to establish a temporary network
connection to our web space provider. During this process, so called server log files, will be
created. These log files contain:

● date and time of your visit

● your Internet Protocol (IP) address

This data will never be merged with the survey data. To exclude multiple participations we will store
a unique identifier on your computer. This identifier does not harm your system and can be
removed after the study.

4) Anonymization of the data

The data mentioned in Section 3 will be made anonymous, making it impossible to assign the
collected data to a person. At the beginning of the study our application will get a randomly
generated ID from our server. This ID will be stored on your machine and will be used
automatically. As all sent data will contain this unique ID, for a short time during the study session,
it will be possible to link survey answers back to your current IP Address. To provide
confidentiality, the IP Address will never be stored with the survey data. Therefore, after the end of
the experiment, it will be impossible to link the log data to a specific person.

5) What do we use the collected data for?

The results and collected data can be processed and published in anonymous form in this
master’s thesis and used for other research purposes (e.g., scientific papers, talks, videos) at the
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the University of Saarland (UDS).

6) Raffle

For your participation you can take part in a raffle of an Amazon voucher in the amount of 50
euros.

You can participate if you are at least 18 years old.

The competition starts on 8st March 2021 and ends on 30th April 2021.

At the end of the study, you will be asked to take off the VR headset and to look on your
computer screen for information on how to participate. It will be required to send an e-mail to the
address provided at the end of the study, if you want to participate in the raffle. The winners will
be drawn at random from the e-mail address you have voluntarily provided.

Your e-mail address will be stored independently from the collected study data and cannot be
merged. The e-mail address will be deleted as soon as the competition ends. However, you can
request the deletion of your e-mail address at any time.

The Amazon voucher will be sent to you by e-mail after the end of the competition in a currency
of your choice supported by Amazon. Participation in the raffle does not guarantee a price.

7) Contacts

If you have any questions that are not answered by this privacy policy or if you would like further
information on data protection, please contact us: felix.kosmalla@dfki.de

8) Right of appeal

The study is conducted in Germany and in accordance with German law. You have the right of
appeal to a supervisory authority if you believe that the processing of your personal data violates
legal data protection regulations.
● I have read and understood the information on data protection and participation information
and I agree that my data may be used for research purposes as described above.
● I have understood the form and purpose of my participation in this project.
● I have been provided with answers to all my questions about the study.
● I voluntarily agree to participate in this study.

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Date, signature of the participant