THE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 

Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree 

MASTER OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 

on

Friday, May 1, 2026

10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EST 

West Architecture 155

Teams Link: Mingqi Wang Thesis Defense | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams

Meeting ID: 294 048 181 186 72

Passcode: WV6Mj2YH

Mingqi Wang

will present a thesis defense entitled, 

"Designing for Breathing-Stroke Coordination Awareness and Training in Front Crawl Swimming"

 Advisor: 

Dr. Yixiao Wang, Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design 

Committee:  

Dr. Eunsook Kwon, Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design 

Dr. Alexander T. Adams, Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing

Faculty and students are invited to attend this presentation. 

Abstract  

Breathing-stroke coordination in front crawl swimming is a skill most swimmers cannot directly perceive or correct in real time. Every breath requires precise lateral head rotation timed to body roll and the arm pull cycle, yet swimmers have no direct view of their own mechanics while in motion. Traditional coaching addresses this through delayed verbal feedback, and while commercial swimming technology has expanded, no existing product targets breathing-stroke coordination specifically.

This thesis investigates how technology can support swimmers' awareness of breathing-stroke coordination in front crawl, with a focus on recreational and developing swimmers. The research follows a two-phase design process. Phase 1 consisted of semi-structured interviews with 16 swimmers and coaches spanning beginner through elite levels, analyzed through thematic analysis to characterize how coordination is experienced across skill levels and to derive design guidelines. Phase 2 developed a virtual reality training prototype grounded in these guidelines, presenting synchronized hand trajectory visualizations and spatial audio cues to make the timing relationship between stroke mechanics and breathing windows explicitly visible. A feasibility pilot study with seven amateur swimmers was conducted to explore the prototype's usability and its potential as a coordination training tool.