Doing even simplest forms of exercise like walking is already an effort people in so called highly developed countries have to be motivated to do.

Many spend time in offices and in front of TV or computer in the evenings, make hardly a mile a day.

Stefan Zwegers has a innovative, motivational proposal in from of his wearable electronic concept which is currently exhibited at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

His project called ‘Walk!‘ consists of two concepts which he did for the Adidas Innovation Team and some coaching by his professors Stephan Wensveen and Michel Peeters from the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Walk! is a shirt developed for women who want an active lifestyle. In the morning a pedometer module is attached to the shirt, which registers the amount of steps that are taken during the day.

The interesting twist: the shirt has circles printed with thermochromic ink which  changes color in sync with changes in temperature.

The change of temperature, triggered by the mileage of the pedometer, draws a line between two circles. The more steps are taken, the more circles will be connected. The wearer has a visual indication of the amount of steps taken just by looking at the shirt.

The second concept uses lighting to provide the feedback. More steps equals more lit flowers.

Stefan build into his motivational fitness shirt the option to turn off the visual indication to avoid being embarrassed when everyone around you would see how lazy you have been again today.

Watch the video below to see the visual effect of the Walk! shirt:

I love this idea, can’t wait until Adidas will bring this to the market – also for men.

The Vital Jacket® is an intelligent wearable garment that is able to continuously monitor electrocardiogram (ECG) wave and Heart Rate as used in medical environment, high performance sports and fitness.

The company behind this futuristic Jacket/Shirt is Biodevices, S.A., a spin-off from IEETA (Institute of Electronics and Telematics Engineering of Aveiro / University of Aveiro, Portugal) with the mission of developing and commercializing biomedical solutions for diagnosis and monitoring support.

The Vital Jacket® is a wearable vital signs monitoring system that joins textiles with microelectronics. It was designed and developed to be a usable pragmatic approach for different clinical and normal life scenarios, in hospitals, home or on the move, that need continuous or frequent high quality vital signs monitoring.

The benefit of Bio-monitoring clothing is obvious: more freedom of movement and independence from stationary treatment for patients or elderly who need special care and quality data collection in high performance sport as well as for fitness enthusiasts.

There are currently two versions available, the HWM100 that stores data on a SD memory card for post-analysis on a PC. This version allows long term monitoring. Users can define heart rate limits and will be alerted through a vibration alarm embedded in the T-Shirt.

The second version is the HWM200 that allows realtime visualization where data is sent via Bluetooth to a PDA or smart phone.

Both VitalJacket versions are ready for pre-order at a price of €399.- / $635.44 (excluding PDA) on VitalJacket’s Website. Shipment is indicated as begin of 2008 so it should be very soon.