# A Wearable Sonification System to Improve Movement Awareness: A Feasibility Study
## 6 Discussion
### Limitation and Future Work  
This feasibility study provided valuable insights into integrating an IMU sensor with MATLAB and Max to deliver auditory feedback in a sonification application. The initial results are promising, showing that the auditory feedback system could inform participants of movements outside the reference regions. However, some limitations should be considered when interpreting these findings.  
Our current system setup relied on an ordinary laptop computer that served as the primary medium for processing the data collected by the IMU and subsequently delivering the auditory tones to the users. These tones were transmitted to the users through the same computer setup. It is acknowledged this method of data collection and feedback provision, while effective for the controlled conditions of our study, may present issues in terms of portability and convenience. The use of a more compact and user-friendly device, such as a smartphone, could significantly enhance the applicability and accessibility of this system and warrants further investigation.  
We did not conduct a comprehensive cost-analysis of the auditory feedback system; our 'low-cost' term referred to the cost-effectiveness attributed to the use of off-the-shelf sensors, open-source software (for data processing and auditory feedback delivery), and an ordinary laptop computer, which has a significantly lower price when compared to systems that involved high-end motion capture or camera systems. Therefore, our system should be viewed cautiously until a thorough cost assessment is conducted. We recommend that future iterations of this research include a complete cost analysis, considering the wearable design, the software development costs, maintenance, and any potential future updates.  
We tested the prototype with four participants, which limited the participant sample size. However, we believe that the consistency and control offered by this approach do not diminish the validity of our proof-of-concept. The findings of this study are intended as an initial exploration, and a larger and more diverse cohort would have enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the system's efficacy across different demographics and movement patterns. As such, the current results may not be generalizable to a wider population. Future research should aim to recruit a larger and varied sample to validate these findings and enhance the study's external validity.  
That said, the CAF system has shown promise in enabling participants to adjust their movements in relation to a reference region and the specific mechanisms by which the combination of continuous and discrete tones contributed to movement correction remain unquantified. Our reliance on an off-the-shelf IMU sensor does require further validation against established measurement tools to confirm the accuracy of the auditory feedback relative to actual movement. As such, in future work, measuring CoM movement on a force plate accompanied with time-synchronized video footage will be essential to understand the movement response to the auditory feedback.  
The reference regions were derived from preliminary data, which may not have captured the full range of movement dynamics. This could have affected the sensitivity and specificity of the auditory feedback, potentially leading to false positives or negatives in signaling movement outside these regions. Future studies should focus on refining the calculations for reference regions, possibly by incorporating machine learning algorithms that can adapt to a more comprehensive array of movement patterns.