Motivating Physical Activity in Children Through Computer Games
Stimulating physical activity through a novel game approach.
Applying the novel physical activity motivating approach to Neverball
Researchers from the Tailored Lifestyle Information project have developed physical activity motivating games. The players' engagement with the game is used to motivate them to get active. The idea was applied to an open source game Neverball, where players have a certain amount of time to guide a ball through a maze. The time was shortened and every player's jump captured by an accelerometer gained them extra time. Activity motivating games were evaluated on 180 primary school children in Hobart. The evaluation found that those playing the activity motivating Neverball performed an average of 257 jumps in the 20 minutes they spent playing the game, while they liked it as much as those playing the standard Neverball.
Read more about our use of wireless sensor networks for about Tailored Lifestyle Information.
This development was captured in a patent:
Shlomo Berkovsky, Dipak Bhandari and Stephen Giugni, "A gaming method and apparatus for motivating physical activity", Australian application number 2009210414", 2009. Application for full Australian patent has been filed.
Two papers presenting the physical activity motivating games have recently been accepted to the International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2010) and International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI, 2010).
Shlomo Berkovsky1, Mac Coombe1*, Jill Freyne1, Dipak Bhandari1 and Nilufar Baghaei1, "Physical Activity Motivating Games: Virtual Rewards for Real Activity", International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems", 2010. Atlanta, USA.
1Tasmanian ICT Centre, CSIRO, Hobart, Tasmania
*Vacation Student from University of Tasmania
and
Shlomo Berkovsky1, Mac Coombe1*, and Richard Helmer2, "Activity Interface for Physical Activity Motivating Games", International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, 2010, Hong Kong, China.
1Tasmanian ICT Centre, CSIRO, Hobart, Tasmania
*Vacation Student from University of Tasmania
2CSIRO Materials and Science Engineering, Geelong, VIC, Australia
