Going for the prize of most cryptic post title ever. Give you a clue, “EX” as in EXercise. If you are reading this blog, and looking for, or into, ways to make exercise a fun and engaging experience then you might just have done some UXD! Still confused? Well the inspiration for this post was a profile of a really cool sounding job – wait for it – a “User eXperience researcher/Designer”. At last there are people out there whose job it is to make technology fit round people and not the other away around!!!
So, if you are interested in or in the business of helping people have a really great experience when they are physically active, then whether you realized it or not, looks like you too have been doing some EX-UX Design. Which now leads me nicely onto ExerGaming. It got me thinking as to whether or not “good” ExerGames are EX-UXD’d? Is ExerGaming about designing exercise to fit around people rather than try to get people to do things that don’t appeal to them and are just not a good experience.
If you go down to the shopping mall today you might be in for a big surprise! How about a few steps of Machine Dance (Dance Dance Revolution) between purchases? Well coming to a shopping centre near you (in Scotland) is a roadshow for the latest health promotion campaign being run by the Scottish health promotion agency.
A sustainable business model for ExerGaming is a hot topic at the moment. It has been occupying my thoughts for some time and I had a particularly insightful conversation around this topic today. However, I must first point out in choosing a title for this post, it is not my intention to belittle or trivialize campaigns to combat poverty in the world which are just as much my problem as anybody else’s. Rather, it is the focus of this blog is on ExerGaming and seeking to maximize the potential health benefits. Second, the calculations that the title is based on a very rough and in order to maximize the impact, a dollar rather than a pound (sterling) was adopted as a currency that is easy to relate to.
Okay, first the competition. A round figure for a cost of a video game is $30 and on average will hold interest for 30 days. So you can have an engaging interactive experience for $1 per day.
In terms of promoting a physically active lifestyle, the current target is one hour per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year. Do some rough calculations, it seems that a Dollar a Day for every man, women and child might just be enough to provide enough facilities and opportunities for the whole population to be physically active. A dollar a day doesn’t seem much and would be small price to pay in terms of the savings on future health care costs.
The problem comes when you start to multiply up the number. For a school say of 500 pupils, over a school year of 200 days that amounts to $100,000 per school. Now some of that money will already be invested in physical infrastructure and facilities, but where is the rest of the money going to come from? Our own pockets? One less soda?
The count-down to the start of term has been occupying a lot of my time recently. However, in preparing my presentation for the Interactive Fitness and ExerGame Network seminar at Leisure Industry Week 2009 in Birmingham, UK, I realized that there were less than 100 days to go till the year 2010! I then began to reflect on how far things had progressed in the first decade of the 21st century.
Many things that last century were science fiction had now become reality. Yet, perhaps more compelling was the view that most of our thinking on health, exercise, physical activity and sport was still rooted in the last century. I chose for the title of my presentation “Gaming4 Life: Eat Longer, Move Well & Live More” as a play on words of the recent health promotion campaign in the UK called “Change for Life“.
The presentation takes a critical look at the context of physical activity in sport in the digital games eras and develops a new way of thinking about the role of games and game play in promoting well-being and health.
I had scanned the program for the Edinburgh Festival back at the beginning of August and payed particular attention to the Physical Theatre section to see if there was anything creative to inspire me. A show called ManoLibera presented by ScarlattineTeatro of Italy caught my attention as it invited you to:
Enter the world of the comic book where the actors interact with the characters and become part of the story. Share the joy and fascination of letting your imagination go in this funny, original and highly visual show.
I finally managed to find time to take in the show a couple of days ago due to its afternoon time slot. It was a very enjoyable and immersive experience in a surprisingly low tech (analogue) way comprising little more than an over-head project (OHP), some pre-prepared cartoon scenes and pre-recorded sounds. These were supplemented by skillful life cartoon sketching and some wonderfully evocative sounds being spurted into a microphone. The projected images then provided the cartoon world for the on-stage actors to move and interact in and allow the show to unfold in a most entertaining and visually comical way.
To me the cartoon action resembled Belleville Rendez-vous, the music was distinctly Hot House Jazz and the visual humor very much in the spirit of Jacques Tati. The limited dialogue was in english when it was central to the understanding of the plot. Otherwise it was a lyrical mix of french and italian which I just about managed to keep up however this was not vital as the animated speech tones conveyed as much meaning as the words themselves.
Fortunately I do not have to struggle much more to try and explain this wonderful hour of analogue interactivity, as thanks to the wonders of digital technology, you see a brief clip for yourself. However I would add to this the creative use of colored sheets of plastic, coffee grinds, a few physical props and even a split-screen at one point.
Now that everything is digital, over-head projectors (OHPs) have to me become a relic of 20th century (analogue) education. However whilst ManoLibera took a tiny step back in terms of the technology the show utilizes, it was two giant steps forward for immersive interactivity. I for one am looking forward to the day when such a sublime experience can be created and extended in the digital realm.
So to sum it up it was an highly entertaining and engaging experience which literally unfolded in front of the audience and drew you into the cartoon world that the actors were playing in. It was a magical experience that people of all ages would enjoy. Bella! Bella! C’est magnifique!
This was the title of an interactive session that I put on the final afternoon of the ISAGA 2009 conference. I took inspiration from things that I had seen and heard over the course of the week in Singapore. I adopted the Triadic Game Design methodology whereby the three components Reality, Meaning and Play are all incorporated into a Rapid Prototyping process after having attended a workshop on it earlier in the week (more Triadic design to follow). I also incorporated a number of pertinent local issues in Singapore including traffic jams and the need to conserve water. I have reproduced the abstract for the session here in order to give an overview of the background to the session. Two of the prototype games that were developed in the session will be described in a second post.
Computer games are a very popular form of entertainment that offer engaging interactive experiences via a highly expressive and potentially persuasive medium. Video game platforms have now evolved from traditional games consoles and personal computers to encompass a wide variety of different experiences on handheld devices including mobile phones. For many people their mobile phone is a constant companion which provides their access point to the digital world through which they experience an ever increasing amount of their daily lives. Furthermore, mobile phones now offer a ubiquitous computing platform which can utilize a variety of different types of sensors and forms of input to capture and provide situational and contextual data and information. As a consequence new forms of mobile games that take advantage of these functions have recently begun to emerge. In addition, mobile access to social media tools and services also provide several different forms of non-traditional game play including various forms of collecting and ranking via number of views or ratings. Given the engaging and interactive nature of game play, it is therefore proposed that the scope of mobile gaming should be widened to incorporate game play scenarios directly into users’ daily lives and activities under the heading of so called “Persuasive Technology”. It is therefore possible that this could provide a novel way to address some of the major social, health and environmental problems currently facing the world by utilizing game play mechanics to both increase situational awareness and help to facilitate positive behavioral change. This interactive workshop will start with briefly describing a range of software games and utilities that run on mobile devices that facilitate personal data collection and raise awareness and also some non-traditional forms of social media game play. Participants will then be asked to contribute further examples of both actual and conceptual games, utilities and services. Drawing on this pool of examples, participants will then be divided in groups and challenged with the task of coming up with ways in which they could utilize the functionality offered by the examples to develop mobile game-based approaches designed to address a specific social, health or environmental problem present in the world today.
Pixel art is all around us. How about doing some digital doodling where you have to physically move around to create the doodle? The DigiGripper is a interactive pixel wall which you can physically interactive with to create art. Is this a new genre?
Physical exertion to me is almost as natural to me as breathing, but I had always wondered what it feels like to have an aversion to exercise. Well for the past four days anything more than the slightest exertion outside results in profuse perspiration. Walking up steps becomes a real chore as your try to lift your legs against the force of your trousers sticking to your skin.
Having adopted a rather slothful attitude (minus the fur and hanging up-side-down) exertion avoidance was very much becoming the norm. Given the time difference (-7 hours), I haven’t been sleeping all that well and awoke at 5 am this morning and was rather restless. Fortunately it was still dark so I put on my running gear and headed out into the dark with only crickets for company.
I decided a lap of the National University of Singapore was in order. However the heat wasn’t my only problem. I had carefully placed the campus map I had in a plastic pocket in order to prevent it from turning to mush. Due to the fact that the roads on the map where effectively shown in white, the map was in fact of questionable value. I would hate to play an ExerGame designed by a cartographer with such a sadistic streak.
Given that I have managed to write this post, you will be glad to know I made it back without getting lost. I even had a momentary urge to take a detour to run to the top of a small hill. At one point there was a slight breeze as I could here it whistling past my ears, but rather bizarrely I couldn’t feel any cooling effect on my face.
Edutainment is the term commonly used in Asia to refer to interactive forms of cultural activities with an element of education. Think interactive of interactive museums and having fun (and in my case being a kid again!). I couldn’t therefore be in Singapore without taking a visit to
Singapore’s leading ‘edutainment’ attraction that offers engaging exhibits for everybody
It was great fun and an opportunity to explore using interactive media both Singapore’s relatively short history and also engage in simulation-type activities to explore plans for Singapore’s future. I even managed to fit in some traditional dancing by means of an interactive virtual dance tutor!
There are so many things to talk about, but as a little taster, I was particular taken by a table top maze game that required teamwork between three players to tilt the not inconsiderable mass of the table in order to move a ball in the virtual maze that was projected onto the surface.
Having been in Singapore for couple of days now you would have thought I would have got the hang of the light rail (MRT) system. Owing to a small but significant navigational error on my part I got off downtown one stop earlier than I had planned. I emerged above ground to be greeted by a “new” river! Where did that come from? It is not on the map that I have! Can’t be very good map this!
As I scanned the terrain, I noticed a bridge that we had crossed the day before (albeit in daylight) whilst been taken on a guided tour by a colleague. It then began to dawn on me that the reality I had constructed was at odds with the ground/river in front of me. Contemplating the alternate reality that I was in fact was not where I had planned to be and that the reason was that I didn’t get off that the stop that I thought I did.
I could see the towers of Suntec City in the distance and thought for a moment about striking out cross-country so to speak. However, despite being dark, it just wasn’t getting any cooler, so I quickly dropped that idea. It was therefore serendipitous that I was able to take in the last night of the Singapore River Festival. The place was buzzing with street performances and people walking everywhere and enjoying the spectacle. Everywhere was lit up along the riverside and there were junks (boats) with colored lights on the too. The water taxis where zipping around all over the place (free rides).
It was a bit of a photography fest with every available vantage point occupied by at least one serious snapper. In the absence of a tripod I had to improvise with street furniture in order to avoid camera shake on long exposures.
