The Quest for the Perfect ExerGame

I was at the seminar today focusing on embodied interaction and computational thinking. It was very much proof of concept research and in many ways the embodied interaction part was a way of trying to make learning about computing principles fun for children.

The prototype system basically consisted of a set of wearable 2D barcodes positioned at various sites on the body, a webcam and a wiimote. This allowed the user to interact with the interface on the screen and move around and have this captured by the system. The basic concept was that of a “magic mirror” where the user is “dressed up” on screen and can act out a story.

It looked great fun and just shows what you can do with a few cheap components. Not only was the talk interesting, it stimulated some lively discussion. I had already been thinking about the continuum between “embodied technology” and “a technologized body” but another dimension emerged, that is the balance between real and virtual objects. More specifically, I could imagine an “ExerGame” that involved more that just an exercise interface, but rather a mixture of real and virtual objects that needs physical effort to manipulate them in order to play the game.

Here is a cut down flash version of the slides from my presentation at Games for Health 2008 entitled “Go for the Burn – Designing Body-Movement Controlled Video Games to Maximize Energy Expenditure”.

Link to Slides.