Gamification For Health

Talk a bite out of the college 15

Brief Instruction

Project:
This is my second year graduate thesis capstone project. I decided to design a
Healthy food and exercise tracker/reward system for college students.

Problems:
The term “Freshman 15” is commonly used in the United States and
Canada that refers to an amount of weight gained (pounds) during a student’s first year at college.
I want to find out how culture and social lives affect their daily activities and exercise.

The first year at school is always fun, but can also be very stressful.  
Students have little time to exercise, yet they engage in a lot of activities like
drinking alcohol, consuming junk food, like burgers, pizzas etc. 
which can cause weight gain and lead to an unhealthy lifestyle. 

My solution:
The objective is to motivate college students to exercise by making the process
wholesome and fun rather than having it seem tedious and a challenge.
A few contributing reasons to why students do not take exercise
seriously include: unattainable goals, complex gadgets or machines,
and insignificant data. All of these factors culminate in an individual to lose motivation.

The objective was to come up with a solution to counter the issue.
My product uses 'gamification theory' to urge college students to participate in exercise. 
I have designed a virtual reality device and an reward system to help students create a new
experience around exercising that will make the whole process more fun and anxiety free. 

User Research and Brainstorm

I'm a Master's student in science of design, and I describe myself as a research data and analysis driven designer.

First, I like conducting  research to know some facts before implementing decisions contributing to design directions. By analysing the problems based on cultural background, I then come up with the 'target users' and 'potential solutions'.

• How I do this?

First I like converting my thoughts into writing. To do that I gist all my ideas and inspiration (however minute it can be) on a piece of paper and try analyzing every related aspect. Secondly I try organizing the information I collected to make sense of facts.

The figure associated highlights how I like to go about research. This paper note helps me to conceptualize information
and shows me the way of how I am thinking and how I can organize information and do research.

Currently, I am working on the reward system that can get campus retail dealers,
college meal unions, restaurants, even vending machines, and the gym involved.
I'm also designing a digital device and system for college freshman.
It’s an attachable device that students can wear, like an Apple or Android watch.

Survey and Analysis

I interviewed 50 college students from Arizona State University. You can find my Google Form Survey here.

Here are some of the results from the survey:

Based on my interview and online survey, I typed all information on a computer and did a keywords search. 
Here is a review based on the gathered results.

To view all results click here. 

After surveying and interviewing several freshmen, I found out a lot of useful information! Most of my initial assumptions were reassured and I also discovered new ideas and problems from their feedback. 

Defining the User

For the next step, I had to figure out who I was designing for that is my target user and how they are going to use this product.
In this section I came up with a storyboard and personas.
In order to understand why and how they would be using this and how they exercise in daily life, based on the survey, I created a storyboard.

Below are two personas that I've created, Hern Weendy and Z. Lee.
I designed some scenarios for each of them and created personas for both as well.
Based on the survey questions, a persona can clearly reflect on the current problems and how I can go about solving them.

Ideation and Brainstorming

Research question:

1) How does gamification affect human health/reduce obesity?

2) What is the relationship between physical activity and gamification?

3) Why and how gamification can adjust people’s behavior among different age groups and genders?

I used gamification techniques to apply to my project. 'Gamification' is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts,to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals[1]. Once I got to know these techniques, I came up with the general research questions. It was time to start narrowing down to one perspective of design.

(1) (Huotari, K., & Hamari, J. (2012). "Defining Gamification - A Service Marketing Perspective" (PDF). Proceedings of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference 2012, Tampere, Finland, October 3–5. )

Research Framework

One ideation method I like to use is 'research framework', here is the visual map of it. I love using this method to gather my ideas and analyze design methodology.

Sketch