Project info
- Developer Leon Chan
- Showcase year 2023
- Programme Game Design and Production
Synopsis
This project uses a prototype fitness tracker made from an Arduino microcontroller to gather a player’s heart rate and allow them to use it as a currency to progress in a mobile game. The game is designed to encourage players to meet the NHS recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. This project takes gamification techniques (such as medals, collections, and leaderboards) from common exercise applications and wraps them into a utopia-themed game set on a spaceship. The objective of this game is to collect minerals, plants, and creatures, and exchange them for ship upgrades. The user will obtain points by having their heart rate in a fat-burning zone (about 60-70% of the user’s maximum heart rate) for periods of time.
Credits
'Motivating people to exercise with fitness tracking and games.' is a 2023 Digital Graduate Show project by Leon Chan, a Games Design and Production student at Abertay University.
Project Motivation
I've worked as a fitness professional for the past 4 years and learned a lot about people's needs, barriers, and limitations with exercise. Obesity and being overweight costs the NHS between £363-£600 million annually. Current methods to reduce the weight of the Scottish population have shown to have little effect on the overall overweight situation in Scotland and I believe with the right design, games can be a contributing factor to improving the health of people everywhere.
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