Carleton Comps Project:

Gamify your health! (2 groups)

Advisor: Amy Csizmar Dalal

Background

With the ubiquitousness of smartphones, Fitbits, GPS watches, etc, we now generate a ton of data about our physical state and physical health. We can track the number of steps we've taken per day, how much elevation we've climbed during our recent run or hike, how many calories were in that double bacon cheeseburger we ate last night, how much and how well we've slept, and so on. Yet we've only really begun to scratch the surface of what this data can tell us.

Up until now, we've largely left the analysis and presentation of this data to specific apps (RunKeeper, Fooducate, CalorieTracker, Cardiograph) or to the device companies. GlucoseBuddy is an example of an app that's an exception---it integrates information about your blood glucose level with information you enter in CalorieTrack about your diet and exercise habits.

What if we could integrate the data from some of these apps and/or devices? What patterns, trends, and information about our health and lifestyle habits might we learn as a result? More specifically, what if we could use all of this aggregated information to not just show us the current state of our health, but to gamify our health? Instead of using all of this data to nag us to eat healthier or to get more sleep, what if we had a game that presented do-able challenges based on our current health status, and that detected and rewarded us for healthy behavior? This will be the focus of this Comps project.

The project

The goal of this project is to develop a game whose purpose is to help the player improve his or her overall health. The game will utilize and aggregate data collected from one or more devices (iPhone, Fitbit, Nike +, GPS, etc) to design healthy living challenges for the player. These challenges will be based on current health/lifestyle data, collected by various devices, as well a player's specific goals.

The data will be collected from one or more mobile devices (iPhone, Fitbit, etc). The game will either be a mobile-based game or a mobile-friendly web-based game---each group will get to decide which option to pursue.

Note that there will be two groups working on this project. Each group will work independently to design their own game and decide on their own set of data to use. Of course, the groups are welcome to consult with each other and/or jointly develop frameworks that will be useful to both games, if they so choose.

Roughly, here's what the project will entail:

Identifying what type of game you'd like to develop: platform, purpose, etc.
Identifying the audience for the game, and determining what goals they might have for such a game.
Identifying appropriate data to collect, and finding or developing APIs for this data.
Sketching/storyboarding game play.
Designing a data collection and aggregation system.
Determining how you will present and visualize the data.
Defining appropriate challenges/levels for the game, and implementing them.
Determining how the game will detect when challenges are met.
Designing an appropriate user interface.
Consulting with your audience throughout the project, and doing user testing during each phase.

References/inspiration

One of your first tasks on this project will be to identify appropriate sources and resources to guide the development and design of the game. Your search will include the following areas/fields:

Game design theory
Human-computer interaction
Data mining
Data visualization

Some of my sources of inspiration when putting this project together, in addition to the apps mentioned above:

Final Results - Fit Frontier

Final Results - Salubrity

Gamify your health! (2 groups)

Advisor: Amy Csizmar Dalal

Background

The project

References/inspiration