Health and Fitness Gaming
In most industrialized countries, a large percentage of adults is obese or overweight because they are physically inactive. This leads to problems, such as decreasing the life quality of individuals and increasing health care costs, especially in North America. The millennial technology-centered lifestyle has brought about unhealthy habits, such as eating more processed food and less physical activity at home. Video games have risen in popularity over the past decades and some have blamed increased game playing habits for an unhealthy lifestyle change. This project investigates whether it is possible to motivate people for a healthy lifestyle and for maintaining increased physical activity by using video games. We are especially interested in exploring game design elements and psychological reward balancing that leads to increased exercise motivation and maintaining healthy eating habits. We are using physiological measures and behaviour tracking to analyse and study habit formation in physically interactive gaming environments.
People
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Publications
Motivational Affordances for Older Adults’ Physical Activity Technology: An Expert Evaluation
Dennis Kappen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke. 2019. Motivational Affordances for Older Adults’ Physical Activity Technology: An Expert Evaluation. In Human-Computer Interaction. Perspectives on Design. Proceedings of HCI International 2019. LNCS 11566. Springer.
Gamification of Older Adults’ Physical Activity: An Eight-Week Study
Dennis Kappen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke. 2018. Gamification of Older Adults’ Physical Activity: An Eight-Week Study. In Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). IEEE, 1207-1216. Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/50036
Adaptive engagement of older adults’ fitness through gamification
Dennis Kappen. 2017. Adaptive engagement of older adults’ fitness through gamification. Oshawa, ON, Canada. University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10155/881
Exploring the Potential of Game Audio for Wellbeing
Katja Rogers and Lennart Nacke. 2017. Exploring the Potential of Game Audio for Wellbeing. In Positive Gaming: Workshop on Gamification and Games for Wellbeing. Amsterdam, Netherlands. CEUR-WS.org. Online: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2055/paper8.pdf
Gamification through the Application of Motivational Affordances for Physical Activity Technology
Dennis Kappen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke. 2017. Gamification through the Application of Motivational Affordances for Physical Activity Technology. In Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY '17. Amsterdam, Netherlands. ACM. doi:10.1145/3116595.3116604
Positive Gaming: Workshop on Gamification and Games for Wellbeing
Gustavo Fortes Tondello, Rita Orji, Kellie Vella, Daniel Johnson, Marierose van Dooren, and Lennart Nacke. 2017. Positive Gaming: Workshop on Gamification and Games for Wellbeing. In Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play - CHI PLAY '17 Extended Abstracts. Amsterdam, Netherlands. ACM. doi:10.1145/3130859.3131442
Towards Personality-driven Persuasive Health Games and Gamified Systems
Rita Orji, Lennart Nacke, and Chrysanne Di Marco. 2017. Towards Personality-driven Persuasive Health Games and Gamified Systems. In Proceeding of the 2017 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI 2017. Denver, CO, USA. ACM, 1015-1027. doi:10.1145/3025453.3025577
Using technology to boost employee wellbeing? How gamification can help or hinder results
Ekaterina Pogrebtsova, Gustavo Fortes Tondello, Hardy Premsukh, and Lennart Nacke. 2017. Using technology to boost employee wellbeing? How gamification can help or hinder results. In Positive Gaming: Workshop on Gamification and Games for Wellbeing. Amsterdam, Netherlands. CEUR-WS.org. Online: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2055/paper5.pdf
ABOVE WATER: An Educational Game for Anxiety
Rina Wehbe, Diane Watson, Gustavo Fortes Tondello, Marim Ganaba, Melissa Stocco, Alvin Lee, and Lennart Nacke. 2016. ABOVE WATER: An Educational Game for Anxiety. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Extended Abstracts - CHI PLAY EA '16. Austin, TX, USA. ACM. doi:10.1145/2968120.2971804
ABOVE WATER: Extending the Play Space for Health
Rina Wehbe, Diane Watson, Gustavo Fortes Tondello, and Lennart Nacke. 2016. ABOVE WATER: Extending the Play Space for Health. In Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces - ISS '16. Niagara Falls, ON, Canada. ACM. doi:10.1145/2992154.2996882
Design Strategies for Gamified Physical Activity Applications for Older Adults
Dennis Kappen, Lennart Nacke, Kathrin Gerling, and Lia Tsotos. 2016. Design Strategies for Gamified Physical Activity Applications for Older Adults. In Proceedings of the 49th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE, 1309-1318. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2016.166
Adaptive Engagement of Older Adults’ Fitness through Gamification
Dennis Kappen. 2015. Adaptive Engagement of Older Adults’ Fitness through Gamification. In Proceedings of CHI PLAY 2015. London, United Kingdom. ACM. doi:10.1145/2793107.2810276
Towards a Personalized Playful Digital Wellness Assistant
Gustavo Fortes Tondello, Rina Wehbe, and Lennart Nacke. 2015. Towards a Personalized Playful Digital Wellness Assistant. In Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gamified Interactions. London, UK. ACM.
Social Player Analytics in a Facebook Health Game
Lennart Nacke, Matthias Klauser, and Paul Prescod. 2014. Social Player Analytics in a Facebook Health Game. In Proceedings of HCI Korea 2014. Seoul, Republic of Korea. Hanbit Media, Inc., 180-187.