Walking and Talking: Using persuasive game elements to increase physical activity

Walking and Talking: Using persuasive game elements to increase physical activity

Bos, J.W.

Visch, V.T. (mentor)
Mulder, I.J. (mentor)
Prins, R.G. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2013-03-04

Physical activity (PA) benefits a healthy condition. On the broader canvas public health benefits from promoting a healthy lifestyle, which includes sufficient PA. Apart from the lives that are improved, The financial merit of improved public health is substantial. Walking is deemed one of the most effective forms of PA. It is for this reason that interest in research on the topic of walking and PA has increased over the past years. A study is being conducted by Erasmus Medical Centre if and how new social and physical interventions in certain neighbourhoods in Rotterdam can induce an increase in the weekly amount of time that people aged 55+ spend on walking. Developing new interventions requires a creative process. Therefore the discipline of Industrial Design offers a valuable addition to the set-up of the study. Senior citizens and other people with a sedentary lifestyle, particularly in some of the neighbourhoods in Rotterdam with lower socioeconomic status, would benefit socially and physically from increasing the role of walking in their daily routine. However they lack sufficiently strong incentives and perceive barriers to go out on the street. A persuasive design, tailored to the context of the neighbourhoods and the motivation of the elderly is desired to influence the citizens aged 55+ to advance their walking behaviour. The assignment is to create an intervention in the physical environment which should - together with other physical interventions - induce an increase in time spend on walking with 30 minutes per week, which is roughly 20% of the average time older people (aged 65+) currently spend on walking. Inspired by a process of context mapping with an emphasis on personal stories, an iterative design approach was followed to develop an appropriate and functioning design to address this matter. The resulting intervention: ‘De Reizende Roos’ (the travelling rose) can best be typified as an effort to brand walking as a social tool - which ultimately helps people retain independence. The objective of the branding campaign is for people to be able to deploy this tool according to their needs. One widely recognised quality of walking is highlighted: Walking benefits a good conversation between two people. Creating awareness around this quality happens by means of a learning experience: Participants are immersed in an experience and subsequently guided to turn the experience into knowledge by reflection and abstraction. "De Reizende Roos" (the travelling rose) is a narrative which gives meaning to an assignment that leads to the aforementioned learning experience. The narrative is about improving ‘the’ neighbourhood by improving one’s perception of the neighbourhood, about taking initiative and plucking up courage. A box containing the assignment is passed on between participants. The rose is the character who explains the assignment. Hence the name: travelling rose. Essentially the assignment is a challenge to make a walk together and while doing so, starting another initiative to improve social relations in the neighbourhood. After performing this act the participants are asked to reflect on the process by filling out a guestbook. Part of the report is to share experiences about if and how walking supported a conversation. The goal of the guestbook is for the participants to put the experience into words and thus transform it into knowledge. Experiments have demonstrated that the pass-on system works in principle, however some limitations are found. The most important finding is that not every senior can cope with the uncertainty of receiving a mysterious box and assuming responsibility for it. Furthermore it is inevitable that the boxes stop progressing at some point. An organisation is required to ‘respawn’ the boxes in such cases. These and other issues are addressed in what is called the ‘final’ design. However, it should be mentioned that the reality that a design is never final, applies on this project. The first and most important steps to evaluate will be how the adjusted pass-on system functions and whether the reflection in the guestbook guides towards an actual learning experience. By creating a learning experience and offering a tool to retain independence, a socially relevant and durable contribution is made, that is, a contribution which exceeds the boundaries of the intervention study and has a long lasting effect in the lives of the target group.

persuasive design
persuasive gaming
social cohesion
physical activity
motivation
experiential learning
elderly
senior
walking
talking
product service system
intervention study
behaviour
iterative design
public health
context mapping

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:90febd72-8f45-4519-b185-c744017d9f13

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Bos, J.W.