Design and implementation of pervasive social exergames and supporting platform : Transforming solitary exercises into social exergames

Abstract

This research is motivated by limited exercise experiences of urban people. They usually employ solitary aerobic exercises such as stationary cycling and treadmill running as alternative means of physical training. Nonetheless, many people find it difficult to become sufficiently motivated to perform these aerobic exercises which are often monotonous and boring. Also, the rewards from these exercises such as better general health and appearance are not immediately observable. This work addresses the drawbacks of the approaches thus far by transforming popular solitary exercises into pervasive social exergames. I envision that people who are to exercise at their preferred places can easily meet and play exergames online with their friends through social network services (SNSs) such as Facebook. To realize this vision, I and my colleagues designed and implemented example games and a supporting platform, by carefully observing exercising context of people as well as actively employing mobile and sensor technology. This work consists of three major perspectives. First, we distilled primitives of social interactions that facilitates fun and engaging social interactions between game players from social sport activities: tightly-coupled real time interaction mediated by virtual creatures or metaphors, and interpersonal action-level synchronization. We could observe several positive effects of these interaction primitives on exercise experiences, motivation, and social relationship by human-subject user experience studies. Based on these observations, we designed one sample exergame Swan Boat, a collaborative paddle-boat racing exergame. It enhances the bland experience of running on a treadmill with rich interaction among players, encouraging intensive synchronized movement with their teammates. Second, we provide a game platform supporting diverse exercise contexts. The platform, ExerLink, supports game play with multiple exercises and shared our experiences in bui...