VivoSpace: towards health behavior change using social gaming

Authors:
Noreen Kamal;Sidney Fels;Michael Blackstock;Kendall Ho
Affiliations:
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada;Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada;Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre, University of British Columbia, Canada;eHealth Strategy Office, University of British Columbia, Canada
Venue:
ICEC'11 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Entertainment Computing
Year:
2011

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Abstract

Social gaming is now surpassing traditional gaming in terms of the total number of players. We describe our research in creating VivoSpace, an online social network application that applies the rapid uptake of social gaming to the domain of serious games for personal health. Specifically, VivoSpace aims to leverage social gaming to motivate positive health behavior change. A user centered design process has begun for designing VivoSpace based on an initial user inquiry questionnaire that revealed key motivations for using online social networks and users' thoughts on health. Interview feedback of the paper prototypes highlighted reluctance to share particular types of health information and apprehension in logging daily information. However, people were fond of the social aspect of sharing personal health information in the context of group challenges and participating in group health activities.