Greg Walsh
Jennifer Golbeck
ABSTRACT
Encouraging physical activity is an important public health issue. In this study, we set out to see if a game could be used to motivate people to be more active. We recruited 74 subjects to wear Fitbits -- a personal activity monitoring device that tracked the number of steps taken in a day -- and compared step totals in three experimental conditions: a control, a social interaction experience, and a social game we developed called StepCity. We found that for newer Fitbit users, the game led to users taking more steps than they did in a control condition. In this poster, we present the details of our system and the results of a controlled experiment.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
Zip file containing a PDF of the Accompanying Poster
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Index Terms
- StepCity: a preliminary investigation of a personal informatics-based social game on behavior change
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