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Let's play!: mobile health games for adults

Published: 26 September 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Researchers have designed a variety of systems that promote wellness. However, little work has been done to examine how casual mobile games can help adults learn how to live healthfully. To explore this design space, we created OrderUP!, a game in which players learn how to make healthier meal choices. Through our field study, we found that playing OrderUP! helped participants engage in four processes of change identified by a well-established health behavior theory, the Transtheoretical Model: they improved their understanding of how to eat healthfully and engaged in nutrition-related analytical thinking, reevaluated the healthiness of their real life habits, formed helping relationships by discussing nutrition with others and started replacing unhealthy meals with more nutritious foods. Our research shows the promise of using casual mobile games to encourage adults to live healthier lifestyles.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UbiComp '10: Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing
    September 2010
    366 pages
    ISBN:9781605588438
    DOI:10.1145/1864349
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 26 September 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. behavior change
    2. casual games
    3. food
    4. health
    5. mobile games
    6. nutrition
    7. transtheoretical model

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    Ubicomp '10
    Ubicomp '10: The 2010 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing
    September 26 - 29, 2010
    Copenhagen, Denmark

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    UbiComp '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 39 of 202 submissions, 19%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

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    View all
    • (2024)Assessing the Importance of Content Versus Design for Successful Crowdfunding of Health Education Games: Online Survey StudyJMIR Serious Games10.2196/3958712(e39587-e39587)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2024
    • (2024)Go-Go Biome: Evaluation of a Casual Game for Gut Health Engagement and ReflectionProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642742(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Beyond Static Labels: Unpacking Nutrition Comprehension in the Digital AgeProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642672(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Leveraging Idle Games to Incentivize Intermittent and Frequent Practice of Deep BreathingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642430(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Tracking During Ramadan: Examining the Intersection of Menstrual and Religious Tracking Practices Among Muslim Women in the United StatesProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642374(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2023)Play to Learn: from Serious Games to just GamesProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good10.1145/3582515.3609525(117-127)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Design and Evaluation of Technologies for Informed Food ChoicesACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/356548230:4(1-46)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
    • (2023)Towards understanding the mechanism through which reward and punishment motivate or demotivate behavioursBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2023.219658243:6(1042-1066)Online publication date: 10-Apr-2023
    • (2022)Developing a Clearer Understanding of Genre and Mobile GameplayResearch Anthology on Game Design, Development, Usage, and Social Impact10.4018/978-1-6684-7589-8.ch050(1055-1084)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2022
    • (2022)Socially-Oriented Persuasive Game to Promote Disease Awareness and PreventionHuman Behavior and Emerging Technologies10.1155/2022/94035782022(1-17)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2022
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