Adaptive Engagement of Older Adults' Fitness through Gamification

Abstract

First and foremost, I take this opportunity to sincerely thank Dr. Lennart E. Nacke, to whom I am deeply indebted for taking the chance on an industrial designer and including me in his interdisciplinary team. I am grateful to him for inspiring me about gamification and giving me the confidence to discover the researcher in me. Despite hectic schedules, I thank him for finding time to encourage, inspire and guide me through this extremely difficult quest of a PhD. I thank him for the gift of forbearance, fortitude and the strength in persevering on a task and to never give up.I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Pejman Mirza-Babaei for taking me on as a student and inspiring me with the correctness of story-telling, methodology and method. I am grateful to him for investing the time to critically review my work, at times on short-notice, and forever instilling in me the essence of weaving an underlying theme within my thesis.

Technology Facilitates Physical Activity Through Gamification: A Thematic Analysis of an 8-Week Study

“…Spirit50 incorporated the following gamification elements: goal definition (quest), daily challenges (sub-goals), goal progression meter, points and badges (stars) as motivational affordances. Pedometers was used as a non-gamified second type of PA intervention (Kappen, 2017;Kappen et al, 2019). We acknowledge that our prior publication (Kappen et al, 2018) was presented as a summary paper of the same mixed-method study which incorporated quantitative measures and collected interview data over an 8week period.…”

“…Setup comprised of a laptop, 53" screen and a Samsung webcam as shown in Figure 1. Participants selected their long-term goals and specific goals (Kappen, 2017), barriers to doing PA and answered questions regarding their health situations. This enabled the gamified application to identify a low, medium or high intensity exercise routine for an 8-week period.…”

“…The themes emerging from the qualitative analysis also indicated that participants in the gamified group felt that a scheduled program with daily achievements and challenges with motivational affordances like points and stars (rewards) helped them feel that there was validation of their efforts, and provided constant monitoring of their progress. Furthermore, the emergent themes indicated the possibility of tailoring and customizing PA routines for older adults leading to adaptive engagement (Kappen, 2017;Kappen et al, 2018).…”

“…This theory posited the relevance of intrinsic, extrinsic and feedback affordances to facilitate PA in older adults to sustain engagement in PA over longer periods of time. Customization and personalization in the context of the design of PA technology relate to the system to be designed (tailored) to suit the agerelated infirmities of older adults mirrored with their abilities and the flexibility of the system to match their short-term and long-term PA goals, respectively (Kappen, 2017;Kappen et al, 2018Kappen et al, , 2019. However, in order to identify intrinsic, extrinsic and feedback gamification elements or motivational affordances) specific to older adults PA, we used the findings from GT as a framework to develop a codebook and re-analyse the interview data using thematic analysis (TA).…”

Therapeutic Strategy in Gamification and Game Based Learning for Elderly People in Thailand

“…Many older adults are concerned about maintaining a healthy level of physical activity. The challenges of healthcare can include decreasing strength, reduced mental capacity, social isolation, and the development of chronic health conditions (Kappen, 2015). The implementation of motivating mechanics in game design in production environments by integrating them in the process can be called "gamification".…”