Gamified Educational Mobile Application to Support Healthy Lifestyle

Abstract

This paper aims to present a tool for (a) supporting the change of people’s behavior about physical activity, and (b) raising awareness about their body and nutrition. Taking into account studies that show reduced physical activity in the majority of European adolescents [1,2,3], an incredible number of people being obese or overweight [4], a sedentary lifestyle being prevalent [5], an insufficient amount of nutrients or unbalanced diet [6], and a lack of ongoing nutrition counselling [7, 8], the need to change is of crucial importance. It is important to address all the above at the same time due to the strong relationship between physical activity, healthy nutrition and healthy lifestyle [9]. The main goal of this paper is to present a first version of a gamified educational application aiming to promote awareness on the importance of health-enhancing physical activity by contributing on the changes of lifestyle and physical activity habits. The suggested application follows the direction of the European Erasmus+ Sport project SUGAPAS (Supporting Gamified Physical Activities in & out of Schools, [19]). The current paper explains the way the application aims to contribute to change, emphasizing the gamification elements and the way they are used to serve its purpose more effectively. Hereupon, the users’ needs analysis is presented, in order the users’ needs of this specific type of application to be perceived. Moreover, a brief presentation of the main use cases in parallel with mock-ups and a general use case diagram of the complete application. At last, the evaluation results are described. The USE questionnaire [18] was distributed in order to assess the usability of the application. Following its standards, three negatives and three positives were mentioned from each user. Consequently, a concluding paragraph of the results and possible improvements is included.