Elsevier

Entertainment Computing

Volume 5, Issue 4, December 2014, Pages 475-484
Entertainment Computing

Schoolchildren’s user experiences on a physical exercise game utilizing lighting and audio

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2014.08.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A unique exercise game based on lighting, narrative and audio for schoolchildren.

  • Provides strong motivation for children to exercise in physical education classes.

  • The results show that the game is extremely fun and inspiring even in long-term use.

Abstract

Motivated by the troubling news on decreased exercise amount and increased obesity among children and adolescents, we investigated the possibilities of interactive lighting technology in encouraging children to participate in physical exercise in schools. We have created a story-driven physical exercise game based on light and sound utilizing a reasonably priced technological setup. The game has been evaluated with several groups of schoolchildren during physical education classes. The results show that a physical exercise game enhanced with lighting and audio keeps schoolchildren motivated both mentally and physically even after several playtimes. In subjective evaluations, participants still found the story of the game interesting after three playtimes, and were eager to exercise this way again.

Introduction

There is a great need to encourage children and adolescents to engage in physical activity. For example, only 29% of high school students in the United States report sufficient daily physical activity levels [5]. Time previously spent on physical activities is increasingly spent on video gaming and other forms of sedentary entertainment. Increasing children’s motivation and interest in their health and physical activities is important, since childhood obesity is a serious and increasing challenge to public health [16], and regular physical activity in childhood and adolescence is shown to improve health and quality of life [14]. Physical education (PE) classes in schools play an important role in guiding children to lead a life with healthy amount of exercise. However, the time available for actual physical activity can be low [6]. Furthermore, there are children who may find physical exercise and sports unpleasant or uninteresting for various reasons, such as poor coordination of movement. Supporting the improvement of physical abilities through games could potentially increase the chances of engaging in and benefitting from the positive outcomes of physical activities [12]. One way to foster health-related behavioral change is to use video games designed for this purpose [1]; exertion-based games have been shown to stimulate physical activity in inactive children [6] and to increase energy expenditure over sedentary activities [15]. This suggests that exertion-based games are a potential approach for promoting the physical health of children.

We have designed a game-based approach to physical exercises, where storytelling and dramatic elements, such as interactive lighting, inspire and guide children in the exercise activity. The aim of the system is to make physical activities more pleasant and motivating for those children who find current forms of exercise uninteresting or even intimidating. The proposed prototype is targeted for 7–12-year-old schoolchildren and is meant to be played during PE classes together as a large group under the supervision of a teacher.

Modern technology provides many possibilities for implementing exercise games, but we aimed at a solution that would also be economically viable for schools. The total cost of the implemented system is projected to be less than two thousand euros. It consists of a laptop computer, a set of audio speakers, a wireless gaming controller, or a mouse, and a set of computer-controlled lighting fixtures mounted into a mobile trolley. The physical setup, augmented with additional hardware like motion sensors and a projector as necessary, can be utilized for many other uses in schools as well, for example in teaching mathematics or physics in a more immersive way. Although obviously very relevant for school context, pedagogical aspects are not in the core of this article. Instead, we focus on the entertainment aspects of the game. Thus, subjective experiences gathered from the children themselves form the central message and contribution of this article alongside with the introduction of a novel system for inspiring physical education classes.

The proposed prototype has been iteratively developed and studied in PE classes with several groups of schoolchildren [9]. First, a short version of the game was evaluated in order to validate the viability of the concept in general, and after extensive development work, a complete version has been studied with close to 300 schoolchildren in total. Here, we focus on the complete version and its evaluations. The results indicate that it is possible to create immersive and engaging, story-driven exercise games using a small set of lighting hardware and audio. Children’s imagination can create rich experiences from rather simple elements, and the resulting experience helps minimize feelings of exclusion. Our long-term evaluation results also show that it is possible to maintain children’s interest towards the game with rather simple stories and game elements.

In this article, we first cover related work on exercise games and their design challenges. Then, we introduce the context of our research, and the audio and lighting based exercise game we developed. Finally, we present our in situ evaluations and the results focusing on user experiences, and conclude by discussing the implications of our findings.

Section snippets

Exercise games

With the advances in consumer electronics, such as the introduction of the Nintendo Wii controller and the Microsoft Kinect, health and activity related games have become popular. Brox et al. [3] categorize such games into three genres: educational games, persuasive games, and exergames. Educational games are primarily designed for improving health literacy of both children and adult population. Persuasive games, on the other hand, attempt to persuade people to modify their behavior, be it

The lighting-based exercise game concept

The proposed game concept is designed for physical education classes in elementary schools (see Fig. 1 for an example game situation). Unlike most exergames, the game is played in large groups to suit the school context, where an entire class can play the game together. The game uses lighting hardware, which can project light to different parts of the space. The lighting and audio create an immersive story environment. In the games we have built, stories have a central role, and the games ask

Technical setup

The system consists of a laptop PC, a pair of active speakers, a moving head lighting fixture, five fixed lights and optionally a projector. For input, either a Playstation Move controller® or a regular mouse is used. The hardware was originally mounted on a 1 by 1 by 1.8 m (w, d, h) sized trolley, but due to physical limitations of storage spaces the height had to be decreased to about 1.4 m. The moving head light is situated on top of the trolley. The trolley enables easy transportation of the

The game – story and exercises

The game has been developed iteratively through design and implementation efforts and evaluations. The purpose of the initial version was to validate the fundamental concept and to get initial reactions from children. The initial version lasted about 10 min and consisted of a story, where the “Light” attempts to stop the “Shadow” from destroying the world. The evaluation results gave us the confidence to further develop the concept and the game to an extended version filling a 60-min PE class.

Evaluation

We have evaluated the complete version of the game in two schools with about 280 schoolchildren in total. Next, we will shortly summarize the first, one-playtime evaluation of the complete version, and then describe in detail a long-term, three-playtime evaluation focusing on user experience data collection methods and results. It is noteworthy that all the data presented here has been collected from the individuals themselves and the data is thus incomplete in coverage. This means, that all

Discussion

Light and sound do create a very strong effect, pulling children into the world of the story immediately. Speech is a powerful way to tell a story but sound effects are very important in building the atmosphere. The story does not need to be told in any detail, very compact descriptions of stereotypic scenarios are enough and players’ imagination takes care of the rest. This means that creating new games does not require particular skills in storytelling; even rather straightforward stories

Conclusion

The purpose of our work has been to create fun games for physical education classes in order to motivate schoolchildren to exercise. Here, we have introduced our solution which is a system utilizing speech-synthesized storytelling, audio effects, music and interactive lighting. Based on our several evaluations in schools, schoolchildren receive the concept enthusiastically. The light and sound based game we have created does seem to encourage children to participate in physical exercise. The

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation as a part of the “Active Learning Spaces” project, and the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT ICT Labs). We thank the participating schools and project partners for collaboration.

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This paper has been recommended for acceptance by Haruhiro Katayose.

1

Present address: School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere, FI-33014 University of Tampere, Finland.

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