Xin Tong (game designer and developer), together with Amber Choo (game designer and artist), graduate students at Pain Studies Lab, released their App called FitPet designed for providing motivations for more physical activities. The idea is to convert the users health data grabbed by the mobile devices accelerometer (steps) into game coins, where you will need to keep your virtual pet healthy and grow up by feeding food, providing first aid, and play games with your pet. So users need to take care of their pet by taking care of their physical activities. This gamification approach was designed to promote more steps and awareness towards walking in daily routine for users who are lack of motivations and activities.
This is part of Xin Tongs Msc thesis research prototype. She is currently conducting a six-week long-term user study with 23 participants to validate her research proposal and hypothesis. Users need to set their daily activity goals and try to keep their pet in a good condition by completing goals. For more information, please contact Xin at tongxint@sfu.ca. App for iPhone is still under review process but is coming soon. Download the App to your Android phone from here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=xinAmber.FitPet.fitpet
