Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 College Students’ Health Conditions

The Chinese Ministry of Education has hammered the great importance of students’ physical health. However, under the intervention of the Ministry of Education, schools and other relevant departments, students in different grades vary in physical performance. The 2014 National College Health Assessment reports that the health conditions of primary and secondary school students is pretty satisfying, but that of university students is becoming ubiquitously poorer. The reason might line in that the various interventions are easier to be implemented in primary and secondary schools. Compared with juvenile school students, university students spend less time exercising vastly contrasted with sedentary activities. These results indicate that a high proportion of university students’ physical activity levels remain below recommended standards. The survey shows that 84.16 % of university students spend less than one hour a day in exercising, 50.2 % of college students cannot meet current recommendations of the Ministry of Health (at least 6000 steps per day,the best for more than 10000 steps per day).

There is a close relationship between health and lifestyle. Studies have revealed that the five factors closely related with college students’ health conditions are: diet, exercise, sleep, health habits and leisure activities [1]. Considering the particularity of university life,physical exercise is the most proper aspect to be chosen to ameliorate by design and products. Many university students are inactive or irregularly active during their leisure time. Therefore, intervention strategies, for promoting lifetime physical activity among all university students, represent a major health priority. In view of the little possibility of forcing university students to take more exercise, products can be an innovative way to motivate them to be more physically active.

1.2 “Physical Activity” and “Exercise”

“Physical activity” and “exercise” are terms that describe different concepts. However, they are often confused with one another and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Physical activity is defined as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure. Physical activity in daily life can be categorized into occupational, sports, conditioning, household, or other activities. Exercise is a subset of physical activity that is planned, structured and repetitive and has as a final or an intermediate objective the improvement or maintenance of physical fitness [2]. It is difficult for university students to cultivate the habit of exercise, but it is not that difficult to do some interesting physical activity every day or several times a week in their leisure time. Hence our study focuses on motivating university students to do more physical activity during their leisure time. Previous studies have shown that physical activity at moderate intensity gives people the happiest experience [3]. Brisk waling and jogging are of moderate intensity for university students (boys at 7 km/h, girls at 6 km/h) [4].

1.3 Physical Activity Confers a Positive Benefit on Health

Physical activity is a key ingredient to be healthy. The benefits and importance of physical activity have been well confirmed.

Over the past half-century, scientific evidence has continued to accumulate, indicating that being physically inactive leads to major negative health consequences throughout the lifespan [5]. Health promotion programs should target people of all ages, since the risk of chronic disease starts in childhood and increases with age [6]. There appears to be a linear relation between physical activity and health conditions, such that a further increase in physical activity will lead to additional improvements in health conditions [6]. Furthermore, routine physical activity can improve musculoskeletal fitness and there is increasing evidence supporting that enhanced musculoskeletal fitness is associated with an enhancement in overall health conditions and a reduction in the risk of chronic disease and disability [6].

Routine physical activity is also associated with improved psychological well-being (e.g. through reduced stress, anxiety and depression) [6]. It has been claimed that vigorous physical activity has positive effects on mental health in both clinical and nonclinical populations. The evidence also suggests that physical activity and exercise might provide a beneficial adjunct for improving self-image, social skills, and cognitive functioning, reducing the symptoms of anxiety and altering aspects of coronary-prone (Type A) behavior and physiological response to stressors [7].

Furthermore, the intensity of physical activity also has a close relation with one’s mood. People are in better emotional state after doing physical activity at small or moderate intensity [3].

2 Gamification: An Overview

Recent years have seen a rapid proliferation of mass-market consumer software that draws inspiration from video games. Usually summarized as “gamification” which is defined as “an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non- gaming systems to improve user experience and user engagement” [8]. One of the most popular uses of gamification is to transform a mundane, menial, or otherwise uninspiring task into one that engages users and actively encourages them to complete the needed task [9]. The use of video game elements to enhance the enjoyment of non-game applications dates back to research as early as the 1980s [10]. Companies have widely accepted and adopted gamification as a means to increase initiation and retention of desired behaviors [11].

2.1 The Application of Gamification

Adding game elements to an application to motivate use and enhance the user experience is a growing trend known as gamification [12]. There is increasing interest in the potential use of gamification as a means to motivate attitudinal and behavioral change. Sports and fitness seems to be an area where people have a hard time of motivating themselves in [13]. If we blend the cheerful nature of games with the boring exercising process, it will enlarge the enjoyment of the process.

Mobile phone technology has recently become an area of focus for disseminating health behavior change interventions [14–16]. This technology has been used to study several health topics like physical activity [17], diabetes self-management [18], and smoking cessation [19]. Third party applications, also abbreviated as apps, are software programs that serve to expand the utility of mobile devices. Within just 6 years, Apple celebrated its 50 billionth app download, with Google only trailing slightly behind with 48 billion as of May 2013 [22]. Health apps have also become a part of this market, with over 31,000 health and medical apps available for download [17]. With the blooming of mobile phone ownership and the number and complexity of health apps likely to increase, the potential for technology-based health interventions to impact populations is expanding in ways previously not possible [11].

Using gamification in health and fitness apps has become immensely popular, and it has been estimated that 60 % of health initiatives in workplaces now include gamification elements [20, 21]. Though there are thousands of downloadable apps with the presence of gamification in the Health & Fitness category on Apple’s App Store,the goal of each application is similar: an attempt to promote and encourage physical activity. Despite the inclusion of at least some components of gamification, the mean scores of integration of gamification components were still below 50 % [11]. In this usage, game components such as a scoreboard, competition amongst friends, and awards and achievements are employed to motivate users to achieve personal health goals [9].

2.2 “Gamification” and “Games”

Games are certain products or services with pure purpose of entertainment. Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts [22]. Video games are designed with the primary purpose of entertainment and since they can demonstrably motivate users to engage with them with unparalleled intensity and duration, game elements should be able to make other, non-game products and services more enjoyable and engaging as well [23, 24]. Gamification uses elements of games for purposes other than their normal expected use as part of an entertaining game and gamification has been defined as a process of enhancing services with (motivational) affordances in order to invoke gameful experiences and further behavioral outcomes [25, 26]. The purpose of our design is to motivate university students to be more physically active and make the suffering running process more interesting and enjoyable. Therefore, LOOP can be defined as a gamification-based fitness mobile application.

3 Methodology Description

3.1 Gamification Design for Sedentary University Students

There are mainly five different categories of motivations for activity engagement: fitness, appearance, competence, enjoyment, and social [27]. Prior studies have shown that adherence is associated with motivations focused on enjoyment, competence and social interaction, other than those focused on fitness or appearance. Body-related motivations are not, on average, sufficient to sustain regular exercise regimens [27]. So it is more effective to place the focus of exercise promotion on the inherent enjoyment of physical activity. Spontaneous enjoyment of an activity leads to increased persistence, decreased stress and positive psychological status. In addition, social interaction can add one’s enjoyment in participating [28]. To sum up, we believe that gamification design for sedentary students to become more physically active should focus on enjoyment and social interaction.

3.2 Design Guidelines

Based on the sedentary lifestyle of university students and previous research on gamification in the field of health and fitness application, promoting lifetime physical activity through mobile apps among all university students represents a major health priority. Their needs are concluded as follows:

  • Sedentary students should spend more time doing physical activity during their leisure time.

  • The exercising process must be full of enjoyment to ensure students’ adherence.

In accordance to the needs of sedentary students, four design guidelines for gamification-based fitness application are concluded as follows:

  • The physical activity should be easily accessible.

  • The intensity of the physical activity should be moderate.

  • The process of the physical activity should be interesting enough to motivate students to adhere.

  • Social interaction should be added to the process of the physical activity to reinforce enjoyment.

4 Case Study of Gamification Design for University Students

4.1 Prototype

Based on above research findings, a prototype of a gamification-based fitness mobile application named LOOP, has been developed. The prototype is an easily-used mobile application for sedentary university students to motivate themselves to do more physical activity at school. It is recommended for sedentary university students who want to be healthier but find it difficult to adhere to their regular exercise plan in their leisure time (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Logical frame of LOOP

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The Gamification-Based Fitness Mobile App.

The app is designed for university students who find it difficult to stick with exercise. It has three main functions: game, social interaction, multidimensional reward mechanism.

Game.

A series of game levels is designed for users. The intensity and difficulty of the physical activity (jogging & brisk walking) will increase as users proceed to harder levels. There are two game modes: Chasing Mode and Treasure Hunting Mode. No matter in which mode, users must run or move for a reasonable distance to win the game. The game scene is designed based on the real-life scenarios of the users’ own campus, so that there are many various scenarios for students from different universities to choose from. The real-life scenarios will bring users a strong feeling of immersion and enjoyment. With the LBS (Location-based Service) technology, users and the game characters can move simultaneously in the similar scenarios.

In treasure hunting mode, treasures are hidden somewhere in the campus scenario. Users must move and collect more clues to find the treasure according to the given prompts. Users will be rewarded if the treasure is found (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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Treasure hunting

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In chasing mode, users can choose to be chased or to be a chaser. If one was a chaser, he or she should try the best to catch runaways as many as possible. The more he/she catches the runaways, the more rewards he/she will receive. If one was a runaway, he/she should try the best to evade capture of the chasers. The longer he/she survive in the game, the more rewards he/she will receive (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Chasing mode

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Social Interaction.

During the chasing process, social interaction will happen when catching somebody or being caught. Thus students will meet each other and make friends offline. Meanwhile, users can also talk with their friends and check their ranking in the app (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Friends list & ranking page

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Multidimensional Reward Mechanism.

Users will be rewarded when they win the game. In addition to the game’s virtual reward, users will also be rewarded with discount coupons that can be used in stores around the campus (e.g. fruit stores, book stores, supermarkets, restaurants and so on).

4.2 Experiments

On the basis of prior findings, we hypothesized that: (a) gamification-based process brings users more enjoyment than traditional process (b) adding social interaction to the gamification-based process increases users’ enjoyment as well.

Comparing Access to Physical Activity.

We made a survey on how and where they did physical activity among 98 college students (49 girls and 49 boys).

Comparing Enjoyment.

The experiments were designed based on the design guidelines, aiming to compare three running processes: the traditional running process (just running without doing anything else), the gamification-based process and the gamification-based process with social interaction. The comparison experiments were designed to compare the enjoyment of the three processes.

Participants were 12 university students. They all ran at low frequency before and want to cultivate the habit of running regularly. They were divided into three groups by average. Group A proceeded the traditional running process as control group; Group B proceeded the gamification-based running process; And Group C proceeded the gamification-based running process with social interaction. The emotion performance of students in the three processes was recorded by experimenters with emotion scores. The scores ranged from −2 to 2. −2 means very unhappy; −1 means a little unhappy; 0 means no obvious emotion; 1 means a little happy; 2 means very happy. Experimenters took notes of what happened when emotion varied.

4.3 Results

Access to Physical Activity.

We made a survey on how and where they did physical activity among 98 college students. We found that running was the most popular exercise among students and the campus was the most popular venues they would like to choose (Fig. 5). In conclusion, running or jogging in the campus was the most accessible among university students. That might reason from geographical and economic factors.

Fig. 5.
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How & where do you usually do physical activity? (Multiple choice questions)

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Enjoyment.

Emotion performance of the twelve students in the three training processes was marked by emotion scores each minute. For example, the emotion performance of three object students from three groups was recorded in Table 1 and Fig. 3, according to which average emotion score of the three processes was calculated and displayed in Table 2.

Table 1. Emotion performance of three students in three training processes
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Table 2. Average emotion scores of each student in three training processes
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According to the experimental data (Fig. 6), we found that (a) students from Group B and Group C were happier during the running process than those from Group A; (b) students from Group C were happier than students from Group B. This result verifies that gamification-based process brings the users more enjoyment and the experiment results have confirmed our prior hypothesis.

Fig. 6.
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Emotion performance of three students in three running processes (Color figure online)

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In traditional running process, students got excited in the beginning, but soon got tired. They were forced to keep running and running solely by their willpower, filled with tendency to give up. A long period of the process could be suffering. But when adding gamification to the process, students’ excitement extended obviously. Students’ spirit got stimulated when the game feedback (the game sound, picking up props, finding the treasure and so on). When adding social interaction on the basis of gamification, the stimulation became more conspicuous. They found themselves quite amused when catching somebody or being caught especially when the interaction happened between male and female users. Though they would get disappointed when they missed the opportunity to catch somebody, users actually didn’t have time to feel tired throughout the process.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, the idea of amalgamating gamification and social interaction with traditional running process has been proposed and a health & fitness mobile application LOOP is designed and developed following the 4 guidelines derived from our survey. Experiments have been performed as well to compare the three processes and the conclusions are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Running or jogging in the campus are more accessible physical activity compared with their counterparts. Easier access can confirm more adherence to a certain extent.

  2. 2.

    Gamification-based process brings more enjoyment to users and those students who feet more enjoyable would be more likely to adhere.

  3. 3.

    On the basis of gamification, social interaction has an effect of boosting enjoyment, which leads to relatively greater adherence.

While the results of the experiment support our general hypotheses, this study contains several limitations and shortcomings due to time limit. It is hither to based on a small population of samples and the association between enjoyment and adherence has not been firmly confirmed by experiments. The product is still being modified and iterated and future work will include more tests on larger student population from more universities.