Habit Labs • Response to Gabe and Sebastian's #gamification discussion. Adventure Walks Get You on Your Feet. For a few of the past 139 years that the American Public Health Association has held annual meetings, it has sponsored a 5K run to support wellness and bring attention to the importance of exercise in public health. It may seem that a game would be ill-suited for such a venerable institution (it was created in 1872!) , but this year instead of sponsoring a 5K and with the support of Shinobi Labs, the APHA is hosting a health contest and game. The contest will be based on Shinobi Labs’ recently released app, Mobile Adventure Walks, which provides a fun and engaging way to get players on their feet.
The app sets out to achieve similar goals to those of many projects in gamification of health, make exercise “sticky” and engaging. “We believe that the key to engaging this audience is to create a fun experience that people enjoy and think of as a new category that is not ‘exercise’ or ‘fitness’ related,” said Julie Price, CEO of Shinobi Labs. The app itself is pretty straightforward. Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists. MSNBC's Thomas Roberts talks with University of Washington Center for Game Science director Seth Cooper and researcher Firas Khatib about a video game that helped unravel a protein structure in an AIDS-like virus. By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News Last updated 12:45 p.m. ET Sept. 20: Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other diseases.
"This is one small piece of the puzzle in being able to help with AIDS," Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, told me. The feat, which was accomplished using a collaborative online game called Foldit, is also one giant leap for citizen science — a burgeoning field that enlists Internet users to look for alien planets, decipher ancient texts and do other scientific tasks that sheer computer power can't accomplish as easily. That's where Foldit plays a role.
They could. Games for Health — Using Videogames and Videogame Technologies to Improve Health & Healthcare. FootGamingCQ. The Health Care Blog. Federal News Radio 1500 AM: VA competition brings health care innovation. What is CrossFit? What Is CrossFit? Videos CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide. Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive.
Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist. The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Thousands of athletes worldwide have followed our workouts posted daily on this site and distinguished themselves in combat, the streets, the ring, stadiums, gyms and homes. TEDMED.
Health 2.0 | Home. Fitness Games For The Xbox 360 Kinect: A Review. I haven’t mentioned it much here, but I enjoy video gaming. Maybe a bit too much, it may be part of what has gotten me into such bad shape – sitting on the couch vegging out all the time. Well now, you can enjoy still enjoy playing video games, but get a workout while you’re at it! If you’re into video games at all you know that next week the Xbox team will be launching a new peripheral for the Xbox 360 that will allow controller free gaming, motion capture, video chat, voice commands and a host of other functionality. It’s going to be called the Kinect ($149.99). The Kinect hasn’t launched as of this writing, so the jury is still out as to just how well Kinect will work. Initial reports are that the Kinect performs rather well, and I for one am excited at the prospect of controller free gaming, and am interested to see how well these fitness games work. Fitness Games For Xbox Kinect So what fitness games will be available for Kinect at launch?
Your Shape Fitness Evolved Zumba Fitness. The Gamification of Wellness « Healthy Community Networks. For a full 80% of the population who don’t exercise – it’s just not fun! Hey, for some of us dutifully heading to our workouts – is that why we call them “work?” As gamification intersects every aspect of life, wellness can get into the “game” as well. Companies are realizing that “gamification” — using the same mechanics that hook gamers — is an effective way to engage people. Since the advent of videogames, skeptics have questioned their inherent value: why do players spend hours accruing virtual points working towards intangible rewards?
Chalk it up to basic human behavior, which game makers have been trying to understand and appeal to for decades. Too often a social media or marketing guru armed with “gamification” aspirations will try to employ game-like mechanisms to provide a sense that customers/audience is having fun while working towards a rewards-based goal. Proponents of “gamification” consider conventional incentive-based mechanics to be flawed, broken, or skewed. Like this: Healthgamescamp. Thank you! Thank you to all of the participants in the first HealthGamesCamp! Thank you for playing the game with such passion and energy, and for pouring yourselves into the fabulous health-behavior-changing game designs and prototypes that were produced! Because head-to-head game competition was important to drive excellent design in a short timeframe, we do have HealthGamesCamp winners. But we hope that all of you feel that you won something due to your involvement—new collaborators, more exposure to other industries and roles, or a larger set of tools to use when tackling big design challenges.
Final Results for Team Competition Collaboration Awards Tweet your congratulations to the winners! Blogs, Photos, Videos Please post or link anything that you want to share from the event here: Blog entry by Alex Tam, Steve Selzer, and Montana Cherney of frog design. Blog entries from Day 1 by Srihari Yamanoor: Part 1 & Part 2 Chelsea Howe: The Sweet Taste of Victory! Photos by Rajiv Mehta: photos. Bustr Bensn • Announcing Habit Labs! I have something very exciting to tell you! (I love when I can start a post with that line.) My one-man shop, Health Month, started almost exactly a year ago, is growing! I’ve merged my company into Jen McCabe’s Contagion Health, and formed a new company called Habit Labs! Also, we raised some money! And also, people are writing about us! What does this mean?! We can hire people! What can you do to help? Haha, yes. Are you willing to do one or more of the following?
Tweet, Re-tweet, Super-tweet, etc one of the articles aboveReblog or heart this if you’re on TumblrFacebook Like or Google+ something, which you can do from the article pages, aka the GeekWire articleTell your mom, aunt, and co-worker about Health Month, create a team for them and play next month! We’re ready to grow! The whole world of health-improvement games, apps, and services is in fact ready to grow.
Lots of opportunity, lots of good company, and a big audacious problem to solve. The Gamification of Healthcare. By Giorgio Baresi - October 29, 2010 When I started to use Nike Plus I couldn't imagine I would end up enjoying running so much. Nike Plus allowed me to keep a record of all of my runs and gather feedback and motivation from friends on Facebook, where all of my runs are automatically posted. Thanks to a challenge we've set up in the frog Milan Studio, I've pushed my limits much farther than I would have ever expected only a month ago.
You might wonder why this should matter to you. Well, it's a long story and for the purpose of this post we'll keep it short: global changing factors such as aging population, growing incidence of chronic diseases and sky-rocketing costs are undermining the healthcare system as we know it. Healthcare needs to be reframed: we need to move away from a system which is HCP-centric, based on treatment and prescriptions, command and control. Designing the behavior change View more presentations from frog design.