A Review of Gamified Fitness Tracker Apps and Future Directions

Neupane, Aatish; Hansen, Derek L.; Sharma, Anud; Fails, Jerry Alan; Neupane, Bikalpa; Beutler, Jeremy

doi:10.1145/3410404.3414258

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The quantitative process involved systematically identifying apps and games for review, gathering app store stats about their performance and popularity, recording the presence of different game elements using a codebook (see Table 1), and using network analysis to identify gaps in the design space by visualizing co-occurrence and clustering patterns of game elements. We have presented part of this research previously [15]. We describe the methods used here for the sake of completeness, though some details are left to the conference paper.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another limitation of the study is that it did not look into other app categories apart from the "Health and Fitness", as in an ideal world, apps related to encouraging fitness would be in this category, but, in real life, apps are often miscategorized [25]. Our previous work [15] filled some of these gaps for step-counter based apps. Specifically, we extended the work of Cotton and Patel, and performed a more thorough systematic review of all step-counter apps by adding game elements missed by this framework and including apps and games from other app store categories as well.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our initial study [15] showed that the co-occurrences of game elements such as Competition, Challenges, and Social Influences are very common. We also observed that step-counter based apps used different types of rewards to keep users motivated but our early work did not tackle this issue of understanding different types of rewards in more detail.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In our previous work [15], we combined the works of Cotton and Patel, and Kappen et al, and came up with a taxonomy for coding game elements [24,28]. We also added two categories ("Real-life Incentives" and "Plot") as we realized the need to capture these elements as well.…”

Section: Coding For the Presence Of Game Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, the goal of this article is to characterize the design space in terms of different game elements used by existing gamified fitness apps and provide insights on how game elements are being used. More specifically, we address the following research questions (research questions 1, 2, and 4 were addressed previously in an ACM CHI Play Conference paper [15], this article expands on the analysis presented there and furthers the discussion by also addressing question 3):…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The Role of Steps and Game Elements in Gamified Fitness Tracker Apps: A Systematic Review

Neupane

Hansen

Fails

et al. 2021

MTI

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This article reviews 103 gamified fitness tracker apps (Android and iOS) that incorporate step count data into gameplay. Games are labeled with a set of 13 game elements as well as meta-data from the app stores (e.g., avg rating, number of reviews). Network clustering and visualizations are used to identify the relationship between game elements that occur in the same games. A taxonomy of how steps are used as rewards is provided, along with example games. An existing taxonomy of how games use currency is also mapped to step-based games. We show that many games use the triad of Social Influence, Competition, and Challenges, with Social Influence being the most common game element. We also identify holes in the design space, such as games that include a Plot element (e.g., Collaboration and Plot only co-occur in one game). Games that use Real-Life Incentives (e.g., allow you to translate steps into dollars or discounts) were surprisingly common, but relatively simple in their gameplay. We differentiate between task-contingent rewards (including completion-contingent and engagement-contingent) and performance-contingent rewards, illustrating the differences with fitness apps. We also demonstrate the value of treating steps as currency by mapping an existing currency-based taxonomy onto step-based games and providing illustrations of nine different categories.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%