NEAT-o-Games

Abstract

________________________________________________________________________This article describes research that aims to encourage physical activity through a novel pervasive gaming paradigm. Data from a wearable accelerometer are logged wirelessly to a cell phone and control the animation of an avatar that represents the player in a virtual race game with other players over the cellular network. Winners are declared every day and players with an excess of activity points can spend some to get hints in mental games of the suite, like Sudoku. The racing game runs in the background throughout the day and every little move counts. As the gaming platform is embedded in the daily routine of players, it may act as a strong behavioral modifier and increase everyday physical activity other than volitional sporting exercise. Such physical activity (e.g., taking the stairs), is termed NEAT and was shown to play a major role in obesity prevention and intervention. A pilot experiment demonstrates that players are engaged in NEAT-o-Games and become more physically active while having a good dosage of fun.

NEAT-Lamp and Talking Tree: Beyond Personal Informatics towards Active Workplaces

“…As a result of an inactive lifestyle, the incidence of overweight individuals and obesity is becoming a major problem worldwide. According to a number of recently conducted medical studies, prolonged sitting increases the risk of causes of mortality, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), certain types of cancer, and non-CVD/noncancer mortality in adults [32][33][34][35][36][37]. Prolonged sitting covers all types of sedentary behavior, including sitting or lying down in all situations associated with working, eating and traveling that incur no more than 1.5 metabolic equivalents [22,37].…”

“…In recent years, it has become apparent that regular physical activity within the context of everyday practices yields health benefits [33,38]. Existing research indicates that non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which refers to any physical activity other than sport-type exercise, including work-related activities, has a direct effect on the physiology of weight change [32,33].…”

“…As discussed above, there have been a variety of PI design projects conducted with the focus of encouraging movement in everyday life. In the field of public health, there have also been a number of attempts in modifying workplaces for increasing physical activity [18,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Introducing treadmills in offices as a tool to shift from sitting to standing deskwork and increase NEAT is among the most recent attempts for designing active workplaces [34].…”

“…Although the solution is considered an effective way to make changes in this environment, efficient and silent treadmills are still expensive and require substantial space [35]. Therefore, alternative approaches, such as game-based mobile applications designed to increase NEAT, have recently been explored [32]. Others have suggested computer break programs for interrupting sedentary office work.…”

Electronic Gaming and the Obesity Crisis

“…This kind of information can also be applied to competitive mobile game applications. For example, Fujiki, Kazakos, Puri, Buddharaju, and Pavlidis (2008) developed an innovative sensor-based application that ran in the background of a mobile phone at all times. Every movement counted toward the user’s ultimate goal of winning a race against another user.…”