Speaker at Games for Health Europe Conference 2014

1. Jussi Holopainen
GEELab Europe, RMIT University, Karlsruhe, Germany
Behavior Change Techniques, Playability Heuristics and Mobile Health Games

2. Health games?

3. Increase physical activity
Encourage healthy diet
Game as motivator

4. Why mobile?

5. Personal
Social
Always on
Range of sensors
Pretty much everyone has one

6. Behavior change techniques?

7. CALO-RE taxonomy
40 behavior change techniques
Michie, S., Ashford, S., Sniehotta, F. F., Dombrowski, S. U., Bishop, A., & French, D. P. (2011). A refined taxonomy of behaviour change techniques to help people change their physical activity and healthy eating behaviours: the CALO-RE taxonomy. Psychology & Health, 26(11), 1479-1498.

8. […] 5. Goal setting (behaviour) 6. Goal setting (outcome) 7. Action planning 8. Barrier identification/problem solving 9. Set graded tasks 10. Prompt review of behavioural goals 11. Prompt review of outcome goals 12. Prompt rewards contingent on effort or progress towards behaviour 13. Provide rewards contingent on successful behaviour 14. Shaping […]

9. Playability heuristics?

10. 47 heuristics in 3 categories
•Game Play
•Coolness/Entertainment/Humor/ Emotional Immersion
•Usability & Game Mechanics
Desurvire, H., & Wiberg, C. (2009). Game usability heuristics (PLAY) for evaluating and designing better games: The next iteration. In Online Communities and Social Computing (pp. 557-566). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

11. […]
•The game world reacts to the player and remembers their passage through it.
•Changes the player make in the game world are persistent and noticeable if they back-track to where they have been before.
•The game goals are clear. The game provides clear goals, presents overriding goals early as well as short term goals throughout game play.
•The skills needed to attain goals are taught early enough to play or use later, or right before the new skill is needed. […]

12. Game design?

13. •BCTs as inspiration in concept creation
•BCTs and heuristics as guidelines during game design
•BCTs and heuristics in design evaluations during different phases of development (e.g. checklists for playtesting)

14. Does it work?

15. Yes!
[based on my not-so-humble-opinion, more robust method evaluations to follow]

16. Questions?
jussi.holopainen@rmit.edu.au http://geelab.rmit.edu.au