Development of an exergame to encourage active pausing and break sedentary behavior

Sammanfattning: Most people today spend a large part of their days doing sedentary activities, such as working in front of a computer. Long hours of inactivity have a negative effect on the body, even in people who report an active lifestyle outside of their sedentary work environment. This negative effect can be counteracted by taking short pauses of activity with regular intervals during the day. However, despite the fact that the time and level of activity needed to gain these positive effects are small, most people still have a hard time taking these breaks, even when they know it is good for them. To help break this sedentary behavior the project therefore aimed to develop an exergame that increases the motivation to actually engage in active pauses on a regular basis, and to examine how such a game should be designed for an enjoyable experience. The developed game prototype was an explorative game with a set play time of two minutes per round, controlled by the player moving in front of a web camera. Evaluation with playtesters showed that the game did not lead to a particularly enjoyable experience, but possible improvements in terms of challenge, feedback, level design and immersion were identified.