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Obesity Management in Children on an iOS Device

Authors:
Alexiei Dingli
Gary Hili

Keywords: obesity; healthy; iOS; gamification; lifestyle

Abstract:
The main objective of this paper is to create an application that makes use of gamification principles in order to teach and guide children and teens towards a healthier life and encourage them to lead it. The application also allows users to track their overall progress and it instructs them on how to proceed. While doing so it gives them tips and facts about improving their lifestyle. The application also tries to apply gamification techniques like having a sense of competition and providing feedback so that tasks like exercise are more engaging. To evaluate the application, a group of people made use of the application as they saw fit, for a period of time. The gamification techniques used were successful in giving them the desired experience. With the competitive element between friends encouraging them to make more use of the application and the tips and facts helping them towards a healthier lifestyle. The biggest concern was that the application did not encourage the users to keep using it as much as we’d liked.

Pages: 83 to 89

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2013

Publication date: November 17, 2013

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-3468

ISBN: 978-1-61208-313-1

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from November 17, 2013 to November 21, 2013