Martin Knöll

Diabetes City: How Urban Game Design Strategies Can Help Diabetics

Computer Games are about to leave their “electronic shells” and enter the city. So-called Serious Pervasive Games (SPGs) [1] allow for hybrid – simultaneously physical and virtual - experiences, applying technologies of ubiquitous computing, communication and “intelligent” interfaces. They begin to focus on non-entertaining purposes. The following article a) presents game design strategies as a missing link between pervasive computing, Ambient Intelligence and user’s everyday life. Therefore it spurs a discussion how Pervasive Healthcare focusing on the therapy and prevention of chronic diseases can benefit from urban game design strategies. b) Moreover the article presents the development and work in progress of “DiabetesCity“ - an educational game prototype for young diabetics.

Urban Exergames: How Architects and Serious Gaming Researchers Collaborate on the Design of Digital Games that Make You Move

This chapter presents a novel research collaboration between architects and computer scientists to investigate and develop mobile, context-sensitive serious games for sports and health (so-called exergames). Specifically, it describes a new approach that aims to design exergames which interact with the player’s built, topographic, and social environment in a meaningful way and presents strategies on how to integrate research on health-oriented urban design and planning to the design of such games. To that end, this chapter analyzes the state of the art of mobile context-sensitive exergames and introduces the reader to the basics of “Active Street Design”. After recapitulating how the built environment influences physical activity such as walking, cycling, and stair climbing in everyday situations, it is speculated on how to integrate best practices and guidelines from architecture into the game design process in order to create attractive and more effective exergames. The chapter is concluded with a discussion on strategies to validate the (positive) side-effects of urban exergames and an outline of future research directions.

User Interfaces of Mobile Exergames

Exergames are video games that require the player to be physically active. They can be roughly grouped into two categories, namely indoor exergames that are usually being played in the confines of one’s living room, and mobile exergames, which run on a user’s smartphone and can be played outside. While indoor exergames have been able to establish themselves as a popular type of video game, mobile exergames are still far and few between. An explanation for this phenomenon may lie in the difficulty of designing user interfaces for mobile exergames. This contribution analyzes the user interfaces of various existing mobile exergames and fitness applications, and proposes a methodology for the creation of such games.

A tool to predict perceived urban stress in open public spaces

This article presents an exploratory framework to predict ratings of subjectively perceived urban stress in open public spaces by analysing properties of the built environment with GIS and Space Syntax. The authors report on the findings of an empirical study in which the environmental properties of a sample of open public spaces in the city of Darmstadt, Germany were constructed and paired to users’ ratings. The data are analysed using different types of multivariate analyses with the aim to predict the ratings of perceived urban stress with a high explained variance and significance. The study finds that open public space typologies (park, square, courtyard, streets) are the best predictors for perceived urban stress, followed by isovist characteristics, street network characteristics and building density. Specifically, the isovist visibility, vertices number and perimeter, previously related to arousal and complexity in indoor spaces, show significant relation to perceived urban stress in open public spaces, but with different direction of effects. A model is presented that achieves a predictive power of R2 = 54.6%. It extends existing models that focused on green spaces and streetscapes with a first exploratory attempt to predict more complex reactions such as perceived urban stress.

Spontaneous Interventions for Health: How Digital Games May Supplement Urban Design Projects

Health games seem to provide for attractive play experiences and promise increased effects on health-related learning, motivation and behavior change. This chapter discusses the further possibility of mobile games acting as a springboard for communication on health and its correlations to the built environment. First, it introduces the notion of spontaneous interventions, which has been used to characterize co-design projects in which citizens seek to improve infrastructure, green and public spaces, and recreational facilities of their local neighborhoods by adding temporary objects and installations to the built environment. Focusing on interventions, which aim to stimulate physical activity, this chapter identifies potentials and challenges to increase their impact from an ICT perspective. Second, the chapter gives an overview into current research and best practice of health games which seek to enable interaction with urban spaces through mobile and context-sensitive technologies. Specifically, it highlights “self reflective” games in which players seem to adjust their behavior in response to interacting with real time bio-physiological and position data. Observing how mapping technology enables users to relate objective data to subjective context, the chapter identifies how health games may supplement future urban research and design in the following aspects: Raising attention to new complexes, stimulating participation, identifying locales for potential improvement and evaluating impact. The chapter concludes with an outline of future research directions to facilitate serious games supplementing health-related urban design interventions.

How Mobile Devices Could Change the Face of Serious Gaming

Zusammenfassung Der Erfolg von Smartphones und Tablet-PCs hat den Markt der mobile digitalen Spiele nachhaltig beeinflusst, sowohl auf Hardware- als auch auf Softwareebene. Aktuell findet ein Verdrängungsprozess statt, in dessen Rahmen Smartphones andere Geräte für mobiles Spielen vom Markt drängen. Gleichzeitig ermöglichen Smartphones aber auch eine ganz neue Art von digitalen Spielen. In diesem Beitrag betrachten wir die möglichen Implikationen dieser Tatsache auf den Bereich des Serious Gaming. Summary The rise of smartphones and tablet computers has changed the landscape of mobile gaming, both hardware and software-wise. Smartphones are squeezing other mobile gaming devices out of the market and their specific characteristics enable entirely new types of games and interfaces. In this contribution, we investigate the possible effects of these developments on the field of serious gaming.