Applying game elements to a diabetes lifestyle coaching application to make monitoring your health more fun and insightfull.

Context

The ZGT hospital in Almelo were developing an application for people with Diabetes Mellitus type 2. The goal of the app is to support people with DMT2 in managing their diabetes and obtaining/maintaining a healthy lifestyle. A more detailed description of the research and design here.

Trough the implementation of gamification and personalised design the app will enhance the motivation of the user, as well as help them commit long term to a healthy lifestyle.

Problem case

Focussing on the essence of the Diameter, it can be described as a personalised coaching system where the patient can manage their food intake, physical activity (PA), glucose values and medication. All these values can give clearer insights into their lifestyle habits in relation to glucose values and also provide diabetes health care professionals information on the self-managing of the patient.

Though, the main problem is that monitoring this data feels timeconsuming for the patient and is often forgotten, increasing the chance of incomplete data. This can be solved by addressing the motivation of each individual patient. The use of gamification elements is an often used tool to enhance motivation and engagement in different settings. We aim to develop an interface that motivates DMT2 patients to commit to a healthy lifestyle with gamification and good personalisation.

Design Process

The first prototype of the app is based on the literature on gamification, personalisation and real user experience. From this, MoSCoW requirements are derived that serve as the fundament of the design. These requirements translated into the game elements of a goal and point setting system, feedback elements and an avatar. Following, an iterative design process including an evaluation with the target group resulted in the final prototype and requirements. The end result shows a prototype including the game elements and a re-design of the interface.

Gamification

Based on a brainstorm on games played by the target group their player profile could be defined. Below are the game mechanics and dynamics that resulted from the brainstorm and additional research.

• Create meaning speak to the internal motivation by setting in game valuable goals (philanthropist).
• Create a challenge: give the feeling of wanting to gain and not wanting to lose by point/badge system (achiever).
• Personalisation: give identity to parts of the interface, customisation and creativity (free spirits).
• Connection: give the user the feeling of collaboration with the game, create an empathic environment (socialisers).

With this knowledge we started the design process. This resulted in the implementation of a point system, goal setting, avatar creating and insightful feedback. Troughout the itterations the main focus stayed on balancing the game elements to not overpower the importance of the other elements of the app.

Design

The design of the app was not the main focus of this research. But when implementing game features in an app an accompanying story needs to be told. We wanted to achieve a feeling of fun and loose most of the aspects that would make this feel like a chore or too serious. The colours that We choose are bold and playfull. We stepped away from data visualisations that could come over as too clinical and made them as if they are part of the game environment.