Abstract
Today globally, more people die from chronic diseases than from war and terrorism. This is not due to aging alone but also because we lead unhealthy lifestyles with little or no exercise and typically consume food with poor nutritional content. This paper proffers the design science research method to create an artefact that can help people study the diffusion of serious games. The ultimate goal of the study is to create a serious game that can help people to improve their balance in physical exercise, nutrition and well-being. To do this, first we conducted 97 interviews to study if wearables can be used for gathering health data. Analysis indicates that designers, manufacturers, and developers of wearables and associated software and apps should make their devices reliable, relevant, and user friendly. To increase the diffusion, adoption, and habitual usage of wearables key issues such as privacy and security need to be addressed as well. Then, we created a paper prototype and conducted a further 32 interviews to validate the first prototype of the game, especially with respect to the diffusion possibilities of the game. Results are positive from a formal technology acceptance point of view showing relevance and usefulness. But informally in the open questions some limitations also became visible. In particular, ease of use is extremely important for acceptance and calling it a game can in fact be an obstruction. Moreover, the artefact should not be patronizing and age differences can also pose problems, hence the title not to make the serious game too serious. Future research plans to address these problems in the next iteration while the future implementation plan seeks for big platforms or companies to diffuse the serious game. A key theoretical contribution of this research is the identification of habit as a potential dependent variable for the intention to use wearables and the development of a diffusion model for serious games. The hedonic perspective is added to the model as well as trust and perceived risks. This model ends the cycle of critical design with an improvement of theory as result contributing to the societal goal of decreasing Obesities and Diabetes.
Highlights
Mobile health solutions, including those with the ability to provide healthcare delivery, advice and access to healthcare information, are rapidly gaining prominence (American Diabetes Association, 2008)
We study how the adoption of serious wearable games can be improved - the principle of taking a value position - in order to help improve health on both an individual and societal level - the principles of individual emancipation and improvements in society - and try to improve diffusion models for serious games by identifying habit as a potential dependent variable for the intention to use wearables - the principle of improvements in social theories
The results indicated that people were neutral to positive with regards to sharing information, body data, habits, addictions, and the living environment that the wearable provided for diagnosis and statistical research
Summary
Mobile health solutions, including those with the ability to provide healthcare delivery, advice and access to healthcare information, are rapidly gaining prominence (American Diabetes Association, 2008). This is largely due to increases in computing power and developments with smart phone capabilities and technologies (Global mobile statistics, 2014). We first present relevant aspects of the adoption and diffusion literature to create the basis for the interview model. This is followed by specific wearable diffusion issues from literature and we discuss the diffusion of serious games from a theoretical perspective. The domains are taken from Delone and McLean (2003) who show the net benefits of an information system in the User domain (relevance) and the information, system and service quality in the Information Technology domain
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