Extending a Gamified Mobile App with a Public Display to Encourage Walking

Sedentary behavior is a determining cause for numerous illnesses, such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes. To counter this, the World Health Organization recommends at least 30 minutes of activity, such as walking, every day. We present a system making use of fitness trackers to gather step counts and showing them using a gamified mobile app and a gamified public display. We performed a four-week in-the-wild study (N=12) to evaluate the system and the effects of introducing a public display on walking behavior. We found that adding the public display significantly increased step counts and users' motivation to walk, which seems to be attributable to the significant increase in social relatedness. In semi-structured interviews, we learned that besides encouraging socialization, the public display made participants aware that their step data is visible for outsiders and that they could be confronted with their performance, providing additional motivation to increase their step counts.