Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SmartLife (Smart Clothing Gamification to promote Energy-related Behaviours among Adolescents)

Teaser

The overall aim of the SmartLife project is to provide European adolescents with an individually tailored, evidence-based and engaging gamification tool to promote physical activity, fitness and reduce sedentary behaviour by using feedback from smart textiles, and thus...

Summary

The overall aim of the SmartLife project is to provide European adolescents with an individually tailored, evidence-based and engaging gamification tool to promote physical activity, fitness and reduce sedentary behaviour by using feedback from smart textiles, and thus contribute to the prevention of non-communicable diseases and conditions related to unhealthy lifestyles, such as overweight and obesity, diabetes type II and common mental disorders.
SmartLife project is wrapped around the following main objectives:
• Provide a system to integrate the real-time feedback on energy-expenditure from the smart textile T-shirt into the programming code of the game. Game dynamics will adapt to the feedback from the smart textile throughout the game play.
• Provide a set of exercises which can be performed in the game that require sufficient energy expenditure to promote moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
• Create a data-driven approach used here by SmartLife that allows to innovate beyond best available evidence and discover new patterns in energy-related and game behaviour.
• Design a health-promoting game intervention based on what is predictive of the energy-related behaviours and feasible to change, based on user preferences, and including features with high motivational appeal in games. Individual tailoring enhances effectiveness and engagement of the user with the game.
• Have a finalized product integrating a game and smart textiles, developed based on previous objectives that can also show data on its effectiveness in reaching the target objectives on energy-related behaviours and health outcomes.
• Include a business model that paves the road for SMEs to exploit the product in a commercial setting and create new business opportunities.
• Aim for the maximum possible exposure, appealing both to stakeholders and end-users. The approaches will fit the specific target group’s media use, e.g. by creating demo sessions and YouTube films for adolescents, and organizing industrial dissemination for other stakeholders.

Work performed

Objective 1 The progress towards this objective includes the realisation of the development of the SmartLife technical architecture. These have been focusing on the development of an android app able to integrate and monitor data acquisition from wearable sensor and an android library able to integrate acquired sensor data with gaming components.

Objective 2 A working data infrastructure was built, allowing the project to get fast and reliable access to the relevant data sources. A set of physical exercises which require lower body movement, were proposed as the baseline for the SmartLife game calibration process.

Objective 3 The algorithms that have been used for the purposes of SmartLife activities are all machine learning algorithms for high-throughput and online stream and predictive analytics that can be used and re-used on any domain. The project has implemented 2 different ML algorithms for classifying and predicting physical activities, those are based on decision trees and neural networks.

Objective 4 Regarding this objective, SmarLife Individual tailoring involved the development of personalized messages to increase their relevance. Tailored health messages are more read, better remembered, more discussed with others and considered as more useful by their target users.

Objective 5 The progress towards this objective is summarized in the activities for the identification of pilots’ needs.Those pilot needs are related to the strategy that is required to be placed per pilot in order to retrieve requirements from end users. This strategy encompasses an information collection methodology via the use of questionnaires and prototype testing, through the use of the mobile application that is being developed.

Objective 6 The main idea of the exploitation methodology in SmartLife is that each phase in the conceptual/technical development contributes explicitly to the exploitation activities and it is even influenced by the exploitation strategy.

Final results

\"Advancement beyond state-of-the-art on exergaming to improve energy-related behaviours:

The SmartLife project aims to expand on current state-of-the-art by designing an exergame yielding sufficient energy expenditure to enable adolescents to meet health recommendations, that is tailored by real-time energy-expenditure information, and that is engaging by exploring the possibilities of including a narrative or geographical context-information.


Advancement beyond state-of-the-art on participatory development and social inclusion:

SmartLife aims to involve end-users at every stage of the development process to increase its potential for engagement and fit with users’ needs. We are applying participatory development according to the most recent evidence available, and advance literature and evidence on this topic by describing detailed methods for participatory design of serious games, that have so far not been reported very extensively.


Advancement beyond state-of-the-art on Game Analytics:

The approach to be tackled within SmartLife, will take into account the processing capabilities of smartphones (which most of times are underestimated) by performing local processing and the complex data analytics tasks to be performed in the backend.


Advancement beyond state-of-the-art on integration of wearable sensors with games:

Game and smart textile sensor system will actuate as one single system providing adolescents players with a unique user experience which will contribute to introduce healthy habits into their life styles.



Expected results:

Wearable sensor system: The main result will be the Smart textile sensor system, which will be adapted to young people in order to create an easy to wear and comfortable system attractive to adolescent people.

SmartLife exergame: The main result will be the SmartLife exergame, including several options for exercises that provide users a choice and a possibility to tailor to user’s needs. The exergame will be mobile, include a narrative and context information, and be based on user input to increase its motivational appeal.

Participatory, evidence-based development and social inclusion: The main result will be the evidence-based and user-involved recommendations for design, including those on exercises with sufficient energy expenditure, gaming methods and features; the tailored advice and feedback; and evidence of feasibility, acceptability and superior effectiveness of the product compared to no activity or existing commercial exergames.

Game data analytics: SmartLife will introduce the concept of game data analytics techniques, including data mining, visualization, and tools in order to augment the use of analytics to make business and design decisions as well as study human behaviour.

Potential Impacts:
• Work Programme Impact
- Take up in a non-leisure context
- New innovative businesses
- Validation of open gaming technologies
- Education and training of the youth
- Faster rate of development and adoption
- Increased skills capacity

• Strategic Impact
- \"\"Together for Health\"\" strategy
- ICT use in Health and Education
- Europe 2020

• Societal Impact
- Socialisation of the youth
- Healthy communities
- Employment opportunities
- Reduced health inequalities

• Economic Impact
- ICT in Health
- Smart textile in Health
- Applied gaming in non-leisure market
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Website & more info

More info: http://www.smartlifeproject.eu.