Ubiquitous Computing at its best: Serious exercise games for older adults in ambient assisted living environments – a technology acceptance perspective

Philipp Brauner; Andreas  Holzinger; Martina  Ziefle

Research Article

Ubiquitous Computing at its best: Serious exercise games for older adults in ambient assisted living environments – a technology acceptance perspective

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@ARTICLE{10.4108/sg.1.4.e3,
    author={Philipp Brauner and Andreas  Holzinger and Martina  Ziefle},
    title={Ubiquitous Computing at its best: Serious exercise games for older adults in ambient assisted living environments -- a technology acceptance perspective},
    journal={EAI Endorsed Transactions on Serious Games},
    volume={1},
    number={4},
    publisher={ICST},
    journal_a={SG},
    year={2015},
    month={7},
    keywords={Serious Games, Serious Games for Health, Health care, Exercise Game, Exergame, Ubiquitous Computing, Ambient Assisted Living, eHealth, Technology Acceptance, User Diversity, Older Adults, Demographic Change},
    doi={10.4108/sg.1.4.e3}
}

Philipp Brauner
Andreas Holzinger
Martina Ziefle
Year: 2015
Ubiquitous Computing at its best: Serious exercise games for older adults in ambient assisted living environments – a technology acceptance perspective
SG
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/sg.1.4.e3

Philipp Brauner^1,2^,*, Andreas Holzinger^3,4, Martina Ziefle^1,2

1: Human-Computer Interaction Center (HCIC), RWTH Aachen University, Germany
2: Chair for Communication Science, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
3: Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media, Graz University of Technology, Austria
4: Research Unit Human-Computer Interaction, Institute for Medical Informatics, Medical University Graz, Austria

*Contact email: philipp.brauner@rwth-aachen.de

Abstract

Ubiquitous computing and ambient assisted living environments offer promising solutions to meet the demographic change. An example are serious games for health care: Regular exercises mediated through games increase health, well-being, and autonomy of the residents whilst at the same time reducing the costs for caregiving. To understand which factors contribute to an increased acceptance of such exercise games in ambient assisted living environments, a prototypic game was evaluated with 32 younger and 32 older players. Game performance is influenced by age, need for achievement, and also gender. Acceptance and projected use are related to the believe in making the game a habit, current gaming frequency, and social influences. Notably, the game increased the perceived health of the subjects, which is an important issue. This article concludes with guidelines to successfully introduce serious exercise games into health care and future ideas to realize social inclusion in game design.

Keywords: Serious Games, Serious Games for Health, Health care, Exercise Game, Exergame, Ubiquitous Computing, Ambient Assisted Living, eHealth, Technology Acceptance, User Diversity, Older Adults, Demographic Change

Received: 2014-11-05
Accepted: 2014-12-01
Published: 2015-07-03
Publisher: ICST

: http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/sg.1.4.e3

Copyright © 2015 P. Brauner et al., licensed to ICST. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.