Creating an adaptive gamified online service for older adults

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Aging adults can become reluctant to engage in fitness activity because they are getting older, which often contributes to a lack of motivation to exercise and can lead to a sedentary lifestyle. Research emphasizes the positive aspects of video game technology as a medium to mitigate the challenges of aging and provide more incentives for fitness for people in the age group of 50 to 70 year-old adults. The company, Vintage Fitness, aims to engage older adults through gamified online technology to sustain their motivation of maintaining a healthy and fit lifestyle. Older adults can feel unmotivated, confused by the technology and unsure of the complex fitness offerings available today (such as Nike+, Runkeeper, Fitocracy to name a few examples) especially by online offerings. It is important that such offerings adapt to the specific needs of older adults to keep them engaged and allow for low barriers of entry when using technology. The company is seeking the expertise of UOIT's research team to build the underlying game technology and for an online gamified online fitness service for older adults. This proposal outlines the need to develop an adaptive gamification web service that interprets physiological and online user activity data of older adults, builds an interactive community through data logging, and establishes a parametric relationship between physical activity and online presence. Such a specialized gamified service would be a first to address motivational aspects of older adults through scientific study relating physical fitness and online presence to each other. This could bring new insights into the study of motivational game technology and provide research value to the company.