Shannon Parker: Designing an Obstacle Course Game to Motivate Physical Activity among Teens

Designing an Obstacle Course Game to Motivate Physical Activity among Teens

Shannon Parker, Sonia Arteaga, Sri Kurniawan 

The Department of Computer and Information Science, Clark Atlanta Univeristy

Shannon Parker is a senior CS major at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, Georgia. Shannon worked in the HCI lab under graduate student Sonia Arteaga and professor Sri Kurniawan. This summer in her research she presents an obstacle course game for the iPhone OS platform called Jungle Course. The goal of this game is to motivate and encourage teens to become and/or remain physically active in a fun and challenging way. Increasing and maintaining high levels of physical activity in teenagers is one of the two elements suggested to maintain an energy balance and thus maintain healthy weights. Over the years, obesity has become a main health concern for adolescents and teenagers with many health risks associated with it. Combating obesity is essential to improve the healthy outlook of teenagers as adults, and reduce the expected pressures on our health care systems. To increase teenagers physical activity, Jungle Course requires that the teenager physically walk in order to complete timed obstacles and gain points. Each level requires that the user walks more steps to complete the level and the obstacle becomes more challenging. Higher scores are given for completing the level in shorter amounts of time, and thus is associated with more vigorous physical activity. To explore the usability and entertainment value of the game, she conducted a focus group for Jungle Course to analyze the impact the game had on personal motivators to become or remain physically active.