Fish N Steps
It sounds like a paradox: Sit in front of your computer screen and get in better shape.
But that's the type of research Silvia Lindtner has immersed herself in as a doctoral student in the Bren Schools Department of Informatics.
Lindtner of Long Beach was part of a team within a Siemens Research lab that developed an interactive computer game, Fish 'N' Steps, which links a player's daily footstep count to the growth and activity of animated fish.
In the Fish 'N' Steps game, the more a player walks, the bigger her fish grows. Linked to a community of other players, a player can become the biggest fish in the virtual pond.
Experts recommend walking 10,000 steps a day, or about five miles, to maintain aerobic health.
Lindtner worked on the Fish 'N' Steps project with her colleagues in the User Experience department at Siemens Corporate Research Inc. in Princeton, N.J.
Her team's idea was a twist on the Tamagotchi "digital pet" that created a sensation when manufacturer Bandai introduced it in 1996. The "health" and "happiness" of the handheld virtual creature depended on how well the user took care of it by responding to prompts for food, play and sanitation.
In a 14-week study with 19 participants, Lindtner and her colleagues found that Fish 'N' Steps which is not yet commercially available served as a catalyst for promoting exercise and for improving players' attitudes toward physical activity.
"In general, the game seems to have served its purpose: Created initial excitement, increased participants' awareness of their levels of physical activity and provided motivation to increase the activity level in a fun and engaging way," Lindtner and her colleagues wrote in their paper.
An increasingly sedentary lifestyle like sitting in front of a computer is one factor behind the worldwide epidemic of obesity, researchers say.
In a study released at an informatics conference in September the UbiComp 2006, at UCI the research team from Siemens found that the players' awareness of their own physical activity level increased and that the majority of the participants in the study were able to improve their physical activity, measured in steps per day. In the paper presented at the Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Lindtner cited research that says individuals change their behavior gradually such as lifestyle changes that lead to weight loss by advancing along a series of steps.
"This is all about enhancing people's everyday lives through technological and artistic artifacts," Lindtner says.
Steps like the ones taken in the Fish 'N' Steps game.
By wearing a pedometer, downloading the data and watching a virtual pet grow, most participants in the Fish 'n' Steps study increased the number of steps they took each day.
Also, a participant's daily walking goal affected the appearance of his or her fish. The fish would smile in the case of sufficient progress, and would shed cute little animated tears when a person wasn't walking enough.
One participant reported an increase in the number of steps, to 7,000 per day from 5,000.
"It motivated me to start exercising," the participant told researchers. "Before, I wasn't doing any kind of jogging. The game made me realize that I need to exercise more. My goals have now increased.
Though she is not sure if Fish 'N' Steps will become commercially available, her research, completed just before she started her doctoral program this fall, dovetails into a major mission of the Department of Informatics: discovering ways to further integrate technology into people's daily lives.
- Greg Hardesty, The Orange County Register. The full version of this story can be viewed on the Orange Country Register web site.
