Staying healthy. We all know it’s something we should do more but rarely follow through on. With busy lives that only seem to get busier, our 24/7 juggling act of work, social life, money, and family pushes health maintenance to the backburner – often keeping it there. There are also the additional, unrelenting waves of stress that come with healthcare and healthcare organizations, whether it’s staying on top of claim statuses or the balance in one’s HSA account. Part I will be focused on gamification’s role in health and wellness. Stay tuned to learn about gamification’s role in healthcare and healthcare organizations in Part II!
Recently, the gamification gears have been grinding to convert what seems to be a necessary evil into tasks that are manageable, and even pleasurable, to maintain. Much of this has to do with the primary obstacle that many face when trying to be healthy. Today, especially in the United States, the majority of unhealthy behavior does not stem from a lack of resources or knowledge surrounding the subject, but rather, from a lack of motivation, also known as an intention-behavior gap.
We know it all too well. It’s the difference between intending to diet and actually dropping ten pounds, or between intending to sleep more and actually hitting the pillow by midnight. The key, it turns out, is to establish vivid, explicit rules. Instead of intending to diet, you state, “I will buy vegetables, not potato chips, at the store today.” The latter not only incites specific, easily followed behavior in a way that the former does not, but it also structures future behavior.
As a system that thrives off targeting and rewarding quantifiable, desirable behavior, it’s no wonder that gamification has made an appearance, with programs like Runkeeper, Nike+, and Fitbit. Especially with the ubiquity of smartphones, users have biometric sensors, GPS, and accelerometers (movement detection) right in their pockets, making it possible to target and measure behaviors such as walking, individual step count, and distance covered. Once those desirable behaviors have been identified, gamification uses game mechanics to reward those behaviors and keep the user healthy and engaged (if done correctly) for a prolonged period of time rather than a brief initial spike. In this way, gamification and mobile technology explicitly outline a step-by-step process for the user to follow, bridge the intention-behavior gap, feel rewarded, and continue towards their individual health goals.
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