An Active Lifestyle for Youths through Ambient Persuasive Technology. Implementing Activating Concepts in a School Environment

Abstract

The PlayFit project aims to design for a structural reduction in sedentary behavior throughout the day. The challenge is to engage teenagers by connecting to their mainly sedentary lifestyle by playful persuasion. Therefore we defined four design principles: (1) embedded in the context (2) trigger an intrinsic need to play, (3) adapt to a personal playing style and (4) facilitate open-ended and/or emergent play. In the past three years we have been exploring solutions through design research and applied these insights to three new concepts, each tying into a different aspect of a school day. In this paper we share the first insights in applying these design principles and implementing the concepts that help reducing sedentary behavior in schools for vocational education.