Was out with some friends earlier playing the Nintendo Wii. For those of you who still have the console, one of the base games (and frankly most entertaining games) is Wii Sports. The graphics are absolutely horrid, especially everything else on the market these days but the fun factor still exists (enough to get 4 lazy bums to work their asses off).
That got me thinking about experiences being used in training and whether it’s possible to use this for home based exercises.
A Friend of mine works in the augmented humans lab (http://asg.sutd.edu.sg) in one of the Singapore universities and this is an area we have been looking at for a while (in terms of making things more entertaining for folks going through rehab)
The early stages would still be to design the function (throw the crap of design first out the window. I’m an engineer first and function always surpasses form. Until no one uses the product then scramble to rebuild the product from scratch with a design overhaul while still having function as the compass)
But in general the same steps apply (the way I see it):
- Look at the problem
- Understand the problem
- Address the problem with a solution
- Test it out
- If it works, think of how to do it better
- Humanize the whole experience
iOS exercise apps
There’s the famous Zombie Run (https://appsto.re/sg/gnzXH.i) and an equivalent walking app (for the garden variety couch potato) The Walk (https://appsto.re/sg/oKeEO.i)
There’s the one more I discovered earlier, 7 Minute Superhero Workout (
The company behind this, Six to Start is constantly pushing the boundary to gamify exercise. Looking forward to what they have next.
Screenshots
