Mobile Game Approach to Prevent Childhood
Obesity Using Persuasive Technology
Eman Almonani1, Wahidah Husain2, Oh Ying San3
Ammar Almomani4, Mohammed Al-Betar5
School of Computer Sciences,
Universiti Sains Malaysia
11800 Penang, Malaysia
1
eman19830@yahoo.com, 2wahidah@cs.usm.my,
3
oysan@student.usm.my
Dept. of Information Technology,
Al-Huson University College, Al-Balqa Applied University,
P.O. Box 50, Irbid, Jordan,
4
ammarnav6@gmail.com, 5mohbetar@cs.usm.my
Abstract—Obesity is a condition in which the body has excess
fat. Childhood obesity has become an important public health
issue because affects every aspect of the life of a child. More
specifically, the condition leads to poor health and negative social
perceptions. Many risk factors are linked to obesity. The varying
aspects of the problem and its serious implications for future
health and well-being of children are enormous. The most
effective solution can be achieved via programs geared to prevent
such diseases. Children spend an average of more than three
hours daily in front of the television, an hour at the computer,
and 30 minutes playing video games, which opens major
opportunities for us to propose a mobile game approach to
prevent childhood obesity (MACO) using persuasive technology.
MACO is a game-based persuasive mobile technology designed to
inspire children to apply healthy eating habits as well as to begin
and continue being physically active. This technology also
introduces fun activities to motivate children to exercise more
and encourage them to choose healthier food in appropriate
amounts. A study on persuasive technologies application and
childhood obesity prevention is conducted to determine the best
persuasive technology application for MACO. The study
proposes a framework and develops a system prototype.
Keywords—Childhood
Technology
Obesity;
I.
Mobile
Phone;
Persuasive
INTRODUCTION
The combined average of overweight and obese children in
Malaysia is 9.6%, which represents a high percentage [1]. A
survey revealed that the incidence of obesity is increasing
gradually with age. Obesity is prevalent among 6.6% of
children aged seven years and 13.8% of children aged 10 years
old [2], indicating that childhood obesity is increasing through
the years.
Persuasive technology is often developed to shift the
attention of people to particular information to modify their
thoughts and actions. Persuasive technology is computer
system, device, or application that is voluntarily designed to
modify the attitude or behavior of a person [3]. The tools
include devices (e.g., pedometer or balance board), media (e.g.,
video, audio, or both), and social interaction (e.g., playing with
another person) to enable the individual to change his behavior
without being conscious of the change.
978-1-4799-0059-6/13/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Children spend an average of more than three hours daily in
front of the TV, an hour at the computer, and 30 minutes
playing video games. They also send almost 100 text messages
daily [4]. Approximately more than 50% of children use
mobile phones. The majority of the children use mobile phones
daily at home and at school in periods ranging from less than
one year to more than four years. Moreover, most children
believe that mobile technologies are easy to use, and most of
them enjoy playing mobile games.
To deal with health-related problems, children can be
reached through the media in which they are most familiar.
Although studies on the application of persuasive technologies
to prevent childhood obesity are numerous, studies that
combine persuasive technology to promote physical activity
and healthy eating habits in mobile game application are
scarce.
Therefore, a mobile game approach to prevent childhood
obesity (MACO) application is proposed by utilizing
persuasive mobile game technology to prevent childhood
obesity. The main goal of MACO is to persuade children to
practice healthy lifestyles by eating the right food and to be
physically active.
The objectives of the study are:
• To identify the most suitable persuasive technology to
be applied in MACO.
• To identify the user requirements of MACO.
• To propose the framework for MACO.
• To design the prototype of MACO that matches the
needs and preferences of users.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2
presents the related works. Sections 3 and 4 discuss the
proposed framework and system prototype, respectively.
Section 5 presents the conclusions and future work.
II.
RELATED WORK
Persuasive technology is commonly developed to attract the
attention of people to specific information in an attempt to
modify their thoughts and actions. The computer screen
displays warnings in the form of prompts for software guidance
[5]. Persuasive technology can be used to modify human
behavior to improve healthcare and fitness [3]. Such
technologies are also employed in sales, diplomacy, politics,
religion, military training, public health, and management. The
most common persuasive technology analysis concentrates on
interactive, computational technologies, along with desktop
computers, web services, video games, and mobile technology
[6]. Persuasive technologies exist in many domains, but
attention to the modification of behavior in health domains was
only given recently.
A. Persuasive Mobile Technologies
Fogg described mobile technology as the “kairos factor”
[7]. The substantial information on a mobile phone regarding
its owner facilitated the delivery of messages tailored to the
current location, calendar, habits, and preferences of the user.
This description also led to the very personal relationship
between a phone and its owner. Fogg even used the term
“marriage” to describe the relationship of a person with their
mobile phone. Users are confident about the quality and
relevance of information found in phone messages and the
amount of accessible mobile phone games because the mobile
phone is always connected, and the user, in many cases, has
constant access to the Internet. The emphasis of persuasive
mobile technologies is to modify the habits or to improve the
health of the individual by monitoring his or her behavior.
B. Education Game Design
Cordova and Lepper revealed that learning could be fun
and effective, especially with the help of simple educational
tasks [8]. They showed that learning in a setting that motivates
enhances learning outcomes, and that interaction helps children
learn. Learning can only occur when the learner is interactively
involved with the game; in other words, balance between
challenge and action is possible [8].
Based on the study of Alessi and Trollip, an educational
game can be divided into three main parts, namely, the
introduction, the body of the game, and the conclusion [9] as
shown in Figure 1. In the introduction section, the scenario of
the game is presented to the students. Then, the students need
to accomplish the games as planned. Finally, the reaction is
evaluated and updated.
C. Game in Healthcare
Game for healthcare is a game that moves beyond the
educational phase toward the long-term support for children
who suffer from chronic conditions, such as obesity. Games
can motivate the healthy eating habits of children, remind them
of their treatments, direct their attention, and maintain their
health status and records of treatment [10].
Pollak et al. developed “Time to Eat,” a mobile phone
based game intended to improve teen eating behavior [4]. They
designed the game similar to virtual pet care. The game focuses
on pet care as part of the daily routine of child, which fits well
with behavior change models employing repeated
reinforcement. Walter et al. developed a long-term treatment
game [10]. The player owns pet stored in the backpack. In case
the player forgets to take care of the pet at suitable times in the
day, the pet will become ill. To feed the pet, the game presents
several menus to feed the pet to restore or maintain its health.
The game attempts try to solve childhood obesity by
organizing meal times or providing information on food while
the children will require more physical activity to make this
game more realistic. Integrating persuasive mobile
technologies in games for physical and eating habit activities is
vital. A persuasive game to prevent childhood obesity based on
the background study, the combination of education
courseware on good eating habit, and the importance of
physical activity is proposed.
III.
PROPOSED FRAMEWORK
The main role of MACO is to prevent childhood obesity by
teaching children to eat healthy food and suggest physical
activities, with or without the Internet connection. A survey
regarding the expectations of the MACO is developed to
support the proposed work. The survey is divided into two
parts. Part one pertains to the demographic information, family
background, knowledge related to mobile usage, and behavior
of children toward mobile games and its effectiveness to
prevent obesity. Part two of the survey extracts the user
requirement for MACO. This survey successfully obtained
feedback from 93 respondents. Based on the background study
of persuasive technologies, education courseware, and the
survey results, a framework for MACO is designed and the
prototype of the system is developed.
MACO is a game based persuasive mobile technology
designed to inspire children to apply healthy eating habits, as
well as to encourage them to be physically active. The aim is to
design a fun game courseware to motivate the children to start
exercising and to empower them to choose the proper type and
amount of food. Figure 2 shows the two main components of
MACO. The first component includes a courseware that
consists of “My healthy food,” “It is time to eat,” and “My
active kids,” whereas the second component includes two
games, namely, healthy food and physical activity games.
Fig. 1: The general structure and flow of the games [9]
The first part of MACO shows the first step of the
persuasive mobile game, which requires the user to input their
profile data. The data includes the name, gender, age, weight,
and height of the user. Then, the system will ask the user to
select a game and level from the options using real picture,
animation, music, sound effects, and mind games. The final
choice is the default system, which includes the dynamic and
static user options. All the data will be loaded onto the MACO
game system before starting the game. The second step is to
calculate the points accumulated by the user. The user gains a
point for every correct answer. Collecting 10 points entitles the
user access to the next part of MACO, which are physical
activity games. Otherwise, the user will have to play the same
healthy food game again until he gains the full 10 points. The
persuasive approach is applied in this game component to
encourage children to eat healthy food and to exercise in an
enjoyable manner.
Fig. 2: Proposed Framework of MACO
IV.
SYSTEM PROTYPE
A system prototype is developed to evaluate the
functionalities of the proposed framework. The two
components of the system prototype are persuasive mobile
courseware and persuasive mobile game.
A. Persuasive Mobile Courseware
Persuasive mobile courseware has two learning modules.
The first module is on healthy foods and the best time to eat,
whereas the second teaches children the importance of
physical activities to make them healthy.
1) My healthy foods and It’s time to eat
These two modules introduce children to healthy food
and explain the schedule of eating times, and provide
reminders for healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner as shown
in Figures 3(a) and (b).
Fig. 3(a): Snapshot of the best time
to eat
Fig.3(b): Snapshot
breakfast
of
Healthy
Before the game is played, the children are provided
with some information regarding the nutrition benefits of
each food through simple image and text. Finally, each
course will inform the children regarding healthy and
unhealthy foods as shown in Figures 4(a) and (b). At this
level, MACO will inform the children regarding the
importance of eating healthy food and inform them about
the effects of eating unhealthy food.
Fig. 4(a): Snapshot of Unhealthy
foods
1) Healthy Food Game
In one of the healthy food games, both healthy and
unhealthy food objects will continuously drop from the top
of the screen, and the children have to click on the objects
before the objects reach the bottom of the screen and
disappear. They need to accumulate 10 points by selecting
10 healthy foods before they can advance to the next level.
Figures 6(a) and (b) show the snapshots of the Healthy Food
Game.
Fig.4(b): Snapshot of Unhealthy
food
2) My active kids
My active kids helps children become aware of the
importance of being physically active and to inform them of
the risk of being obese by displaying images of healthy and
active children overweight and obese children, and the effect
of physical activity for each type of children. For instance,
active children can be funny, relaxed, and have many friends,
whereas obese children tend to be lazy, have low selfesteem, easily agitated, and have few friends (Figures 5(a)
and ( b)). In this module, MACO attempts to instill in the
children the disadvantages of being obese, and to persuade
them to exercise regularly to stay healthy.
Fig. 5(a): Snapshot of My active kids
B. Persuasive Mobile Games
The second component is the game module, which
includes healthy food and physical activity games.
Fig. 5(b): Snapshot of My active
kids
Fig. 6(a): Snapshot I of Healthy
foods game
Fig. 6(b): Snapshot II of Healthy
foods game
If the children accumulate 10 points, the children can
continue playing or advance to the next level of the game or
proceed to the physical activity game. If the children failed
to accumulate 10 points, they have to repeat the lesson on
healthy and unhealthy foods as shown in Figures 7(a) and
(b). This process will ensure that the children can distinguish
between healthy and unhealthy foods, and achieves the
objectives in persuasive mobile games. The children are
persuaded to learn about healthy food in a fun way without
realizing it.
Fig. 7(a): Snapshot in healthy food
game
Fig.7(b): Snapshot in healthy food
game
2) Physical Activities Game
Games are related to the changing experience of the
person, and the method of learning offers the opportunity to
practice and examine the environment. The main concern is
to motivate and make exercise flexible based on persuasive
mobile technology. Only a simple room or space is required
to activate the game. The child can easily operate the game
alone, with their friends, or with their parents.
The children are asked to play the games in a specific
place (fixed location) or by moving based on the required
physical activity. This activity has many types of games.
Games involving physical activities, such as jumping or
running are shown in Figures 8(a) and (b). The user is
requested to update the information at the end of each
activity to assess the effectiveness of the learning courseware
and the games.
children today use mobile phones. Most children find mobile
technologies easy to use and they enjoy playing mobile
games. Based on the study on the persuasive mobile game
technology and the response from the potential users, MACO
is developed to provide services and to assist children to
apply healthy eating habits, as well as to encourage them to
be physically active. Applying persuasive mobile game
technology in the learning courseware will encourage
children to practice healthy lifestyles. As a result, the total
number of overweight and obese children can be reduced.
For future work, a study on the effectiveness of the
proposed system will be conducted on a group of children
between the ages of six to twelve years old. The result of the
study will be used to develop the full version of the mobile
game approach using persuasive technology.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to thanks Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Penang, and Al-Huson University College, Al-Balqa Applied
University, Irbid, Jordan for supporting this study.
Play with Jumping
Jump 20 times in your
place in 5 minutes
rope 5 minutes
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Fig. 8(a): Snapshot
activities Game
of
Physical
Next
Fig. 8(b): Snapshot of Physical
activities Game
The main roles of the learning courseware and the
persuasive game are to prevent obesity among children and
to overcome the childhood obesity problem. The application
teaches the children about healthy and unhealthy foods and
encourages them to be physically active. Moreover,
collaboration and support from friends, parents, and schools
are required to ensure that the process of improving the
lifestyle of the children is successful.
V.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
Obesity can be prevented through lifestyle changes and
should begin early in life. Obesity cannot be prevented or
managed solely at the individual level. The communities,
government, the media, and the food industry need to work
together to modify and stop the unhealthy trends in diet and
to encourage physical activity among children. A majority of