{"id":8383,"date":"2013-11-07T11:08:54","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T16:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8383"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:09:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:09:49","slug":"assistant-professor-edward-kims-new-app-uses-gamification-techniques-to-engage-users-and-help-them-live-healthier-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8383","title":{"rendered":"Assistant Professor Edward Kim\u2019s new app uses gamification techniques to engage users and help them live healthier lives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ed<\/a>
Assistant Professor Edward Kim is at the forefront of the emerging field of gamification.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From Oregon Trail<\/em> to Call of Duty,<\/em> video games have captivated audiences for decades. But a new trend\u2014gamification\u2014is turning a platform traditionally associated with entertainment into a functional way to gather data, enhance people\u2019s life choices, and more.<\/p>\n

Edward Kim<\/strong>, assistant professor of interactive multimedia (IMM) and computer science, is at the forefront of this emerging field. Together with IMM majors Eliza Donne \u201914<\/strong> and Jared Krinsky \u201914<\/strong> and a collaborator from Rutgers, Kim developed wHealth<\/em>, an award-winning interactive application that aims to improve users\u2019 health-related decision making.<\/p>\n

wHealth<\/em> puts users in the role of a recently graduated college student, where they make decisions governing the activities of their digital counterpart. For example, on a Saturday afternoon do you drink beer, watch TV, or meet up with a coworker? To show users the impact of their decisions, every choice has immediate and extreme health consequences. It\u2019s a process called minimizing future discounting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you make a decision to have a cigarette or drink a beer in real life, you feel good about yourself because those items provide instant gratification and you don\u2019t see the negative health impacts immediately,\u201d Kim said. wHealth<\/em> attempts to minimize future discounting\u2014to stop people from choosing instant gratification over healthy habits\u2014by immediately showing the adverse effects of poor health choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you eat a pizza in the game you get diabetes; if you drink a beer you become obese,\u201d Kim said.<\/p>\n

Because wHealth<\/em> combines aspects of video games with engaging storytelling techniques, it holds the user\u2019s interest, which enables it to collect meaningful data, Kim said. That\u2019s why games such as wHealth<\/em> can have a bigger impact on a person\u2019s health choices than conventional applications, like quit smoking apps, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no engagement in those apps. The only hook is that people want to quit smoking, but there is nothing to keep that intrinsic motivation high for users.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for wHealth<\/em>\u2019s effectiveness in influencing users\u2019 future decision making, Kim said, \u201cThe data is still preliminary, but on a personal note, I haven\u2019t seen a doctor in years. After playing this game, I made an appointment to see one in the next month.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From ‘Oregon Trail’ to ‘Call of Duty,’ video games have captivated audiences for decades. But a new trend\u2014gamification\u2014is turning a platform traditionally associated with entertainment into a functional way to gather data, enhance people\u2019s life choices, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":8384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}