HealthyU

Designing a health and fitness app through gamification and personalised avatars

HealthyU is my dissertation project. I wanted to see if designing an app to improve health and wellbeing in students and young adults using game design methods was viable.

The app tries to encourage healthy lifestyle choices through gameplay.

Sleep

One of the habits I wanted to encourage was healthy sleep routines. This is proven to have a good impact on physical and mental health. To accomplish this, the app features a sleep calculator and a sleep tracking graph.

These were simple enough to design so I will not share the code - however, this allows the user to view and track their own sleeping patterns as well as work out when to sleep/wake up in order to get the recommended amount of sleep each night.

Avatar

In order to maintain user engagement and fulfill a user’s need for social interaction - I decided to implement a basic virtual avatar that would guide the user around the app as well as being a (really cute) virtual pet.
Users can interact with the avatar by feeding it, resting it and playing mini-games with it. As well as this, there are over 22 different avatars to pick from (although they are all cats).

Mini games

The app features mini games to improve engagement and allow the user to interact with their avatar. One game is a 2D falling coin game where the user has to catch coins and avoid falling objects to earn points.
Another game is a gamified version of the 4-7-8 breathing pattern to reduce anxiety or help people sleep.
The avatar grows and shrinks for the same amount of time as the method advises, helping the user to visualise how long they should inhale/exhale for.
Although this was a small addition, I was pleased I could add something simple which was proven to help reduce anxiety symptoms.

Evaluation

I am pleased with the finished app prototype. I think it showcases what an app of this nature could look like, and I plan to improve the features that were barer and improve the UI. I have learned a lot about project management, and the importance of setting clear milestones throughout the development cycle. I’m also pleased to have had a chance to gain experience developing for a mobile platform, as this is an area I have been interested in but hadn’t had the chance to pursue on my degree.