Seekaboo is a game that subtly motivates walking through play.
We developed a puzzle scavenger-hunt like game, Seekaboo, that can scale for any size city. Each clue, a secret leads citywalkers from location to location. They can jump in the game at any point and quit at any time. Secrets move overtime; the game becomes challenging.
The goal of our project is to motivate walking for moms with young children. Changing behavior is difficult, so a fun game they can play together was our solution from the ideation process. The Secrets are hidden in high and low locations that both parents and children would 'seek' together. Over time, the Secrets shift locations so the game continues to be fun. Each device is develoepd at an inexpensive cost and has a small GPS device to track for theft and when the Secrets move.
Secrets are hidden all over the city (above, left) and are manually moved over time.
When a Secret is found, a simple puzzle needs to be solved that both challenges the intellect of the mother and is enjoyable for the child. Players can 'jump in' or 'jump out' of the game at any time. It's free and they can play one puzzle or all of them. For mothers with full hands and busy schedules, this is game allows them to walk and play at their pace and schedule. We tested Seekaboo with 3 adults and 3 children respsectively. While the game was set up in an arts neighorhood of Bloomington, Indiana, people casually walking by began to play the game.
Research was a lot of fun
We researched many academic and scientific documents to understand exercise and behavior change principles. But, our best understanding came from simply watching and talking to people who walk... and people who don't!
To better understand moms and their children we went to the Wonderlab, a science playground to understand their interactions through ethnographic studies.
We also played with some really cool kids for our UX test
I designed a pretty goody bag for their participation time.
In the future players who solve Seekaboo puzzles may benefit local or global communities like freerice.com. Future considerations also include a level for casual players and a more immersive game for competitive players similar to geo-caching.
