Hunting Relics: A Persuasive Exergame to Promote Collective Exercise in Young Children

Child obesity and being overweight is a health problem of increasing occurrence. Sedentary lifestyles and lack of exercise affect young children’s motor skills development, hence their quality of life. This study presents the design and evaluation of Hunting Relics, a collaborative exergame to promote collective exertion in young children. The system runs on an interactive floor and was designed using an iterative user-centered methodology in combination with the Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation to generate Behavior (COM-B) model. To evaluate the impact of our design choices, two deployment studies were conducted. Results show that Hunting Relics augments existing exercise routines, keeps young children engaged for the long term, and persuades them to discover new collaborative practices to support exercising. A discussion follows about how the COM-B model is a useful framework to design exergames for young children and the impact of Hunting Relics from an educational, technical, and clinical perspective.