BIG-AOME: Designing Bodily Interaction Gamification towards Anti-sedentary Online Meeting Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces the BIG-AOME framework, a gamified bodily interaction design to reduce sedentary behavior and enhance social engagement during online meetings, based on user-centered prototyping and evaluation.

Contribution

It presents a novel framework for anti-sedentary online meeting design using gamified bodily interactions, developed through collaborative prototyping and qualitative evaluation.

Findings

Gamified bodily interactions encourage physical movement.

Participants found these interactions reduce awkwardness and foster social engagement.

The framework highlights design dimensions like body engagement and virtual/physical environment.

Abstract

Online meetings have become an integral part of daily life, but prolonged screen time poses significant health risks. While various interventions address sedentary lifestyles, few focus on mitigating sedentary behavior during online meetings. Design opportunities in this context remain underexplored. This study investigates the design of gamified bodily interactions as anti-sedentary measures during online meetings using a research through design approach. In collaboration with 11 users, we co-designed and iterated three prototypes, resulting in the BIG-AOME (Bodily Interaction Gamification towards Anti-sedentary Online Meeting Environments) framework. User studies with 15 participants across three groups evaluated these prototypes through semi-structured interviews analyzed using Hsieh's qualitative content analysis. Findings show that gamified bodily interactions encourage physical movement while reducing awkwardness during online meetings. Participants valued the social engagement fostered by cooperative and competitive elements in these games, enhancing social dynamics while encouraging physical movement. Such games can also serve as online icebreakers or playful decision-making tools. This study offers a comprehensive analysis of design dimensions within the BIG-AOME framework, including body engagement, attention, bodily interplay, timeliness, and virtual/physical environments, highlighting the potential of anti-sedentary bodily interactions to mitigate sedentary behavior and enhance social connections in online meetings.