Print thisMindless Eating Challenge: Persuasive Mechanisms in Mobile Health Games
Mindless Eating Challenge, a mobile phone game for younger adolescents, rewards players’ good health habits and food choices. A study of this game investigates how strategies of persuasion in a game can promote healthy behaviors in daily life. The game uses eating tips, mobile phone snapshots of foods that players plan to eat, nurturing of virtual characters, and feedback from the system and from peers to promote good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.
Daniel R. Cosley, Ph.D.
Collin R. Payne, Ph.D.
John Pollak
Brian Wansink
News
| Grantee | Project | Publication | Title |
Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Cornell University
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Mindless Eating Challenge: Persuasive Mechanisms in Mobile Health Games | The Post-Standard |
Virtual Pets Encourage Canastota Students to Eat Healthy  |
06/08/2009 |
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Cornell University
|
Mindless Eating Challenge: Persuasive Mechanisms in Mobile Health Games | The Post-Standard |
Can a Virtual Pet Teach Kids? |
11/18/2008 |
Publications
Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology's special issue called Serious Games for Diabetes, Obesity, and Healthy Lifestyle
Byrne, S. (2009). Ahead of their time: Elementary school children and the risks of being online. Presented at Cayuga Heights Elementary School, Ithaca, NY.
Byrne, S. (2009). Youth and Technology: The Risks and Benefits. Presented at Cornell Cooperative Extension, Coalition for Families.
Byrne, S., Gay, G., Pollak, J. P., Retelny, D., Gonzales, A. L., & Wansink, B. (2010). When I eat so bad, my pet looks so sad: An initial test of the persuasive effect of feedback from a mobile phone virtual pet on adolescent breakfast intake. A paper accepted for presentation at the annual conference of the International Communication Association, Division: Children, Adolescents and the Media, Singapore.
Byrne, S., Gay, G., Pollak, J. P., Retelny, D., Gonzales, A. L., & Wansink, B. (under review). Care for mobile phone based avatars can lead teenagers to eat breakfast.
Gay, G. & Byrne, S. (2009). Serious games, digital health. Presented at Intel Corporation.
Gay, G. & Pollak, J.P. (2010). Mood and health. Presented at Sanofi-Aventis.
Gay, G. (2009). Context-Aware Mobile Computing: Affordances of Space, Social Awareness, and Social Influence. Princeton, NJ: Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
Gay, G. (2010). Cell phones and health. Presented at Verizon Research.
Gay, G. (2010). Social networks and health. Presented at Google Research.