StepMate

Take care of a virtual pet while burning calories or walking steps!

Comment 1

With the growing prevalence of technology, there has been an increasing urge to push for healthier lifestyles. Poor dietary choices and sedentary lifestyles have become increasingly common, particularly in the younger generation, leading to many negative impacts.

The sheer multitude of countless papers and research projects have irrefutably shown us what these impacts are: It has been proven that a strong inverse relationship between screen time and motor skills exists, and 83% of adolescents struggle to reach the minimum time recommended for physical activity of 60 minutes per week.

Research has also shown us the most feasible solution. People who exercise less than once a week or less request 75% more sick days than those who walk for 20 minutes a day, and those who do exercise regularly get sick less often, for shorter periods, and with milder symptoms.

So how do we achieve this? A naive approach would be to just “ban screen time”, however technology shapes and improves so many facets of our daily lives. Rather than opposing technology, we instead decided to take advantage of its ubiquity.

Our solution is to bring exercising and technology together. We propose a product that gamifies and holds you accountable to your health goals, with the ability to share and collaborate on goals alongside friends and the wider community.

Introducing StepMate. You take care of a virtual pet, whose happiness directly correlates to your consistency in achieving the goals you’ve set. These health goals can be any quantifiable criteria, from steps walked, flights climbed, calories burned, and etc, all automatically tracked from their phone, no cheating!

These virtual pets can also be shared in a group, your pet (getting sad anyone misses the target), making exercise a collaborative effort.

Share this project:

Updates