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I am currently a PhD student
at the Institut Grundlagen Moderner Architektur und Entwerfen at University of Stuttgart, Germany. My research is funded by a
doctorate fellowship of the Baden-Württemberg state and is partly conducted at
the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts at Middlesex University, UK. I live and
work in east London.
Abstract. Chronic conditions such as obesity
or diabetes are among the most prevalent health threats to Western societies.
They are caused by multiple factors such as genetic disposition, environmental
changes and socio-economic circumstances of millions of people. Bearing the
importance of health related behaviour in mind, urban design and research seems
to face a twofold challenge: Health orientated planning needs to consider how
cities are built and increasingly has
to address how urban landscapes are actually being used in everyday life. Meanwhile, digital health games seek to apply established
knowledge about behaviour change and learning to the design of interactive
media. Though increasingly running on mobile devices, these services hardly
consider design, topography and cultural context of real world locations. Within my research on Urban Health Games, I argue that paying more attention to the urban
landscape while designing health games may well improve their effectiveness and play experience. My aim is therefore to open up the
discussion to the disciplines of pervasive gaming, pervasive healthcare as well
as urban and architectural design.
Urbanism and
Health. In order
to gain a broader understanding of today’s health care services, I
investigate the relationship between ideas of healthy living and urbanism. My
interest spans from early 19th century health reform movements to modernist
life reformers and 1960s artistic practices. The essay Die hygienisierte Stadt, published in the German magazine Die Alte Stadt, takes its starting point from prefect Haussmann’s urbanisation policies. He
introduced a large amount of urban infrastructure to the 19th century
Paris such as canalisation, wide, clean, tree lined boulevards and parks. Two
types of modern pedestrians have been distinguished, who interacted with Haussmann’s
Sanitized City in very different ways: The anti-bourgeois Flaneur protested against taylorism by taking a
turtle for a walk. On the other hand, their bourgeois counterparts
organised themselves in dietetic health clubs. Morgenpromenadler met early in the morning in order to stroll along in large parks near the city before starting their working day…
Knöll, Martin, “Die hygienisierte Stadt: […] zur Teilnahme an postmodernen Health Games”, Die Alte Stadt: Zeitschrift für Stadtgeschichte, Stadtsoziologie, Denkmalpflege und Stadtentwicklung , Vol. 2010, Issue 3, 2010.
Locations
in digital health games. While several “building blocks” of gameplay
activities have been framed in health game design, there is few works discussing
their relation to real world game sites. In contrast, pervasive gaming has
developed several formats and genres – all of them thorough fully
addressing the urban landscape. Moreover, urban and architectural design has
undertaken first attempts to approach the role of space and spatiality in
digital games. In this article, we discuss various research approaches and
construct a conceptual framework to guide our review on current health game
practise.
Knöll, Martin & Moar, Magnus, “On the Importance of Locations in
Therapeutic Serious Games - Review on current health games and how they make
use of the urban landscape”, in: Proceedings of The Therapeutic Serious
Game and Pervasive Computing Workshop 2011, IEEE Explore, Dublin, 23rd May
2011.
Research
and Design. The on going research & design projects aim to further develop
the theoretical framework presented above. They focus on a
specific design task: How can playful digital health services motivate
users to document their daily diabetes management? An earlier project has
been developed together with the Diabetes Centre at Olgahsospital in Stuttgart. In several sessions,
we have interviewed a group of children with type-1 diabetes on their ideas
about mobile health games. Where would they like to play a diabetes game? And
where would they not like to play, if it would for instance imply testing their sugar levels?
In one publication, I try to show that users’ comments seem to be closely
related to the social context of potential play sites. They have revealed several pragmatic
issues arising from playing a diabetes game within an everyday life environment. The project Diabetes City was awarded with MFG Baden Württemberg’s Karl-Steinbuch-Stipendium in 2008 / 2009. See article on Diabetes City in the German
magazine DoIT online.
Knöll, Martin, “’On the
top of high towers...’ - Discussing locations in a mobile health game for
diabetics”, in: Katherine Blashki (ed.), Proceedings
of the IADIS International Conference Game and Entertainment Technologies 2010,
IADIS Press, 2010.
Knöll, Martin,
“Pervasive Health Games”, in: Cannon-Bowers, Janis & Bowers, Clint (ed.), Serious
Game Design and Development: Technologies for Training and Learning, IGI
Global, Hershey & New York, 2010.