Author: Peter Fikar Technological advancement influences the course of our societies' development and has a heavy impact on our daily lives. Computation and industrialization provide us with the opportunity to control many aspects of our work and daily lives by just sitting in front of a computer screen, therefore a sufficient physical activity level, which is essential for our wellbeing and health, no longer portraits a necessity to maintain for many people in their daily routine. The

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... y young field of research regarding digital games utilized in order to achieve serious effects is gaining importance in current scientific literature. Such games make use of the entertaining qualities of video games as a medium to achieve a variety of beneficial effects in users. Prevention, intervention and therapeutic aftercare are just a few fields of application within the health sector providing serious backgrounds for such games. This work documents our experiences in designing a game to encourage physical activity on a scientific and user feedback-driven basis in our attempt to challenge sedentary habits. We look into existing installments of gamified applications, serious games and exergames, propagating exercising activity and sharing similar goals, such as an increase of physical activity level, analyzing their central themes and their development process. We combine defined goals for physical activity and participant's feedback, gathered throughout an iterative design process, into a fully functional mobile game in a serious context. The final digital prototype of this browser-based smart phone game will provide the vital basis for exploring our design decisions and evaluating their impact on the participating users. Through the applied scientific methods and the insights we aim to gain through exploring participant's expectations and experiences, we seek to identify motivational factors within our design which are possibly key to overcome personal barriers to physical activity. Furthermore we seek to encourage increased physical activity and to identify the relating aspects in participants responsible for triggering a possibly successful change from sedentary behavior to a more active lifestyle. v Kurzfassung