From DDR to Pokemon GO: A Brief History of Games for Health

NOTE: All attendees MUST provide their official name on the Meetup and will be required to show proper ID to enter the building.

Abstract:

Over the past 30 years, games for health have been created to convey health-related knowledge, promote health behavior change, and provide medical assistance, reaching widespread popularity in the last few years with Wii Sports. This talk will survey the evolution of games for health over the course of its entire history, with particular focus on the effects that innovations in artificial intelligence and user interface have had in achieving health outcomes by establishing new user behaviors. Finally, we'll explore the potential that the theories and technologies that these games rely on could be applied to influencing user behavior through digital advertising, and the potential application in other realms.

Speaker:

Langxuan (James) Yin is a pioneer in Games for Health. Dr. Yin received his B.E. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, China, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Northeastern University. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Dr. Yin theorized the first research and design framework of Games for Health that this research field has seen. He also designed a series of computer games and a number of experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of his framework. Dr. Yin is now an engineering team lead at MediaMath, where he looks for ways to apply principles from game design to advertising.