HikePal: A mobile exergame to motivate people with intellectual disabilities to do outdoor physical activities

Abstract

People with intellectual disabilities often have a sedentary lifestyle that can lead to long-term issues like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity and depression. Although literature shows that the main reason for this is the lack of motivation to do physical activity, scarce research has been done in accessible apps to track and foster physical activities that address motivation. This paper presents HikePal, a game-inspired app to motivate individuals with intellectual disabilities to do physical activity outdoors. We have followed a design and creation research strategy using 1) semi-structured interviews with five experts (health care workers, special education experts and software engineers); 2) a focus group with an occupational therapist, a physical therapist and four software engineers; 3) a pilot user test with three individuals with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers. Having social interaction during the physical activity turned out to be a major motivational aspect of the system, whereas reward systems did not attract much of the users’ attention. Regarding the adapted navigational assistance, we found out that easy-to-read text, visual communication and street-level pictures were the key features to achieve successful and understandable guidance outdoors for people with intellectual disabilities. It proved useful to perform a test on the field and to refine the design guidelines in view of a forthcoming large-scale experimental test involving a larger number of persons with intellectual, sensory and motor disabilities.