From exercise to socialize: Improving peer relationships in the fitness center

Increasingly, research and design into multiplayer games and social interaction amongst remote and local game participants is becoming a consistent topic in game design and HCI [4]. After six months of ethnographic investigation, empirical study and developing prototypes, we have designed and developed a novel solution in the fitness and social interaction domains. In this paper we introduce "Calorie Cruncher", an interactive game in a fitness center, designed to instigate social interactions in the gym. In this paper we [i] discuss the results of our ethnographic study and highlight the problem space [ii] illustrate our design process after six months of research, design, and development [iii] evaluate our results from the Wizard of Oz usability test while we look at multi user engagement. Our evaluation indicated three major findings: the Calorie Cruncher game was liked by all participants, there are two sub-populations of fitness center attendees: the unsocial and social gym-goers, and the Calorie Cruncher provides a good common ground for social interaction through competition.