I slept most of the flight to Salt Lake City. When we were close the sound of the tires descending woke me up and I looked out the window. I saw patches of murky brown swamp and cyanic waters below. The Salt Lake looked a little gross this time of year. But the mountains were gorgeous. Outside it was 70 degrees; yet the mountains were capped with snow.
I always forget that Utah has some of the best scenery this country can offer. They also have more children than I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re everywhere. Like iPhones.
The setting for one of the schools. Photo by flickr User humanagames.
Earl Hurst, President of Humana of Utah told me that his state was one of the largest producers of kids in the country. I am not surprised. Salt Lake is a very family friendly place. There is plenty of stuff to do outdoors and great schools to attend when you’re grown up. That’s one of the reasons why we’re so excited to launch the Horsepower Challenge (HPC) there. We have a new version of the game: 2.0, and its better and more exciting than ever (if you aren’t familiar with the HPC you can read about here). A quick rundown: the HPC is an online, social video game that is powered in the real world by your steps. Participants wear a wireless pedometer called an actiped that earns them points in the game. Points can be used to buy cool stuff for your (horse) avatar and collectively the steps move your team around tracks surrounding different world landmarks (Taj Mahal, White House, Great Pyramids, etc). Schools compete against other schools for prizes. Students learn about their new locations once they’ve walked there. The most active school wins. 2.0 takes all this and makes it look really slick; check it out at horsepowergame.com.
Humana of Utah sponsors the Utah Horsepower Challenge because healthy behavior and wellness needs to start an early age. Parents realize this; it’s why we see students starting to take the ‘walking bus’ to school (http://bit.ly/paTmc) and the success of ‘exergames’ like Wii Fit. Childhood obesity is a problem plaguing our planet. The Horsepower Challenge is one small step toward getting kids to start thinking about health.
The plan was to launch this game at four schools around Salt Lake. This required coordination beyond anything I’d done in a while. 250 participants had to be registered for the program using a brand new system. But I had a lot of help from the Salt Lake Humana Office and we tackled the registration head on. We had four launch events and four registration events in four days and it all went smoothly. We learned a lot about the game and what really motivates sixth graders.
How many of you have already bought something in the game? Photo by Cynthia Dickerson.
The kids were wild about the game. We had crowds of children clamoring for swag, running up and down the isles of gym, and jumping in place to test out their shiny new actipeds (which are actually black plastic with a matte finish). We brought Coach Boylen of the Utah Utes to one school and had TV stations and newspapers show up in droves. We had Big Blue of Utah State and their head basketball coaches at another event—they brought the kids to their feet and their voices to a resounding din. Every time we went to a launch the kids got riled up and excited to compete against the other Utah schools. They were motivated to step it up in order to outfit their horse avatar. They were full of questions and vigor. It was a rush.
My work didn’t end when I left Utah. Now I have the distinct pleasure of helping the schools take care of lost or broken pedometers, figuring out why someone didn’t get their steps, and answering questions like: why does it cost 5,000 steps to buy the afro wig? The answer is: it’s totally worth it. All of it. Because everyday I get comments in my email from the students telling me how much fun they’re having. Kids are taking this home, walking with their parents, challenging their peers, and moving their teams around the world. The newspapers are talking about how kids need to get out and be more active. A reporter on Channel Five Utah is wearing a pedometer. An ecstatic PE teacher hugged me.
Earl Hurst, President of Humana Utah talking to the students. Photo by flickr user humanagames.
This is all about taking something fun and making it healthy. We want to be where people already enjoy going and make their experience better, in every part of the world. What are you doing to stay healthy?
Follow me on Twitter @naimul!
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
I’m excited to announce the results of our first CrumpleItUp.com contest! Waaaaay back on December 24th (remember back to last year?)we announced the
contest that coincided with the launch of our first casual game, the
Freewheelin Cycle Challenge. Our goal was to discover which of our enterprising readers could find the cleverest and most effective ways to reach out to parents, in the hopes that we could get their kids playing the game over the holidays.
And we had some pretty clever ideas. Here are some of the highlights:
- Spread the word on Facebook to some 1,700 people
- Spread the word on Twitter to some 1,300 people
- Spread the word on LinkedIn to some 700 people
- Posted on 6 blogs/other sites
- Announced on a major Yahoo Groups parenting site
Remember the rules of the contest, as originally published:
“The legal rules of the competition are: There are none. At my sole discretion, I will determine how many winners there will be, what the winning criteria are, and the value of the gift certificates. I reserve the right to be arbitrary and capricious. But I will DEFINITELY give public props to the people who impress me. How to play? Simple.
- Create a strategy for getting your message out.
- Do it.
- Tell me what you did (and if possible, how it worked) by commenting on this blog post.”
The result was that we had over 3,000 game-plays in the first two weeks of the game’s existence . . . which isn’t bad at all! Thanks so much to all of you who participated. EVERYONE is a winner! Here’s our honor roll . . . each of these fine individuals will be contacted individually by me in order to distribute their prizes.
CHRIS HALL
Chris’ efforts included reaching out through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These strategies may not be revolutionary, but because of Chris, over 700 people heard about the game.
Prize: 1 iTunes Gift Certificate
MARTIN REIMER
Martin did something completely unique in the competition; he did a screen capture of the game play, and posted it on YouTube. I hear that a few people use that site. Nice creativity and use of technology!
Prize: 1 iTunes Gift Certificate
NAIMUL
Naimul was a horse. He tweeted the game from 2 accounts, posted to his massive facebook audience, blogged about it, had it posted on another casual game site (which accounted for about 10% of the total gameplay), and used AOL Instant Messenger and gChat to tell all his friends about it. Whew!
Prize: 2 iTunes Gift Certificates
Scott
Scott doesn’t put much much stock all this social media nonsense. But he knows the value of a network . . . and there’s no better network than the one that’s sitting around the holiday table with you. Scott (who is rumored to be the president of a secret Luddite organization) got all the kids in his extended family playing by using the oldest trick in the book: Playing the game himself, and letting everyone see how much fun it was. It generated hours of entertainment for his family. Because we realize that the heart of social media is in the social:
Prize:
2 iTunes Gift CertificatesAnd our GRAND PRIZE WINNER:
Alistair
Alistair is clearly a take-no-prisoners type of fellow . . . and he did yeoman’s work to get the word out. Here’s a sample: Told his friends on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Posted the game on Delicious. Shared it with the “Families Eating Healthy” yahoo group. Shared it with parenting sites Peachhead, Urban Baby, Kids Health, Bike Snob NYC and iVillage. And wrote some great comments on the site. Fantastic! And as the Grand Prize Winner, Alistar will recieve:
Prize: 3 iTunes GIFT CERTIFICATES!
Thanks to everyone who played – and won – in our inaugural contest. Look for more ways to take my money in the coming months. And in the meantime, go keep telling everyone about – and go play – the Freewheelin Cycle Challenge. The contest is over, but the game lives on . . .
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
When we launched the Horsepower Challenge this past spring (see video/more info) in 5 Louisville middle schools, we learned a lot of interesting stuff. For example: More than 50% of the kids playing this exergame included their families in their exercise program. AND, 45% of the kids ate better during the competition.
So what?
Well, the first reason those stats are interesting is that neither activity was explicitly or implicitly encouraged, or even mentioned, as a part of the program. The kids did it on their own. The second is that it points to something important: kids can help their families be healthier.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that one of our core design principles is that we focus first on what’s fun – and use that as a way to get to what’s healthy. And we’ve had a big week. The Battle of the Bulge launches on Facebook today (December 24) and the Freewheelin Cycle Challenge has now been launched at Humanagames.com.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I need your help with the Freewheelin Cycle Challenge. And it involves a contest. With Prizes. For YOU. As a parent, I know that having kids at home, with a month off, in lousy weather and stuffed full of sweets makes for kids with short attention spans. And we want for those kids to play the Freewheelin Cycle Challenge. We think it’s a fun game that can teach kids some healthy stuff.
So my challenge for YOU is to reach as many parents as you can, and convince them to get their kids to play the game (which, by the way, is easy and fun for all ages. OK, maybe all ages over 5. My infant nephew thought it was lame).
I’m going to give away a bunch of iTunes gift certificates to the contestants who:
- Reach out to the most people to tell them about Freewheelin Cycle Challenge
- Come up with the most creative ways of reaching out to people about the Cycle Challenge (that might include a creative communication channel and/or a creative and persuasive message)
The legal rules of the competition are: There are none. At my sole discretion, I will determine how many winners there will be, what the winning criteria are, and the value of the gift certificates. I reserve the right to be arbitrary and capricious. But I will DEFINITELY give public props to the people who impress me. How to play? Simple.
- Create a strategy for getting your message out.
- Do it.
- Tell me what you did (and if possible, how it worked) by commenting on this blog post.
The contest will run between now and Friday, January 2. I’ll announce the winners on Monday, January 5. So tell your friends! Share this post on your web site! Tell your neighbors! Write letters to the editor! Shout it from the rooftops! Whatever works for you. Just tell us about it here, and help some kids alleviate their holiday boredom – while they learn a little bit about health.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
We’ve been having fun with social media for a few months, but now we’re ready to take it to the next level. Humana’s innovation center team is excited to announce the launch of our first Facebook application – the Battle of the Bulge. This is the latest release from Humana’s Games for Health (see Paul Puopolo’s post from last week).
There is some pretty interesting research being done right now on the influence of both social networks and visual reinforcement on weight loss.
And we’ve completely ignored it to launch BoTB.
Just kidding. But Battle of the Bulge does adhere to our most important design principle – to be fun first, and healthy afterwards. Once we figure out whether or not you like it, we’ll see where it goes from a health perspective. Anyway, check it out on Facebook tomorrow. Play it with your friends – have fun – and let us know what you think.
For the official press release (you didn’t really think this was it, did you?), click here.
Popularity: 1% [?]
DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
