Health Gamification

I'm all about technology helping people get into shape, but my employer (and insurance) has chosen is essentially gamifying our wellness reward. In previous years, the wellness reward was achieved by doing an annual check up at a physician or a check up during one of the employer's sessions. 

As I have stated in previous blogs (including about China's attempt at gamifying citizenship), gamification should not be the solution to everything. I could even see the argument that gamification should stay in just games.

The implementation of the reward system is terrible; it is using the Virgin Pulse platform. While mainly a health tracking system, it was miserably tries to be a social network as well. You can see how points are awarded at the bottom of this post.

This wellness reward system requires the use of health devices to acquire certain points (e.g. steps and activities). As someone who no longer wears a smart watch or fitness tracker, I don't think it adds any benefit to my life and am hesitant to wear one in the future. You guess you could say I essentially became numb to the number of steps I took or length of activity I did. It made exercise seem more like a chore.

My phone is able to track steps (because I have a Samsung device with S Health, Google Fit is not supported), but I actually don't carry it majority of the time when I'm exercising. I like to exercise and escape technology for periods of time (and not risking damaging my phone).

Though you can participate without a device, you'll lose substantial number of points for manual input. For example, 45 active minutes in a day recorded by a device will get you 140 points while manual inputting 45 minutes will get you 30 points (and only 100 points for a workout over 90 minutes).

Then, there is an issue with point associated with sleep. You receive 50 points for sleeping over 7 hours (and more points if you do it 20 or more times in a month). For me, I know that sleeping over that amount will make me sleepy throughout the day. I can't possibly sacrifice my productivity trying to gain points.

The Virgin Pulse website is absolutely terrible. The navigation paths are confusing. The menu is not intuitive and content seems to be chaotic and completely random. The website tries to be visual but it is completely overdone to the point there is little to no substance on the displayed page. For something that is intended to be used on a daily basis, the user experience is awful. Though, the mobile application is much more friendly. 

I appreciate that Virgin Pulse is trying to improve workforce health but I don't think gamification should be the solution. I wonder how much it will encourage others to become more active. But more importantly, how long will this motivation last.

Then, there are privacy concerns. How will this data be used? Could programs like this be used in direct relation to pricing health insurance in the future?

What are your thoughts on gamification?

The point system is below:

12,000 points per quarter will earn you the highest reward possible.

Note: I know it is a reward and I should probably not complain. But I just don't think that gamification is the solution to encouraging exercise.