Healthy older adults experience physical and sensory performance decrease,
reducing their interest in exercising and leading to a sedentary lifestyle.
This increases natural decay, diseases, isolation and risk of falls and
eventually death. Active-play video gaming, also referred as exergaming, might
motivate positive changes in health behavior. However, such games need to take
into account the physical characteristics of players and can also be used to
foster their social ties. In this paper, we present a long-term intervention,
using Action Research, aimed at developing insights for the design of full-body
motion-control exergames for older adults experiencing age-related changes
addressing problems raised by their motion capacity. The results of our study
establish which physical characteristics need to be monitored to adapt
gameplay, and other elements of social gameplay and spectatorcentered design.
Based on our study we present guidelines for the design of full-body
interaction in exergames for older adults