Gamification for Healthy Aging

Gamification seems to play a key role to support older adults that live a normal aging. Applying game techniques into non-game activities can motivate elderly for preventing fragility or deterioration. This paper presents the integration of gamification for healthy aging in technological contexts of daily life activities. Following a simple gamification process can effectively improve the specification of basic game elements and mechanics for reducing risk factors of chronic diseases in normal aging. The paper propose the extension of grocery store applications with a gamification component for assisting active aging. Key aspects of personalization and learnability are discussed and avenues of development are advanced for gamification with regard to the maintenance of functional ability in older age. Considering the worldwide actions on healthy aging, gamified applications have the opportunity to improve health and functional ability of the older adults by developing their decision-making skills, even if intervention technologies must take into account the needs of older people.