Academic study: Super Stomp can motivate to exercise

According to the the leading games and human-computer interaction conference CHI PLAY study findings, our two-player trampoline game Super Stomp can motivate people to exercise. 

Super Stomp is a game for our trampoline game platform ValoJump®. The academic study was organized by us together with Aalto university from Finland. Lauri Lehtonen – Valo Motion’s lead developer for ValoJump – designed and programmed Super Stomp as his Master’s thesis.

"Visiting our customers we realized people love jumping on trampolines together with their friends, but because of some safety risks involved, they are not allowed to do this. We designed Super Stomp to solve this problem by bringing two players on two separate trampolines into one single game world where they can stomp each other and have fun together without the unnecessary risks. We were really excited to find out that the end result can actually motivate people to exercise!"- Lauri Lehtonen, Lead Developer for ValoJump

The academic study will explain how the game gives the players an empowering experience using custom computer vision and movement exaggeration and game design techniques. It exaggerates the virtual jumps while preserving precise control of the game characters. This can make the player feel like an actual Superhero within the game world. The study showed that people had a lot of fun playing Super Stomp. 

Access the academic paper below:

The study also revealed that the game scores very high on psychological measures of physical activity motivation and enjoyment. In addition, Super Stomp also scored high in a survey that measures engagement with the game and how enjoyable the game was. In short, games like Super Stomp can tick all the boxes for making the player feel motivated to exercise.

The academic paper about Super Stomp was presented at the international CHI PLAY game research conference. CHI PLAY is the international and interdisciplinary conference (by ACM SIGCHI) for researchers and professionals across all areas of play, games and human-computer interaction (HCI). The conference took place between the 22nd and 25th October 2019 in Barcelona, Spain.

However, this paper was not the first academic study published by CHI about our games. In 2016 CHI Conference a study was published about the ValoClimb augmented climbing wall game platform.

Furthermore, there has been several academic papers written about our products based on the post doctoral research of Valo Motion’s CEO, Dr Raine Kajastila. This research has helped us to create products that are loved all over the world.  

Some of Raine’s research topics have included how can technology be used to motivate people to move or learn skills in sports. Some of the studies also researched the feasibility of interaction or safety in augmented reality exergaming products.

Although ValoClimb and ValoJump are now both commercial products sold by us and our distributors, we continue to collaborate with Aalto University in doing research studies for our immersive and interactive products. These research studies are used to validate our products’ usability, safety and fun factor.