Adventures @ FITology | #4 – Get Fit February | Alternate Reality Game
This post is contributed by Saamir Gupta of FITology.
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Ground Rules
As always, we set some ground rules for designing the concept. We wanted to do something:
- Sustainable: sticks with people for long
- For everyone: at least some component of it should relate to some segment of participants
- Within the premises of the residential society: so that everyone has easy access
Get Fit February
We came up with an idea of an exclusive health and wellness month. All through this month we would do various activities at different times, to cater to all constraints. Because we were doing it in February, we called it #GetFitFebruary!
We organized talk sessions for those who wanted to know more about nutrition, yoga sessions for people who wanted to try it out and improve flexibility, meditation sessions to advocate for mindfulness, group walking/jogging/running sessions, and a lot of different formats of boot camps.
[Calendar image no longer available. originally hosted on LinkedIn]
All the sessions were open to everyone. Prior registration via WhatsApp was necessary — just for us to make sure we made adequate arrangements.
Once an individual came for a particular session, he or she was given an overview of the other sessions and motivated to join or send someone from the family to attend.
[Group photo no longer available. originally hosted on LinkedIn]
Because it was a residential society, instead of a person, the unique identifier was the society’s apartment number. We kept track of how many sessions were attended by a particular apartment number, and accordingly the teams were created and scored.
This was primarily to motivate families living in the same apartment. For different families to collaborate, we would look at the score of the apartments on the same floor or, more so, in the same building. Different floors or different buildings in the same society got into a competitive mode. a natural expression of Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness.
The Boot Camps
Our flagship events were the boot camps. We made sure that we built them in such a fashion that we could account for any and every kind of participant.
The tasks and exercises were not just exciting and fun but also scalable to all age groups. We wanted to ensure all participants had the feeling of competence and autonomy while choosing the version of tasks they wanted to perform. There were prize medals for top-performing teams at the end of the final bootcamp to give a sense of purpose to the participants.
Results
We witnessed teams in which three generations of the same family participated. Youngest members were as young as 3 years. There was a team of all women, a team of school friends.
It was great to see how people bonded with their fellow society mates while conquering their personal health and wellness goals. A lot of people picked up healthy habits. and it was no longer only Get Fit February.
[Bootcamp photo no longer available. originally hosted on LinkedIn]
About the Author: Saamir Gupta
Saamir is the founder of FITology. He creates alternate reality games to nudge people towards a healthier lifestyle. Over the last five years, he has developed and executed fun, engaging, and gamified concepts for people across geographies, cultures, and ages. As an ex-strategy consultant, he has advised the world’s largest oil, chemicals, and electricity companies on growth, cost reduction, and operations optimization. He is also a CrossFit L1 Trainer, ACE Certified Group Instructor, and trained Bollywood dancer and actor. He loves to travel around the world and make new friends.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Adventures @ FITology | #5 — The Game of Families
- Adventures @ FITology | #3 — Fit Team Challenge
- How FITology Used Running to Create an Alternate Reality Adventure
- What is Gamification?
- Books by Yu-kai Chou