HealthSeeker is a unique collaboration between experts, advocates and industry partners who are on the front lines of healthcare. It was built using GoodLife™, a serious games engine designed by Ayogo. Ayogo developed the game for the Diabetes Hands Foundation in collaboration with Joslin Diabetes Center, with support provided by Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Lilly USA, LLC.

Healthseeker was designed with the goal of helping adults living with diabetes or those at the risk of developing diabetes with specific lifestyle and nutritional challenges. The game creates compulsion loops around reciprocal social obligation, gifting, collection, and achievement to motivate action. The idea of shifting a player’s concerns from big commitments over long periods of time for greatly deferred rewards to small manageable actions in short periods of time for instant rewards, has been very popular with players and medical professionals.

For more information, please read the press release.

Tagging photos and friends on social networks is the norm. But what if you could tag and monitor your heart health in the same way? We are collaborating with the University of Southern California Center for Body Computing to make this a reality by working on a mobile- based heart rate game that will be played on social networks.

Targeting a younger demographic, think of this app as the mood ring of the 80′s for today’s smartphone generation. “We believe creating compelling medical apps will create a generation of more health-aware people—health awareness can be as significant a part of a teenager’s life as the next Twilight saga movie (well, almost),” said Dr. Leslie Saxon, the Executive Director of the USC Center for Body Computing. Social games can become a fun and cool way to introduce people to their basic human data, such as heart rate, and we plan to have a leadership role in this area.”

A prototype of the game, code-named “Beating Heart,” was co-developed at the Center for Body Computing. The “Beating Heart” prototype has been written about in Forbes and Fast Company, and was named one of the top ten iPhone apps by Gizmodo, a technology site. Our award-winning design team is thrilled to be involved in this project and the tremendous opportunity it represents to innovate in social game design.

“There isn’t a demographic more socially networked, more connected than Gen Y,” said Michael Fergusson. “Working with the Body Computing Center gives us a unique opportunity to use games and social play to engage this crucial demographic, and let them experience their own physiological data in new, meaningful ways. We can help create a new generation of more informed, empowered healthcare consumers.”

Courtesy of Flickr's undergroundbastard

Ayogo got some more press recently, this time from Canada’s largest urban weekly, Vancouver’s very own The Georgia Straight. Christopher Poon contacted us after hearing about some of the innovative games we have been working on for the iPad. He thought it’d be valuable to interview Michael Fergusson about how Vancouver mobile game developers are preparing for the arrival of Apple’s newest IT-device. Thanks for the interview Christopher! I’ve cross-posted the interview below. As always, we’d love to hear from you, so make sure to leave a comment or contact us if you have any questions.

For Hong-Yee Wong, the scenario is all too familiar. Apple unveils an innovative mobile device, and critics are quick to point out its flaws before even seeing what effect it has on the mobile-entertainment market.

The CEO of IUGO Mobile Entertainment, the Vancouver-based game developer behind such iPhone titles as Toy Bot Diaries and Zombie Attack, is optimistic that the highly anticipated iPad will create a new market in interactive entertainment, much as the iPhone did after its release in 2007.

“We are definitely very excited to see the new platform,” Wong told the Georgia Straight by phone. “I think it’s a revolutionary device, and I think it provides a new paradigm for the interactive digital lifestyle.”

Unveiled back in January by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the iPad is a touchscreen tablet computer that resembles a large iPod Touch. One line of iPads will be Wi-Fi–enabled, while the other will have both Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities. The former will be released in the U.S. on April 3, with both becoming available in Canada, the U.S., and other countries by late April.

While skeptics have dismissed the iPad as uninspiring, Wong sees nothing but potential. Wong noted that the iPhone received similar criticism prior to the launch of the App Store, and we all know how that turned out.

Michael Fergusson, CEO of Ayogo, another Vancouver-based mobile-game developer, echoes Wong’s sentiments.

“There are those who say it’s nothing more than a big iPod Touch—it has a bigger screen, there’s no multitasking—but there were also those who said that about the iPhone: that it wasn’t going to be a game changer,” Fergusson said by phone.

Both IUGO and Ayogo are in the midst of developing games for the iPad. Wong and Fergusson agree that the only way to successfully carve out a place in the mobile-game market is to design products geared to the specifications of each device.

“We looked at the iPhone as a unique device, and we designed an original game for the device that made you solve things by using the tilt functionality or the touchscreen,” Wong said. “We’re definitely looking at the uniqueness for the iPad. We’re not blindly extending what we have on the iPhone or the iPod Touch onto it because we do spend a lot of attention and focus on the user experience and a lot of the user interface, and it’s critical to us.”

Fergusson said the iPad’s key feature is its larger, 9.7-inch touchscreen, which will allow developers to create a multiplayer experience that is impossible on the iPhone or the iPod Touch.

“When you think about games that you play on your phone and then you think about games that you play with other people, like board games—I mean, Monopoly is hard to play on an iPhone,” Fergusson said. “It’s hard to play on a board that’s four inches by two inches, but it’s a lot easier to play on one that’s 10 inches.”

Screen size is one of the reasons Andres Wanner, a lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s school of interactive arts and technology in Surrey, believes the iPad will be a success. According to Wanner, the screen will also allow innovative features to be developed for applications for use in everyday life.

“Map applications have been quite a successful thing on the iPhone itself, but when you think of a map, you don’t want to have tiny little details but, rather, a large overview,” Wanner explained by phone. “The big screen will help with that, and that’s one way that the iPad will have an advantage over the iPhone.”

Wanner predicts that, at first, only tech-savvy individuals will pick up the device. However, he said he wouldn’t be surprised to see older generations embrace the device later, as its simplicity could appeal to those who thought the iPhone and iPod Touch were too small.

Fergusson is hopeful that developers will take heed of how consumers use the iPad, so that they can create better products for the device.

“Right now, we’ll only have early-stage games, but as we get better over time, I’m sure we’ll see more and more innovative games on the device, and really see what the iPad is capable of,” Fergusson said.