Welcome to Fitzania, an interactive exhibit that was recently on display at the UAE’s Museum of the Future installation, conceived by Tellart and produced by Specular.
According to Dubai’s Museum of the Future, “the future is uncertain, but the Museum highlights a positive vision of the future with governments and society working together to create a more hopeful world. Fitzania’s advanced sensors and interactions provide targeted preventive treatment and care as part of a personalized healthcare regime in the form of a game.”
As reported on Fast Company, Fitzania uses body tracking and projection mapping, inviting patients/players to swing a ball around – matching onscreen prompts.
“The angle we were going for was, most kids don’t get enough exercise,” explains Dr. Noah Raford, advisor to the UAE’s strategic projects department. “The user experience of going to the doctor is terrible and scary to most kids.”
Find out how it works:
The idea was to design an experience that could fit into the larger system of healthcare and wellness.
While people played the game, the system tracks biometrics such as heat rate, respiration, reflexes and cognitive speed, the idea being that if this idea took off, the date would be uploaded to the person’s private medical records, serving as an automated check-up. With the increase of wearables and fitness trackers, Fitzania is not such an abstract idea.
“We’re using simulated technology to bring up social issues we need to wrestle with,” says Raford. “It’s one thing to say: ‘medical record privacy is going to be a big deal in the future, here’s another policy paper on big medicine’. And it’s another thing to get that spine tingling sensation – is this real?”
