Novartis – Mission: Schweinehund

Between 2013 and 2015, the GEElab served as principal research and prototyping partner for Novartis Pharma Deutschland GmbHto develop a gameful approach in order to support the necessary lifestyle changes for Type 2 Diabetic patients and others who have afflicted so called "lifestyle disases" and who are less physically active than they should be. Novartis Pharma's parent enterprise, Novartis International AG, is a Swiss multinational pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, ranking number one in sales (57.9 billion US$) among the world-wide industry in 2013. Novartis manufactures drugs such as clozapine (Clozaril), diclofenac (Voltaren), carbamazepine (Tegretol), valsartan (Diovan) and imatinib mesylate (Gleevec/Glivec). 

The main focus of this research was to identify and provide incentives for those afflicted to stay active, in the form of powerful, engaging software. We have accompanied the project from initiation to release on a day-to-day basis; amongst the many services provided, we e.g. carried out user research in several countries; we coordinated and led prestudies and prototyping; we worked closely with Sports Medical experts; and we helped conceptualize, evaluate and roll out the project. 

The result of this research is the gameful mobile application and service Mission: Schweinehund (engl. Mission: My Inner Temptation), now available for iOS in the German App Store and soon for Android. The website at www.mission-schweinehund.de provides German language details about the game. 

Mission: Schweinehund uniquely combines innovative gameplay and technology, e.g. it allows players to customize gameplay according to one's fitness level, using sports medically based methods; it also features motion capturing exercising using just the smartphone's camera; and it further integrates this with the player's overall physical activity as detected by the smartphone's sensors.

An article in Germany's leading business magazine Wirtschaftswoche from February 2014 has highlighted the collaboration between RMIT's GEElab and Novartis. Find our partial translation and report about the article here.