Assisted Gamified Exercise For All (AGE4A)

Exercise is very helpful for the health and happiness of older adults, but only a small number of older people do enough regular exercise to make a difference.

Shapemaster is a British company that makes power assisted exercise machines. These machines have motors that help to perform the exercise for people who would otherwise find it difficult. This is particularly helpful for people who live with pain, have restricted movement or have low confidence in their physical ability. The machines are available in leisure centres and don't need any special clothing or other equipment, making them suitable for people who don't see themselves as sporty, or who have low income levels.

Because we want to increase the number of older adults using these machines to exercise we will investigate the following things:

1. What will encourage more users to use the machines? This will include improving how users with restricted movement get on and off the machines, making them more fun by linking them to computer games, displaying how well people have done and allowing them to share this with friends and family.
2. What will make leisure centres more likely to install Shapemaster equipment? This might include price and what sort of things the machines can do.

We will investigate these things by interviewing users and leisure centres, and also by making different prototypes for users to try so they can experience it for themselves. We will interview a wide range of users including people with disabilities and from different ethnic backgrounds.

Once we have chosen the best designs to make the most number of people active, we will build full versions of them, and then try them out with many different users. We will see how much they like them, and how likely they are to get people to start and stick-with exercise. We will also see if there are any benefits for people's health and happiness.

Finally, we will plan how best to get the machines as widely used as possible in the UK and worldwide, to give as many people as possible the chance to use it. We hope that by doing this we will help to make people fitter, healthier and happier.