Gamification stuff we love: Beat the street
In Scotland the town Annan instigated a 6 week “Beat the street” campaign to get the community involved in regular exercise outdoors from cycling to walking and jogging. In order to participate you were given a fob, which could then be scanned by a number of boxes installed around the town. Each scan gives a start of point collection and if you reach a new scan point after 2 minutes and below one hour in terms of time lapsed you earned 10 points. The side purpose was also to encourage people to team up, because mainly community initiatives to do with wellbeing and health and active travel would be rewarded as well as schools.
In total 39% of the population took part and they travelled over 122,118 miles in 6 weeks. The campaign was funded by Dumfries and Galloway Council on behalf of the Scottish Governments Smarter Choices, Smarter Places Initiative. Personally I think this a great way to get people active in groups, maybe another roll out could reward those that are first time participants to join a team and for teams to recruit newbies.
From a gamification perspective a tracking system for activity, a point system associated with action and a leaderboard where the key drivers. Community prizes were additional motivators to get schools and community based groups involved, even if the rewards were very much on the conservative side and possibly not the main motivator.
Where have you seen an active health and wellbeing campaign run by towns and councils?
