DiaBeaThis — A gamified self-tracking portal to support people suffering from diabetes mellitus to control their blood glucose level

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is affecting a wide range of people around the world. There is no cure, therefore people need to live with that disease for a long time. Suffering from diabetes mellitus means that the insulin regulation inside the body is not working correctly and must therefore be monitored very carefully ending up with documenting the blood glucose level and the complete nutrition intake. This is still very often a paper based and not really motivating or diversified process with the help of so called diabetes diaries. Today's society also delivers mobile solutions even with gamification elements, but the combination of monitoring blood glucose level and a complete independent/not directly related game was not yet the State of The Art focus. As a result, the authors of this publication present a game, where people get benefits from entering their blood glucose measurements and nutrition intake in an included digital diabetes diary. By including 21 people suffering from type 1 or 2 diabetes it was shown, that such a solution poses a motivating aspect in their daily lives and differs from current software solutions. Throughout different iterations, 29 functional requirements were identified and described. Within a five week test phase, the participants played 178 game sessions and entered 1102 diary entries.