Hello World

Testing 123.

Basically, I'm doing an experiment for my graduate Games for Health class where I need to evaluate a game that encourages physical activity or other healthy behavior. I chose Pokemon Heart Gold and will be evaluating the Pokewalker device for the next couple weeks. I'm going to have to review some of my Japanese, but frankly I've played enough Pokemon that I'm sure I can figure out what is going on.

Yesterday, I ordered a copy of the game off eBay using "buy it now" from someone with "fast shipping already in the United States;" we'll see how fast the shipping actually is. I also picked up a pedometer at REI which I've been playing with last night and today so I can give my recorder correct instructions (and not goof up my data collection later).

I'm going to create a calibration level of steps based of carrying a pedometer for a week before the experiment and during the entire experiment. I'll be having someone else record the reading of the pedometer, so I don't skew my results based on looking at it, and I'll look at these results at the end of my test. The pedometer I chose has seven days of memory and I plan to put a piece of black electrical tape over the display so I don't need to worry about accidentally looking at my daily step count.

More details and papers to follow (as well as my daily impressions about the game and such).