The following is an excerpt from a publication that describes the project in further detail:
On the basis of the lessons from the WuppDi project (Assad et al., 2011), and given the strong positive response expressed not only by PD patients, their relatives, and therapists, but also through notable public interest and requests by therapists for similar programs for other target groups, the project Spiel Dich fit und gesund (SDF), which translates roughly to “play to become fit and healthy”, was set up to focus on exploring the use of MGH for older adults. Gerontologists and social care workers had suggested that games similar to those that they had seen as part of the WuppDi suite of games for people with PD could work well for general move-ment motivation with older adults. Thus, a suite of games was envisioned around the corner-stones of supporting motivation to improve upper body movement, flexibility, and balance, as well as exploring general movement motivation, cognitive training, and MGH with a strong musical, or rhythm and timing component. The possibility to personalize the games to individual users was also an integral part of the concept.
Since related work and the prior project had underlined the importance of user-centered iterative design in the context of MGH, SDF was designed around that approach from the start. The project aimed for continuous iterative testing alongside the project development to start as soon as interactive prototypes were available. The continuous brief iterative testing was flanked by selective, more quantitative evaluations and comparative studies around specific questions that arose during the development.