MyGlasgow News

With just a month to go until the opening ceremony of the XX Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, smartphone owners are being given the opportunity to boost their fitness and learn more about the host city. An award-winning app, officially launched today by the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde with support from Commonwealth Games competitors, allows users to compete with others around the world to increase their physical activity and test their knowledge of Glasgow before, during and after the Games.

The MyCity: Glasgow app, developed by Glasgow and Strathclyde researchers, uses smartphones’ built-in accelerometers to track how much players walk each day. The app sets daily activity goals for each player based on their activity over the previous few days. The target increases each time players achieve their goals, steadily increasing their levels of activity.

Each time an activity goal is achieved, a reward is unlocked with the appearance of one of 42 of Glasgow’s landmark buildings on a map of the city. Players can find out more about Glasgow through fun ‘Fact or Fiction’ quizzes, and use their phone’s GPS function to follow virtual ‘treasure trails’ across the city.

Users can compare their performance to others’ using the MyCity Activity and Quizzes Leaderboards. They can also share their progress, and selfies of them playing the game, straight from the app to Facebook.

Development of the app was led by Dr Cindy Gray, of the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing, and Dr Marilyn McGee-Lennon, of the University of Strathclyde’s Department of Computer and Information Sciences.

The app has achieved acclaim even before its official launch. In April, it won the gold medal in the ‘Creative & Cultural – Higher Education Institutions’ category at the Game Changer Awards.

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First published: 23 June 2014