Sofoklis Kyriazakos

Assoc. Professor at Aarhus University (DK)

Sofoklis Kyriazakos

Assoc. Professor at Aarhus University (DK)
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Biography

Sofoklis Kyriazakos graduated in 1993 a Greek-American school, namely Athens College and obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications in RWTH Aachen, Germany in 1999. Then he moved to the National Technical University of Athens, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Telecommunications in 2003. He also received an MBA degree in Techno-economic systems from the same University.
Sofoklis holds the position of Associate Professor in Aarhus University, where his activities are focused around Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. He has managed, both as technical manager and coordinator, a large number of multi-million ICT projects, both at R&D and industrial level. Sofoklis has published more than 100 publications in international conferences, journals, books and standardization bodies and has more than 400 citations.
In 2006 Sofoklis founded Converge SA, an ICT startup with specialization in software integration. In 2016 after having steered successfully the company from the position of Managing Director, he resigned to co-found Innovation Sprint Sprl and he is currently the CEO of the company. Sofoklis has served as member of Board of Directors several companies in Greece and Canada and has also been a member of the BoD of Athens Information Technology, a Center of Excellence for Research and Education. He is also the Innovation Office of Meet-Magento Association, the largest eCommerce meetup community.

PRESENTATION

Transforming Games into Health Apps

Playing a game on your mobile phone and working on your health are typically not things that you do at the same time. Engaging in healthy behavior and playing games are driven by different internal motives. You play a game to relax, to unwind, to have fun. And people from all ages do just that. How can we transform that internal motivation to play games into a driver for healthy behavior? That is the question that we aim to answer in this workshop “Transforming Games into Health Apps”.
The European H2020 project GOAL – or Games of Active Life – is hosting this workshop to initiate a discussion around its envisioned healthy gaming platform. The platform allows 3rd party developers to connect their health apps or mobile games to become part of the GOAL ecosystem. In this ecosystem, health apps are used to generate virtual rewards – GOAL Coins – which in turn can be spent in mobile games. The user is in the lead, and can involve his/her environment and favorite games to achieve a healthy lifestyle. So, after an active, socially engaged and cognitively stimulated day, you will have earned the coins necessary to advance your progress in your game of SuperFarmer, KingdomBuilder, or FruitCrush.

WORKSHOP

GOAL workshop

In GOAL we are stimulating healthy behavior through gaming, targeting an elderly user group, but eventually building a platform that is attractive for all types of users. In short we are combining gaming and motivational aspects. In this part we will address the questions: what is the right game for each individual user? and what is the right motivation strategy for each user?
Program

Program
General introduction of the GOAL Platform

Aristodemos Pnevatikakis, Athens Information Technology

Classifying individual gamer types and determining game preferences

Frederiek de Vette, Roessingh Research and Development

Matching motivation strategies with user motivation profiles

Marijke Broekhuis, Roessingh Research and Development

The need for gamification in Healthcare

Jeff van den Biggelaar, LIVIO

GOAL Technology – A developer’s perspective

Andrew Pomazanskyi

Discussion “Engaging users and developers”

Roselien Buys, KU Leuven

Discussion “Gamification and its benefit on physical activity and heart rate”

Sofoklis Kyriazakos, Aarhus University