The Gauntlet: A Systems Approach for Community Challenges

This paper describes and outlines the design evolution of a new platform, the Gauntlet, for creating and sharing user-generated challenges that can be carried out in real-world settings. We first describe related work in the field of pervasive games and discuss how we can use these game-like mechanisms to foster greater community engagement and environment immersion. Our study design, based on three design principles (social connection, motivation and opportunity) consists of a participatory design activity and design evaluation and reiteration of the Gauntlet user interface. We also propose how this platform can be used to foster greater community engagement and increase personal well-being