Pedalling with purpose: relational action in children's VR cycling exergames

Jin, Mingxuan, Zhou, Min, Peng, Xiaolan, Finnegan, Daniel J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1169-2842 and Barathi, Soumya C. 2026. Pedalling with purpose: relational action in children's VR cycling exergames. Presented at: Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, York, UK, 2-5 November 2026. Published in: Buruk, Oğuz 'Oz', Cmentowski, Sebastian, Klarkowski, Madison, Reinschluessel, Anke V., Harbig, Imke Alenka, Wanick, Vanissa and Chukoskie, Leanne eds. CHI PLAY Companion '26: Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY). ACM, pp. 211-217. 10.1145/3800965.3834288

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Abstract

Narrative can make children’s exergames more engaging, but story content alone does not explain when bodily effort becomes meaningful. We present an exploratory within-subject study with 16 children aged 10-13 who played three contrastive configurations of a stationary-bike VR exergame: scenic cycling, task-framed narrative cycling, and conflict-driven narrative cycling. We treated these configurations as design investigations, asking how children interpreted the same pedalling mechanic when framed through route movement, task completion, and relationships with non-player characters. Post-game interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings suggest that meaningful exertion emerged from design elements that made pedalling legible as action toward, with, for, or against others. The contribution is therefore a design-facing account of how relational framing can reshape children’s interpretation of effort in exergame play. We contribute preliminary design dimensions for children’s VR exergames that frame physical effort as relational action.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Computational & Mathematical Sciences Schools > Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	ACM
ISBN:	979-8-4007-2565-4
Last Modified:	30 Oct 2026 11:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/190549

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