  Promotion of healthy habits help maintain and improve people health, reduce
disease risks, and manage chronic illness. Regular healthy activities like
walking, exercising, healthy eating, drinking water or taking medication on
time require forming the new habits. Gamification techniques are promising in
promoting healthy behaviors and delivering health promotion information.
However, using gaming elements such as badges, leader boards, health-related
challenges in mobile applications to motivate and engage people to change
health behavior is quite new. In this exploratory study, we aimed to assess how
game mechanics and dynamics influence formation of a habit through the mobile
application. Results indicate the different level of user engagement depending
on the presence of gamification elements and suggest that there is value in
adding game elements to the user experience.
