Sometimes it's not easy to motivate yourself to take the stairs instead of the lift. If only there was something that gave us more of an incentive to do it? A new project by Digit London might have the answer. The tech agency has designed a system called City Peaks that uses Oyster cards, as well as a virtual game, to entice us to think of our fitness first and hit the stairs more often.

It works by getting people to tap into a device with our Oyster cards at the bottom of a flight of stairs, and then again on a second device at the top. Once our climb has been tracked, the information is then used by an app that shows how far the person would have ascended inside one of London’s iconic buildings. A few trips up the stairs at Protein HQ might eventually get you halfway up the Gerkin.

Players also compete against each other in the game, with the person who reaches the top of a building first getting to put up a virtual flag on top of it. The game also records your total distances ascended and lets you compare these against the journeys of famous mountaineers.

The system shows how the mechanics of gaming can be used as a great incentive to make better choices – in this case, to stay fit. Plus it cleverly uses something most of us (in London) already have on us: our Oyster card.