Gamifying the web service for the brainwolk walking meeting

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HIEU TRUNG TRINH

GAMIFYING THE WEB SERVICE FOR THE BRAINWOLK WALKING MEETING

Master’s Thesis

Faculty of Information

Technology and Communication

Sciences

Examiners: PhD. Aino Ahtinen,

Prof. Kaisa Väänänen

April 2020

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ABSTRACT

Hieu Trung Trinh: Gamifying the web service for the brainwolk walking meeting Master’s Thesis

Tampere University

Master’s Degree Programme in Information Technology April 2020

A sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical activity have become more and more prevalent in recent years, and they can contribute factors to risk our physical and mental health. Many health- promoting programs, ergonomic furniture, health tracking devices, and wellness applications are introduced to reduce the health effects of a sedentary lifestyle.

Among solutions, the Brainwolk concept was developed to promote walking meetings for creativity and wellbeing in the workplace. Several studies were conducted to learn about the users’ needs and the context of use. In addition, design guidelines, as well as a concept design of a persuasive walking meeting application were presented to support the Brainwolk concept.

Besides, several solutions to the walking meeting were inspired by the concept, but they were designed to target office workers instead of students. Students who can become office workers soon are able to start to form a good habit during their academics. Additionally, students are thought to be attracted less attention by a traditional interface. Thus, gamification, as an innovative approach and growing market, has been implemented in many fields with successful results in altering user behavior. In this thesis, gamification is proposed as a potential alternative to motivate individuals and drive engagement in the conduction of the walking meeting.

This thesis aims to design a gamified Brainwolk walking meeting application to engage the involvement of students. Firstly, the pre-study was conducted to explore the users’ needs, motivation, and challenges in use from surveys of two previous studies. Based on the user research data and literature review, five design implications were formulated and used as the aim of a new walking meeting application design. Secondly, according to a process of engineering gamified software, a paper prototype was created for early validation of application concepts and design approaches. Then, an interactive (high-fidelity) prototype was developed based on user feedback as well as several innovative ideas through a literature review. Finally, the effects of five design implications were validated in user evaluation with usability testing, questionnaires, and interviews.

The results suggested that the gamified system evoked positive experiences on attractiveness and the hedonic quality, while the pragmatic quality aspects need to be enhanced. Besides, several design implications related to meeting support tools are expected to have some further improvement.

Overall, the research of this thesis contributed an approach to gamifying a walking meeting application and an example of applying a gamification framework to design a pervasive gamified system.

Keywords: walking meeting, Brainwolk, persuasive design, gamification, gamification framework, method of engineering gamified system, motivation, mobile application, meeting support tools

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PREFACE

This thesis is submitted to Tampere University, Tampere, Finland, to supplicate the degree of Master of Science in User Experience. It includes the research work carried out by me in the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication. It would have been challenging without the support of many people in our surroundings.

I sincerely express my gratitude to my supervisor, Aino Ahtinen (PhD), for her guidance, support, and advice throughout this research.

I would like to thank Professor Kaisa Väänänen for examination during the thesis process.

Furthermore, I would like to thank Phuong Doan, who patiently reviewed my thesis during the writing process. I also would like to thank Tram Ninh for her solution to correct spellings and grammar.

Although gamification is a new research area for me, the course of Professor Kevin Werbach on Coursera gave me the basic knowledge of gamification.

Lastly, I express my thanks to my family and friends for being supportive during my time studying at Tampere University. Their supports gave me the motivation for my study and work.

Tampere, 08.04.2020

Hieu Trung Trinh

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. The Self-Determination Continuum Including Kinds of Motivation With Their Regulatory Styles, Loci of Causality, and Corresponding

Processes. [21, p. 5] ... 6

Figure 2. Bartle's player types created from observing players of MUDs. [33, p. 6] ... 11

Figure 3. Gamification User Types Hexad. [34, p. 3] ... 12

Figure 4. Gamification elements pyramid. ... 13

Figure 5. The overall research process. ... 18

Figure 6. Gamification design process used in this thesis. ... 20

Figure 7. A part of the pre-study affinity diagram. ... 24

Figure 8. The method of engineering gamified software. ... 30

Figure 9. Engagement loop. [26, p. 96] ... 31

Figure 10. Progression stairs. [26, p. 97] ... 31

Figure 11. User scenario in general context... 33

Figure 12. User scenario with a gamification feature in the paper prototype ... 34

Figure 13. User scenario with a gamification feature in the interactive prototype. ... 34

Figure 14. Enhanced walking meeting flow. ... 40

Figure 15. Gamification flow including adventures, challenges, and community features. ... 41

Figure 16. On-going meeting features: note-taking (A), map (B), conversation (C), and Congratulations screen (D). ... 43

Figure 17. Additional screens: home (A), new meeting (B, C), weather forecast (D). ... 44

Figure 18. Challenges and adventures’ screens: List of challenges and adventures (A), Tampere city routes (B), route information (C), add player (D). ... 45

Figure 19. Newsfeed and groups in the community. ... 46

Figure 20. The basic engagement loop. ... 49

Figure 21. The complex engagement loop includes three simple loops... 50

Figure 22. Two possible scenarios of the gamification feature. ... 51

Figure 23. Ongoing meeting's mode: conversation (A), map (B), An ongoing meeting was showed on the Home screen (C), Loading screen with a useful tip (D). ... 53

Figure 24. A process of a meeting pre-planning. ... 54

Figure 25. Setting a new meeting event: meeting info (A), discussion topics (B), audio/image notes (C), route shuffle (D). ... 54

Figure 26. Weather forecast: 5-Day (A), hourly (B), a specific time(C). ... 55

Figure 27. Congratulations pop ups (A), (B), A number badge shows the number of available rewards (C), A forest with an available green energy bubble (D). ... 56

Figure 28. A) Sun points received, B) The plant grows and changes its appearance. ... 58

Figure 29. Two virtual markets selling plants and decorative items. ... 59

Figure 30. Taking a forgotten reward of a friend. ... 60

Figure 31. A) Loading screen with a tip, B), C) Personalizing the users' goals. ... 60

Figure 32. The sketch of Today(Home) page... 63

Figure 33. Assumed scale structure of the UEQ. [43, p. 2]... 68

Figure 34. The UEQ evaluation result of gamified Brainwolk prototype. ... 72

Figure 35. Benchmark graph for the gamified Brainwolk prototype. ... 73

Figure 36. Results of overall ratings and how relevant the prototype can be used in learning. ... 74

Figure 37. Design implication ratings excluding gamification. ... 75

Figure 38. Game element ratings grouped into types. ... 78

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LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

DI Design implication

MDC Mechanics, Dynamics, Components model SDT Self-determination theory

TUT Tampere University of Technology UEQ User Experience Questionnaire

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1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, sedentary behaviors have become common in our society. We are put in a situation where sitting is encouraged or required, such as time sitting in automobiles, watching TV at home, or prolonged sitting in the office [1]. This lifestyle can be harmful to our future life, but reducing sedentary time seems not easy.

There are many solutions to reduce sedentary behavior and make a healthy lifestyle change. Sitting less and standing up at work can be a solution to this problem, but stepping away from our computers makes us nervous for many reasons, and we feel comfortable sitting in front of our computer [2]. Brainwolk, a walking meeting concept, with a concept design of a mobile application, was introduced to overcome the obstacle not to be physically active enough at work [3]. The idea behind this concept is leaving our computers, and desks behind and going for a short walk with a colleague while handling work-related topics. This related study also shows that walking, an affordable solution with no special equipment required, improves wellbeing, creativity, cognitive capabilities, and social factors. Moreover, the presented design guidelines cover the features and general pieces of advice that should be considered when designing a walking meeting application.

1.1 Background and motivation

Our society, a sitting-centric community [4], is the place where we are asked or encouraged to sit. During the typical day, we are required prolonged sitting in transportation, occupational environments, and even in domestic environments while we do particular sedentary behaviors such as TV viewing and another recreational screen time [1]. However, our behavior patterns during the day can be different. For example, rural residents are more like to devote themselves to sit in a car or on a motorcycle (to their workplace, for errands). At the same time, there are more options for people who live in an urban area, including bicycling, walking, or sliding (on a scooter) from place to place. A study published in 2019 reported total sitting time among the US population (2001-2016) increased from 5.5 to 6.4 hours/day among adults[5]. By sitting at a desk or a computer for four or more hours a day during working time, we are at increased risk for carpal tunnel syndrome, development of type 2 diabetes, elevated blood pressure [6], [7], heart disease, weight gain and obesity [8].

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In order to minimize the health effects of a sedentary lifestyle, there are a variety of ways.

Some organizations have implemented health promotion programs such as walking challenges (to a colleague’s desk or the printer) or exercise classes during lunch breaks [9] to decrease prolonged sitting hours at work. Additionally, employees are allowed to stand instead of sitting at work in some workplaces. They have equipped adjustable desks, computer monitor arms, or ball chairs with legs [6] to improve the work environment and allow workers to stand for part of their workday. Furthermore, the boom of fitness, health tracking devices, and wellness applications allows many of us to keep track of our health better and then facilitate physical activities during the day. Nike, for instance, produced an electronic device including a tiny gadget called an accelerometer, that fits into a hole under the running shoe’s insole [10]. And this device tracks every single step we take when we are walking or running. Therefore, it measures how fast we are moving and how high we can jump, and that data is wirelessly transferred to a smartphone via Bluetooth.

One more straightforward solution to that problem is “move more and sit less", and walking is one of the most convenient ways. Taking a walk doesn’t require any special tools, but walking can lead to many benefits for both physical and mental health [2].

Although it would be very beneficial to sit less at work and move more, we do not want to step away from our desk and chair. Because an efficient worker, in our minds, is a person sitting and typing the keyboard continuously in front of a computer. McEachan et al. have stated in their study [11] ten obstacles to participating in physical activity. The two most common obstacles noted were “I don’t have any time” and “I’m too tired by the time I get home after work” [11, p. 6]. Four other barriers relating to the workplace were

“There aren't any convenient facilities”, “It is more important for me to relax when I'm not working”, “I have too many other commitments”, and “My manager and colleagues would frown on me taking a break” [11, p. 6]. The barriers show that physical activity seems not able to be undertaken while working. In 2016, the Brainwolk concept was introduced to support physical activity for creativity and wellbeing in the workplace [12]. Office workers can work during walking, thus gaining health benefits, as well as social interaction and creativity.

Moreover, the prototype of Brainwolk mobile application was designed to support walking meetings, and several user studies were conducted to learn the right features which office workers need and guidelines for designing a persuasive walking meeting application. Another solution that integrates physical activity into work is the Workwalk concept introduced by Damen et al. (2018). They suggested a simple way to motivate and facilitate knowledge workers to participate in a walking meeting without the support

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of any mobile applications that could interrupt the meeting. The Workwalk concept includes three key factors: 1) a noticeable route marked with a solid line, 2) outdoor signs of meeting and information, 3) the integration with the meeting room booking and reservation system [13]. This concept was designed for office workers, not for students.

At the same time, our target is the use of gamification, a new approach for facilitating walking meetings, to engage students in physical activity at university.

The primary target of this study is to explore a solution to the walking meeting application to engage involvement of students. In recent years, we have seen a rising number of firms applying gamification to solve problems and engage users [14]. The use of gamification strategies to enhance the system with gameful experiences has become fashionable to engage the users [15]. Gamification has been applied in many fields with successful results in changing user behavior [16], [17]. Numerous applications of

“gameful design” has appeared in many aspects of life and promoted intrinsic motivations toward various activities. Employing design for gameful experiences can create motivations and engagement for various activities in a broad range of contexts [18].

Therefore, the use of gamification in walking meeting service can be a potential alternative to the motivation of individuals and drive participation. The work of this thesis focuses on gamifying the Brainwolk walking meeting application. The gamification approach is the primary goal of this thesis to bring the current design more game-like.

1.2 Research objectives and methodology

The main goal of this thesis is to apply gamification techniques to a walking meeting application to engage students. The first phase of the thesis includes the study of existing designs and potential users’ needs in order to bridge the gap between users’ motivations and challenges during a walking meeting. Secondly, gamification as an innovative design approach is utilized in making existing tasks on the walking meeting application feel more like games to engage players. High-fidelity prototypes will be the output of this phase.

Finally, user testing is performed with prototypes to gather feedback for validation of the gamification approach and to improve the design further.

The thesis discusses the following research questions:

1. What kind of gamification elements and techniques are useful for motivating students to conduct a walking meeting?

2. What is the user experience of the gamified Brainwolk walking meeting application?

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The first research question refers to the gamification approach which is one of the formulated design implications from the analysis of the Brainwolk related questionnaires for students. The theoretical background of the walking meeting and gamification strategies are discovered during the literature review. This phase also reviews the game elements, mechanics, and dynamics that can be suitable for the design of a walking meeting application. The process of prototype design and evaluation is conducted to find the potential game elements and techniques for user engagement in a walking meeting.

The second research question is concentrated on evaluating the user experience aspect of the final prototype, which is an outcome of applying gamification to the Brainwolk concept. It includes defining metrics and evaluation process of the prototype, evaluating prospective users with user testing and survey tool, analyzing the qualitative data from users, and discussing and concluding the outcome of the gamification approach.

1.3 Structure of the thesis

The next chapter discusses the related work by reviewing literature that provide necessary theoretical background information for the thesis. Then chapter 3 describes the research process of this thesis and the process of gamification design. In chapter 4, a pre-study for exploring the users and their challenges in conducting Brainwolk is described in detail. From these findings, chapter 5 explains step by step the process of designing the gamified Brainwolk walking meeting prototypes. Next, these prototypes were tested with authentic users and the results of the evaluation process are presented in chapter 6. In the final chapter, we discuss the thesis contributions, limitations, and future work.

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2. RELATED WORK

This chapter reviews necessary literature consisting of knowledge about motivation, several kinds of motivation, and gamification. The study of the literature prepares essential theoretical background information for this thesis.

2.1 Motivation

The goal of applying gamification is to find a solution to engage students to change their way of working to move more and sit less. Altering our habits from prolonged to less sitting time requires more effort and the right type of driving force.

Motivation is a force that drives us to do something. The word “motivation” is often used as a characteristic of an individual in the context of everyday life. However, the psychologists talk about motivation in reference to a specific behavior or action [19]. For instance, when an individual student is talked as being motivated, it means that he is motivated about work related to behaviors (studying hard, coming to the class on time, or finishing all homework). This specific student is likely not motivated to play a game the whole day or sleep in classes. People are seldom motivated to do everything.

Typically, people get motivated from within by interest (intrinsic motivation) or by external factors (extrinsic motivation). Although internal motivation is the best type of motivation for altering a habit, sometimes the level of motivation is far from ideal for habit change.

Therefore, the motivation needs to be guided with the right external factors towards more internal motivation. Understanding the different kinds of motivation is necessary when starting to design a persuasive application for habit change because combining technology together with the notion of varying motivation types can help us create optimal conditions for forming a new habit. Besides, even when the motivation drives us to perform behaviors, there is another notion of three physical needs that should be considered in the design for people’s behavior change.

2.1.1 Intrinsic & extrinsic motivation

Deci and Ryan [20] stated several different types of motivation identified by Self- determination theory (SDT). SDT, a study of human motivation and personality, has been applied in many domains including work, life, health care, and sport [21]. This theory identifies the distinction between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation and describes their roles in social development and individual differences.

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The most basic difference is between extrinsic motivation referring to doing something due to external factors such as reward system, grades, or other’s opinions, and intrinsic motivation referring to doing an activity for the love and joy of doing it. In other words, intrinsic motivation comes from within. People are motivated by their interests, curiosity, or enjoyment rather than because of external pressure or reward. However, after early childhood, when we have the freedom to be intrinsically motivated, much of what we do is not intrinsically motivated because of social pressures to do uninteresting activities or new responsibilities.

In contrast, extrinsic motivation refers to perform a behavior to win some separable outcome. That means we do the activity for reasons other than the love of doing it. For example, when extrinsically motivated, a student who does his homework only because he receives a good mark, fears parental sanctions or personally believes it is valuable for his future career. There are many extrinsic motivations because we do activities for a variety of reasons (e.g., peer pressure, get paid, gain influence, avoid punishment).

However, results showed that when people receive external rewards, they expressed less interest, or effort toward achievement [22].

In the Organismic Integration Theory (OIT), Deci and Ryan proposed different types of extrinsic motivation [20]. Understanding these various kinds of extrinsic motivation, and what fosters each of them, is crucial because sometimes we cannot usually count on intrinsic motivation to move.

Figure 1. The Self-Determination Continuum Including Kinds of Motivation With Their Regulatory Styles, Loci of Causality, and Corresponding Processes. [21, p. 5]

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Figure 1 illustrates various forms of motivations in three categories, which can range from amotivation to active personal commitment [21]. The left end of the continuum, there is amotivation which is the state of lacking an intention to enact a behavior. When amotivated, a person does not act at all or has no plan to do what one does. At the right end of the continuum, there is intrinsic motivation. A person does the thing for no reason other than fun because it is rewarding in and of itself.

On the right of amotivation, there is a spectrum from the most external to the most internal types of extrinsic motivation, namely external, introjected, identified, and integrated regulations. The least autonomous in the group is external regulation, in which the individual’s behaviors are performed for an external demand or reward contingency. The regulation through introjection, the more self-determined form of extrinsic motivation, is driven by ego protection, avoidance of guilt or anxiety, or pride. In other words, we take external motivators and make them our own. Next in line, it is termed identified regulation. The individual has valued behavior and has accepted its regulation as his own. A boy, for instance, who spends much time outside of study on drawing because he can see that knowing about drawing is vital to success in his future career. In other words, it somehow is aligned with his own personal goals. There is value to him in doing this, but he still doesn’t want to. The most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation is the integrated regulation, in which the motivation happens when identified regulation has been fully assimilated to the self. This form of extrinsic motivation is close to intrinsic motivation, and in which the person is starting to be motivated by intrinsic sources of motivation and the desire for self-awareness.

In conclusion, understanding these different kinds of motivation is vital because the application with the essential features of the walking meeting has to be something the person wants to do for themselves, and it has to be authentic. It is not that we have tricked them into thinking they love to do. They have to love doing it and find some meaning in it.

2.1.2 Competence, autonomy and relatedness

Besides, the theory addressed three innate and psychological needs of autonomy, competences and relatedness that, if met, people are motivated to function and grow optimally [21].

- The need for competence refers to the sense that they are accomplished something, solving problems, surmounting obstacles; For example, mastering something or getting into better shape.

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- The need for autonomy refers to the need to feel in control of any decision;

I'm the one making the choices.

- The need for relatedness refers to a sense of belongingness and connectedness to others. Researchers show that the students tend to accept the proffered classroom values because of being respected and cared for by their teacher.

According to a sub theory from self-determination theory, factors in social contexts (e.g., communications, rewards) that conducted during an action toward feelings of competence can improve intrinsic motivation for that action. The reason is that social- contextual events can satisfy the need for competence [20]. Consequently, for instance, effectance promoting feedback and optimal challenges were proved to produce variability in intrinsic motivation. However, in order to improve intrinsic motivation, the feelings of competence need to be accompanied by a sense of autonomy. Thus, according to the sub theory, to maintain or enhance intrinsic motivation, people must not experience only competence or efficacy, but also their behavior to be self-determined.

Also, Ryan and Deci [21] revealed that not only threats, deadlines, directives, and competition pressure, but also tangible rewards diminish intrinsic motivation because they are experienced as controllers of behavior. In contrast, choice and opportunities for self-direction were proved to facilitate intrinsic motivation because people afford a greater sense of autonomy. It means that to improve the intrinsic motivation in a motivational technology, limiting tangle rewards and providing meaningful choices should be considered. The feeling of relatedness is the third factor, and satisfaction of the need for relatedness may play a vital role in improving intrinsic motivation when considering the context. Children, for instance, seem to perform an exciting task with a very low level of intrinsic motivation when they act in the presence of an unfamiliar adult who ignored them [21].

In conclusion, three psychological needs are necessary, and people are encouraged to satisfy these needs. Designing a system needs to consider details of each psychological need in theory to maintain or enhance intrinsic motivation.

2.2 Gamification

In recent years, gamification has become one of the hot topics for discussions among the most admired companies and organizations in the world [23]. An article on the Wall Street Journal discussed how an increasing number of companies are integrating video game elements into work. Some firms are already implementing gamification to grow

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their business, such as Microsoft, Home Depot, Deloitte, Samsung, Hasbro, SAP, PayPal, eBay, IBM, LiveOps Inc., Pearson, Nike, USA Network [24]. The success of commercial mobile services such as Nike+, a service for tracking exercise, and Foursquare, a service for providing recommendations of places to go near a user’s current location, were solutions that offer signposts for the phenomenon of gamification [25].

2.2.1 Definition of gamification

One hundred years ago, the Cracker Jack Company began placing a small “Toy Surprise” in each box of Cracker Jack. Since then, toys and games have been used as a way of marketing products by many companies. The first example of the term gamification involves the first text-based multi-user dungeon game called MUD1.

Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw created the shared virtual world in 1980. In this project, Bartle took a collaboration platform and gamified it, make it feel more game-like [26]. In 2003. Nick Pelling, a British developer and designer, coined the term “gamification”. The first gamification consulting firm, Conundra, was established to make electronic devices having game-like user interces [27]. In 2007, the Bunchball company had created a gamified website for the TV show “The Office” with the same name of the episode

“Dunder Mifflin Infinity” [28]. From 2010, gamification became a popular term. Jesse Schell, a famous American game designer, talked at the DICE Conference in 2010 and pushed people to think of “gamepocalypse – where every second of your life you’re playing a game in some way” [29, p. 1]. Jane McGonigal, a video game designer, spoked the topic of “Gaming can make a better world” in the TED Talk 2010 and pointed how the game could solve major human problems [30]. In her talk, she identified that four basic principles attracting gamers, as human, were “urgent optimism”, “social fabric”,

“blissful productivity”, and “epic meaning”. Also, she stated that positive feedback is essential in game, but we don’t get that kind of positive feedback in reality. In 2011, the Gamification Co. held the first Gamification Summit attracted nearly 400 attendees in San Francisco [31].

However, the word “gamification” is easily confused with terms such as “serious game”, a game created for a basic purpose other than mere entertainment, and “game theory”

[26], a framework to analyze complex problems in economics, social dilemma, conflict/resolution, political science. Deterding et al. separated gamification (involving parts of games) from serious games (including whole games). However, the dividing line is often not easy to see [15].

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According to some experts in this field, a good gamification program includes measurable goals, a carefully designed user journey, definitions of target players, relevant design needs, and a clear development plan [32]. In addition, to figure out whether gamification is right for business needs, Werbach proposes four core factors which should be considered: motivation, meaning choices, structure, and potential conflicts [32].

2.2.2 User types models

In order to design an effective gamified system, it is necessary to know the target players and what motivates them. It is essential to segment players of the gamification system so that our system was appropriate for more than one subsets of players and can fulfill the different needs of different subgroups. Because gamified systems typically provide many choices to the different types of user, there were more than one single segment was needed to target. Two models of player types we can use as a starting point for segmentation.

Bartle’s player type model

Bartle model, the most common model of player types, was invented in the late 1980s by Richard Bartle, who defined four types of players for text-based Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) [33]. Therefore, this model has a strong focus on MUDs rather than different game genres or gameful design. Bartle distinguished four broad types of players into achievers, explorers, killers, and socializers (Figure 2).

- Achievers: who love to collect badges and get recognition for them;

- Explorers: who like to see new contents and discover new secrets;

- Socializers: who want to engage with other players;

- Killers: who would like to impose themselves over other players and want to conquer others.

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Figure 2. Bartle's player types created from observing players of MUDs. [33, p. 6]

Gamification User Types Hexad model

Marczewski developed the Hexad model [34], which aims for a variety of gamification systems. Also, he offered suggestions about different game elements supporting different kinds of players. The hexad consists of six player types that they are driven by intrinsic or extrinsic motivations (Figure 3). Among six types of user, four types are derived from the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness with an additional purpose.

- Philanthropists are driven by purpose, who are kind, gentle, and sensitive.

They are willing to share and expect nothing in return.

- Socializers are motivated by relatedness, who are interested in creating social connections and interacting with others.

- Free Spirits are driven by autonomy. They love to act without external control and express themselves freely.

- Achievers are motivated by competence. They feel satisfied when tackling difficult tasks or overcoming challenges within a system.

- Players love extrinsic rewards. They make a determined effort to get their benefits and will do whatever to earn rewards.

- Disruptors are driven by the triggering change. They have a tendency to disrupt the system and test the systems’ boundaries to force either negative or positive changes.

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Figure 3. Gamification User Types Hexad. [34, p. 3]

2.2.3 Gamification elements

Many typical gamification examples start with the same three elements including points, badges, and leaderboards, thus it is called as PBL Triad [26]. Although these elements are essential and common, it is recommended that gamification should not be limited to them.

Points are often used to encourage people to do some activity; thus, they can either collect more point or keep the score. The points can be used to determine the win states or how well someone is doing in the game. They can connect up with rewards and display progress, and provide data for the game designer. Points are all equal and fungible.

Badges represent achievements of players in the gamified system. Also, badges indicate the vital things in the game and play a role of credentials. They can support collections and push people along to play the game more and feel more engaged in it. They operate as virtual status or social symbols. Leaderboards are rankings that make the performance public for all to see. They can be powered either motivating or demotivating.

They reveal feedbacks of a competition.

Gamification elements pyramid

Although the PBL triad is useful, it should be considered only as a starting point for gamification efforts. Gaming will easily become boring and shallow if gamification is designed with just these three elements [35]. Therefore, Werbach [26] proposed a framework for gamification elements, which is a pyramid structure with three levels. They are organized in decreasing order of abstraction as shown in Figure 4.

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Dynamics on the highest level of the pyramid are considered as the hidden structure making games cohere. The most important dynamics are

- Constraints: limitations or forced trade-offs in the game;

- Emotions: emotional reinforcement to push people to play more;

- Narrative: a consistent, ongoing storyline;

- Progression: the player’s growth and developments;

- Relationships: social interactions generating feelings of camaraderie, status, altruism.

Mechanics thought as the verbs of a game or gamification move the action forward. Ten important game mechanics are listed as following.

- Challenges: puzzles or tasks that require effort to solve;

- Chance: some luck involved or some other mechanism that makes it, so the result is random;

- Competition: one player or team wins against the other;

- Cooperation: players form a group to achieve a shared goal;

- Feedback: real-time progress report;

- Resource acquisition: things or the opportunity to get things in order to move the game forward;

- Rewards: benefits for some kind of action or achievement in the game;

- Transactions: trading between players;

- Turns: sequences of activity in the game;

Dynamics Mechanics

Components

Figure 4. Gamification elements pyramid.

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- Win states: the state which defines winning the game.

Components are kinds of game elements that are at the lowest level. They are specific forms of mechanics and dynamics such as achievements, avatars, boss fights, collections, badges, combat, gifting, points, levels, content unlocking, leaderboards, social graphs, quests, virtual goods, or teams.

Additionally, Werbach [35] states an aspect of the game that’s around the elements and not captured fully by the elements. The overall experience of the game is greater than the sum of the parts. The aesthetic of the game is a critical part of that experience.

Suitable Gamification Elements for Persuasive Fitness Systems

Maximillian stated that gamification elements have different motivational impacts on users. In order to measure the persuasiveness of gamification elements across users, an online study (N = 179) was conducted with a storyboard-based approach [36].

Besides, the Hexad user types and behavior change intentions were used as factors to tailor the gamified persuasive fitness systems in this study.

Results of this study show correlations between Hexad user types and gamification elements, so they have contributed a static set of gamification elements for each user type. Table 1 shows a suggestion of suitable gamification elements set in the study. Also, they found out that it was crucial to consider the stages of change for personalizing gamified persuasive systems in the Physical Activity domain.

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Table 1. A static set of gamification elements for each Hexad user type. [36, p. 5]

Gamification element Expected player types Virtual Character AC (Achievers), PL (Players) Custom Goal AC, FS (Free Spirits)

Personalized Goal AC

Challenge AC

Badges AC, PL

Points PL, AC

Rewards PL

Knowledge Sharing PH (Philanthropists) Unlockable Content FS

Cheating DI (Disruptors)

Social Collaboration SO (Socializers) Social Competition SO, PL

However, there are several limitations relating to the set of suitable gamification elements that should be considered in future work. First, validating their findings using real implementations was needed. Besides, the combination of gamification elements, which may create different experiences for the user, was worthwhile to analyze in the future.

Finally, investigating their finding in different contexts besides Physical Activity should be considered.

2.2.4 Reward structure

According to Michael Wu, motivation and reward play crucial roles in the design and implementation of a gamification system [37]. Basically, motivations come before the behavior, but rewards happen after the behavior. Also, he distinguished between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. The extrinsic reward is a tangible or physical award that

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is given for accomplishing something while the intrinsic one is intangible, and it can be a sense of achievement, recognition, or conscious satisfaction. Even though the person usually receives extrinsic rewards from something beyond the person after performing the activity or behavior, intrinsic rewards usually originate from within the person.

Obviously, doing something for the rewards is different from doing an action sorely for enjoyment and interest (intrinsic motivation), so both rewards are extrinsic motivations.

In addition, intrinsic motivators are reward-independent, so the person intrinsically motivated to perform an activity or behavior will continue doing regardless of any reward he might receive [19].

Gabe Zichermann introduced the SAPS model of gamified reward, namely Status, Access, Power, and Stuff [38]. The SAPS framework details are as following:

- Status is cheap, but powerful because it will make someone cool, and other people will value and respect.

- Access rewards will give users some private or special access to the service that other people don’t have. For example, unlockable content in the game can be accessed by limited players.

- Power rewards enable players more powerful than others. This might be in the form of a moderator position. For instance, experienced users of the Stack Overflow community can edit certain posts without submitting for review.

- Stuff is tangible but expensive, such as coupons or giveaways.

Whilst the first three values are virtual and cheap, and the last one is tangible. Gabe argued that a good gamification application would allow designers to scale up the reward system instead of replacing tangible rewards [39].

2.3 Summary

From the literature review, it can be seen that designing a system of habit change will require consideration in different aspects from the notion of motivation to gamification strategies. Understanding motivation kinds is necessary to develop an efficient and enjoyable system for students, and then the satisfaction of three psychological needs should be considered to maintain intrinsic motivation. This motivation plays a vital role in forming a new habit. Besides, user types models in gamification help us understand the users’ behaviors better and factors to attract users. Then two sets of gamification elements give many options to pick the appropriate mechanics and components integrated into our system. Finally, the knowledge of reward structure provides different

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ways to engage students to participate in the system. The benefits of gamification show a promising solution to promoting walking meeting participation.

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3. RESEARCH PROCESS

The aim of this thesis is to design a walking meeting application for students with gamification techniques. This chapter describes the overall process of study. In addition, the chapter provides different methods which have been used to develop a new design for walking meeting.

3.1 Overall research process and phases

The research process of this thesis contains three main phases including pre-study, gamified application design and user evaluation as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. The overall research process.

Pre-study

The pre-study is the first step of the research that studies the users’ needs, motivations, and challenges in the use of the previous design. Particularly, data collected from surveys of two previous studies, which were conducted by the Brainwolk team in 2017 and 2018, were analyzed by using the affinity diagram [40], [41]. The surveys consisted of mainly the students’ responses about their different experiences of walking meeting.

The result of the surveys gained the understandings of users and their needs, challenges and motivations during their walking meeting. The pre-study is described in detail in Section 4.

The design implications were identified based on the literature and user research data, and those would be used as the aims of the new walking meeting design.

Pre-study

•Analysis of ready- made questionnaire data

•Formulation of Design implications for the gamified Brainwolk concept

Gamified Application Design

•Gamification design

•Features design

User Evaluation

•UEQ

•Semi-structured interview

•Validation of design implications

•Evaluation of game elements and techniques

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Gamified Application Design (Features design and Gamification design)

Based on the pre-study results, some necessary features caused challenges for users.

Therefore, the main goals of the new design were to re-design these functions and use gamification to engage students as potential users. Therefore, the design process was divided into two main parts including features design and gamification design. In the features design, the note-taking, document viewing, pre-planning, and weather forecast features were designed based on the users' feedback collected from the surveys.

Meanwhile, the gamification design followed the assembled method for engineering gamified software [42]. This method suggested activities divided into seven phases:

project preparation, analysis, ideation, design, implementation, evaluation, and monitoring. However, due to the expected outcome of this thesis, our gamification process excluded the implementation, evaluation, and monitoring steps. The next phase focuses on the evaluation of the prototypes instead of a product as the evaluation phase of the mentioned method. The result of this overall design phase is a high-fidelity prototype as an input of the user-testing stage. The gamification design process is clarified in the Section 3.2.

User evaluation

The user evaluation aimed to validate design implications and gain more insights about the experiences of gamification on the walking meeting. The user evaluation consisted of two components: questionnaire and semi-structured interview. There were three questionnaires filled out in each user test with one evaluator and one user.

Before interacting with the prototype, the participants filled out a background questionnaire on their understanding of the Brainwolk concept and the amounts of physical activity during a typical week. Then they performed a list of test tasks using the prototype displayed in a mobile device. Also, there were a series of tasks requiring users to do a walking meeting in 10-20 minutes while trying out the meeting features of the prototype. Afterward, they were asked to answer the post-questionnaire on their general impression of the gamified prototype and their feelings about gamification components.

The post-questionnaire consisted of 5 statements relating to re-designing features and 15 statements on game design elements. The third questionnaire used the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ), was also conducted focusing on the pragmatic and hedonic quality of the evaluated prototype. After completing those questionnaires, the users continued with a semi-structured interview whose result provides additional information to the questionnaire results. The interview aimed to explore problems and

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suggestions for the improvement of the participants during the prototype evaluation. The questionnaire materials used were presented in the Appendix.

After collecting user experiences, the results of user evaluation were evaluated. The UEQ data analysis sheet was used to assess the pragmatic and hedonic quality of the gamified system and compare it to the UEQ benchmark [43]. The results of the post- questionnaire aimed to figure out how each participant interacts with different game elements and how they motivate them. The different perspectives from the interviews support the post-questionnaire results concerning the deep understanding of gamification effects. The evaluation results are described in the Section 6. Based on all the analysis results of user evaluation, the research questions were considered to be answered or not.

The evaluation process is a way to validate how gamification engages students to do the walking meeting and how effective meeting features support. Moreover, the users' insights into user testing can be considered as future improvements of the gamified application.

3.2 Gamification design process

The process of gamification design on phase of thesis project follows four steps including project preparation, analysis, ideation and design as shown in Figure 6. This process is extracted from the process-deliverable-diagram (PDD) [42] which is described in detail at section 5.1.1. The detail designs of gamified application are explained in section 5.

Figure 6. Gamification design process used in this thesis.

•Project objectives

Project preparation

•Context analysis

•User analysis

Analysis

•Target behaviors

•Activity loops

•Fun factors

•Game elements

Ideation

•Sketches

•Prototyping

Design

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Project preparation

In this thesis, the purpose of project preparation is to define ranked and justified objectives of the gamification project. These objectives were clarified based on the user needs and motivational problems in the pre-study.

Analysis of context and users

The information about potential users and context of use was collected and analyzed from the pre-study results. Then we created three user scenarios to understand better the behaviors of the users in a given context (section 5.3.2). Following the context analysis, we used segmentation frameworks to determine the characteristics and intrinsic motivational needs of users.

Ideation

In this step, we developed the idea of target behaviors, activity loops, fun ideas, and gamification elements in order to form a gamified system. Section 5.4.1 and 5.5.1 describe the gamification idea stage in detail for both prototypes.

Design

After collecting all necessary ideas, concrete designs for the system can be developed and evaluated. The engagement loops created above could be considered as the skeleton of the system [42]. Then we put all these game elements together to make the gamification system compelling. In this stage, there were two forms of prototypes created: paper and high-fidelity prototype.

We started the design phase with paper prototyping because sketching allowed us to quickly explore lots of different design alternatives without time and energy consuming.

It also forced us to concentrate on the essence of design (what it does), rather than its aesthetics (how it looks). We downloaded the smartphone sketch sheets from Sketchize [44], printed them out, and sketched all-screen designs. During the paper prototyping, the Bartle’s model of player types was used for segmentation to guide our design process. Then game elements were picked from the MDC model (See Figure 4) to support the ideas brainstormed. The paper prototype provides the gamification features of “one vs. one” walking challenge, group walking competition, and unlockable packages of city routes. The detail design of the paper prototypes is explained in Section 5.4.

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Due to the negative user feedback on the gamification ideas of the paper prototype, we returned to the ideation phase for a new approach. Accordingly, Bartle’s model of player types was replaced with the gamification user types hexad method, which is suitable for personalization of gameful systems [36]. In this model, the user types were divided based on people’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivations rather than observed behaviors.

Meanwhile, game design elements were chosen from the set of gamification elements for persuasive fitness systems suggested by Altmeyer et al. [36]. The high-fidelity prototype was developed with the Sketch [45] without paper prototyping because of the limited time of the thesis. However, some features in the high-fidelity prototype were improved based on feedback for the previous paper prototype. Its gamification idea was about building their own virtual forest by doing the walking meeting or interacting with other players for points. The detailed gamification design concepts are clarified in Section 5.5.

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4. PRE-STUDY

4.1 Focus of the study

The pre-study focused on exploring students’ needs, motivations and challenges in use of the previous design [12]. From these findings, the new design implications will be formulated for re-designing features which caused most problems for users and gamifying the current application.

4.2 Data collection and analysis methods

The pre-study data was collected from surveys of the two previous studies conducted by the teacher of the course “Psychology of Pervasive Computing” (Ms. Aino Ahtinen) and her assistants [40], [41]. These studies were conducted by the Brainwolk team during the autumn 2017 and autumn 2018. On a weekly exercise of the courses, groups were formed among students based on their group assignment topic. A Brainwolk guide and teacher (Aino Ahtinen) prepared some pre-defined topics to be discussed along the way. The concept of Brainwolk was to boost ideation in small teams. Participants met at the Tietotalo’s lobby, then took outdoor walks around the university campus where three checkpoints were set, and on each checkpoint the Brainwolk guide facilitated the previous topic’s wrap-ups and asked participants to carry on the walk with another one.

After these activities, all students were asked to fill in a questionnaire including the following questions:

• What kind of thoughts, ideas or feelings did using the Brainwolk walking method raise on you?

• How did the Brainwolk walking method support the discussion of your team/pair?

• How could the Brainwolk walking method be applied in learning (any ideas, thoughts, objections etc.)?

• In your opinion, how suitable is the Brainwolk walking method to be used in learning? Why would it be suitable or not suitable?

Then they were requested to rate the positive effects on 8 criteria in the scale from 1 to 5. The criteria were:

• Creative thinking?

• Getting new perspectives?

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• Vitality, refreshment, energy?

• Relaxation?

• Happiness?

• Interaction between people?

• Would you like to do it again?

We used an affinity diagram method organizing large amounts of the data into groups or themes based on their relationships in Figure 7. During our analysis of the data, all answers in surveys were transcribed, categorized in themes and organized on a mind map digitally instead of a physical board. All in all, 4 main themes (benefits, challenges in use, motivations and suggested purposes of use) and 18 sub-themes, were discovered based on the thematic coding of the data.

4.3 Participants

Of the 58 respondents, 45% were male. The mean age of respondents was approximately 26 years old, with a range of 20 to 44 years old. 100% participants were the students of the course “Psychology of Pervasive Computing” in the autumn 2017 or autumn 2018, and they came from different countries and continents. Of the total participants in the survey conducted by Brainwolk in both years, 60% were European while students from Asia occupied nearly a third (with 31%) of all respondents. Their fields of study were also different, for example, Human-technology interaction, Electronic engineering, Knowledge of Information Management, etc.

Figure 7. A part of the pre-study affinity diagram.

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4.4 Findings

Benefits. This study shows students reported that the most common benefits of the Brainwolk walking meeting were to enjoy outdoors, to be refreshed in their mind and health benefits of the physical activity (38%). Those benefits were also mentioned in the previous studies [46]. The 26-year-old Finnish female enjoyed the autumn nature and felt energetic to walk and shared her “crazy” ideas generated during the thinking process while the 27-year-old female student from Mexico said that physical activity enhanced learning as well as gave more oxygen to their brain and body. Those were followed by the group discussion and ideation improvement. Here, one respondent commented on her discussion with the Brainwolk.

“The discussion was fluent and stayed in the topic” (Female, 27 years, from Finland)

It is like that this method broke communication barriers because six attendees (10%) from Europe could accept each other ideas even if they might be quite odd and an Asian student did not feel awkward without sharing her thoughts during the walking. Besides, students participating suggested ways how the Brainwolk boosted effective ideation. It is clear that ideas tended to come up with easier and clearer than; new ideas appeared to be combined and refined from existing one without any boundary. Around 19% of respondents commented on the method that it made them feel more awake in comparison with sitting in a classroom.

Challenges. This study also shows some challenges preventing positive experiences.

The biggest challenges were outdoor distractions (19% of responders), the way of recording ideas effectively (14%), followed by visualizing ideas and organizing information (12%) and inclement weather (8%). Outdoor distractions such as noise outside, cars or people caused the trouble with listen and concentration of many participants. Respondents also reported that note taking was difficult and their generated ideas were gone after the instructor gave new topic. Due to unexpected inclement weather, scheduled meetings can be cancelled. The final challenge found is positions of people in the meeting for example participants said that they expected to face each other in the meeting. Therefore, we propose the following design implications: “Support the easy and effective note taking” (DI-1), “Provide friendly weather forecast” (DI-2) and “Support the viewing documents during the meeting (DI-3).

Motivational factors. According to the study, enjoyment, wellbeing, social interaction, and boost in creativity appear to motivate users to take a walking meeting.

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“Brainwolk walking method support our discussion more interactive, like we didn’t think any except our idea. It happened automatically.” (Female, 24 years, from Bangladesh)

“Refreshing was easier to be creative and discuss the concept from many angles.

I felt it lowered my stress levels a bit and it was just easier to think.” (Female, 32 years, from Finland)

“I think meeting new people could help to raise your creativity and if you do this by walking or going out is better. Because the situation is more comfortable, and it seems more that you are talking with your friends.” (Female, 23 years, from Italy) Moreover, students tended to be easier to have a talk with someone who they did not know beforehand about their own ideas during the walking. A better relationship also was established between the members. They had different ideas at first but then they were able to pick the best one and enhance it even better. Even when this concept was great, some participants felt a lack of motivation to keep their continued use after the course. Gamification has been applied in many fields with successful results in the encouragement of habit change [15], so our next implication based on the finding above is “Motivate with use of Gamification techniques” (DI-4).

Suggested work tasks. Based on the feedbacks of users, there was a long list of suggested purposes to improve on the current design. Firstly, one participant suggested being able to record the whole conversation and replay it later, while another student would like to have a note-taking assistant. This finding was already introduced in DI-1.

In addition, some wished to have small breaks (10%) or listen audio lectures (7%) during the walking, but I decided to not focus on those at this time because of time limitations.

Finally, some respondents thought the prepared topics/questions before the walk could be better. I believe that it could keep a meeting on-time. Therefore, the design implication derived from this finding is: “Support the initial planning” (DI-5).

“By organizing Brainwolk walking method before starting any kind of project.”

(Male, 23 years, from Brazil)

“it could have been better if prepared better.” (Male, 36 years, from Finland) The following table presents a summary of the design implications grouped into two groups: meeting support and gamification. The meeting support design implications were the practical supportive tools used in a walking meeting, while the gamification design implication will motivate the users to walk and create the gameful experiences to increase their engagement.

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Table 2. The summary of design implications.

Group Design Implication Explanation

Meeting support

DI-1. Support the easy and effective note-taking

Users tend to forget their ideas without taking note. The app can provide a new way of note taking which record their ideas and categorize into topics.

Participants in the meeting can review all notes.

DI-2. Provide friendly weather forecast

Inclement weather is the one of challenges, which can affect the meeting. One friendly weather notification beforehand can remind users to bring raincoats or reschedule the meeting.

DI-3. Support the viewing document during the meeting

Users need viewing or referencing prepared materials during the walking meeting. The app can display reference documents in easy-to-read type. Adding comments on materials is optional.

DI-5. Support the initial planning

The initial planning is necessary for team to keep a meeting on time, stay in the topic and make sure all topics discussed. Team members can update their plan during the meeting.

Gamification

DI-4. Motivate with use of Gamification techniques

Gamification is a potential solution to form a new habit and motivate a continued use, which is beneficial for users starting to conduct the Brainwolk in their daily life.

We aimed to gamify the next version of the walking meeting application to motivate students to conduct Brainwolk, as well as for note-taking to become easier, and share

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notes among members, to have more fun to prepare and limit the meeting beforehand and to be more enjoyable and motivated.

4.5 Summary

The results of the previous surveys gained insight into the user needs and their challenge during use. From these findings, we decided to improve some aspects of current design and also to apply the gamification to the new design for the purpose of user engagement, motivation boost, and habit change. Accordingly, we generated four design implications for the improvement of meeting support features and one for the use of gamification to motivate users. The gamified Brainwolk walking meeting system will be designed based on design implications and evaluated with the potential users.

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5. GAMIFIED APPLICATION DESIGN

This chapter describes the process of designing gamified Brainwolk walking meeting paper and high-fidelity prototypes. All methods used are presented in section 5.1, while the gamification design process is explained from section 5.2. We clarified the design objectives and the analysis of two prototypes in sections 5.2, and 5.3, respectively . Parts 5.4 and 5.5 focus on the steps of gamification design from generating an idea to prototyping the paper and interactive prototypes.

5.1 Gamification design methods

The main goal of this subchapter was to provide information about different methods have been used to gamify the Brainwolk walking meeting application. These methods include the process used in gamification design, user type models, and two potential sets of gamification elements.

5.1.1 Method of engineering gamified system

A detailed method for gamified engineering software was conducted based on gamification design methods from prior literature [42]. In the prior literature, researchers firstly developed a list of design principles for developing gamified software by synthesizing prior design frameworks and interviewing 25 gamification experts. Then, they assembled a new way for engineering gamified system based on the collected knowledge and design principles. Finally, the obtained method was evaluated by experts, and it was then implemented in a gamification project. As a result, a method divided into seven phases: (1) Project preparation, (2) Analysis, (3) Ideation, (4) Design, (5) Implementation, (6) Evaluation, (7) Monitoring (Figure 8). The evaluation phase in this method focuses on validating an implementation of a gamified system instead of a prototype, but the expected outcome of this thesis was an evaluated prototype.

Therefore, only the first four steps were followed to gamify the Brainwolk walking meeting application.

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Figure 8. The method of engineering gamified software.

The project preparation step focuses on clarifying the objectives of the gamification project. The objectives were used to guide the engineering process and plan expectations. It is necessary to rank and justify these objectives based on their priorities in the project. The purpose of the analysis phase is to understand the target group of the gamified project and context characteristics of the software to be gamified. The user analysis focuses on the characterization of target user groups. Then the user groups were described and clustered through the development of personas or the use of segmentation frameworks, such as player types or the Octalysis Framework [42].

Following the user analysis, the context analysis is to understand where gamification should be applied. Next, the ideation step is to develop a gamification design, including target behaviors, activity cycles, fun ideas, and design features. Specifically, development of target behaviors supports potential users to achieve the objectives while activity cycles were generated to model the user action and keep the game experience changing over time. Two kinds of cycles developed in the system were engagement loops (Figure 9) and progression stairs (Figure 10). Through the progression stairs, the users experience an escalating level of challenges which are designed with a period of

Gamifying the web service for the brainwolk walking meeting

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