User Experience, Gameful Bits

The Theoretical Basis of User Types: My review of the article recently published in IJHCS

A team of researchers from German, Finnish, and Canadian Universities, led by Dr. Jeanine Kirchner-Krath, recently published the interesting article Uncovering the theoretical basis of user types: An empirical analysis and critical discussion of user typologies in research on tailored gameful design. They analyzed and…

Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceFebruary 10, 20221Comment

Classifying User Preferences for Groups of Gameful Design Elements

I have previously described my research that results in the creation of the Groups of Gameful Design Elements. If you're not familiar with it yet, I highly recommend reading the three-post series starting with the one linked in the previous sentence. In my work, I…

Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceOctober 20, 20200Comments

The Effects of Personalized Gamification on Task Performance

In the latest article I published at Frontiers in Computer Science, titled Validation of User Preferences and Effects of Personalized Gamification on Task Performance, I studied how users would react to being able to customize their gameful experience. Additionally, the study also showed that task…

Design Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceMarch 25, 20200Comments

Points and Rewards in Gameful Design

This week's article brings a detailed review of some of the research about points and rewards in gamification. I started by thinking about points, but then I found it hard to separate them totally from rewards as they are often presented as a form…

Design Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceMarch 3, 20201Comment

Leaderboards in Gameful Design: Their effects, types, and guidelines for their correct use

Like the topic of my previous article (badges), leaderboards are also one of the most used elements in gameful design. But despite the prevalence of leaderboards in gamification, few sources explain exactly what role they fulfill in a gameful system, how users interact with them,…

Design Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceFebruary 20, 20204Comments

Badges in Gameful Design: How users perceive them and how are they motivational

Badges are the most used element in educational gameful design and the third most used element in gamification in general. They have been listed by many different gamification researchers and experts as one of the basic gameful design elements. But do you know exactly what…

Design Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceDecember 15, 20191Comment

Personalized Gameful Design – Part 2

Steps for personalized gameful design: 1-classification of user preferences, 2-selection of gameful design elements, 3-evaluation of the design.

In Part 1, I discussed what is personalized gameful design. If you have not read it yet, please take a moment to do it before you continue reading this part. The method to design personalized gameful applications that I proposed as part of my thesis has…

Design Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceDecember 5, 20192Comments

Personalized Gameful Design – Part 1

I recently presented and published my Ph.D. Thesis describing a method for personalized gameful design. I will now begin publishing a series of posts in this blog introducing and detailing this method so everyone can apply it without needing to read the whole thesis. :)…

Games Gamification HCI User ExperienceNovember 26, 20190Comments

Gamification User Types or Player Traits: When should I use each one of them?

At the HCI Games Group, we have been working for the past few years on two related projects: the validation of the Gamification User Types Hexad and the study of player typologies, which recently led to the creation of our Five-factor Player Traits model. Therefore,…

Gamification HCI Research User ExperienceFebruary 28, 20180Comments

Understanding Gamification Through Goal-Setting Theory

Goal-setting theory has been used for decades to explain how to motivate people to perform better in work-related tasks by setting and monitoring goals. Gamification is also inherently a goal-oriented activity, aimed at fostering motivation; therefore, it is logic to expect that these two practices would…