Gameful design, the process of creating a system with affordances for gameful experiences, can be used to increase user engagement and enjoyment of digital interactive systems. It can also be used to create applications for behaviour change in areas such as health, wellness, education,…

I was recently featured on an interview for GamFed, the International Gamification Confederation, where I spoke about my research into personalised gameful design, the state of gamification research in general, what we can look forward to, and the role GamFed can play in furthering gamification.…
Gustavo Tondello is the co-founder and gamification specialist of MotiviUX, research leader at GamFed (the International Gamification Confederation), and a Ph.D. candidate and sessional lecturer at the University of Waterloo, Canada. With more than 10 years of experience in software engineering and business analysis,…

Last week, Ryerson University's Chang School of Continuing Education organized a one-day professional development and networking event in Toronto, Canada. The event focused on serious games and gamification for three specific application areas: higher education, healthcare, and corporate. Several dozens of attendees spent the day…
How can we design persuasive and gameful technologies that can motivate different types of users to achieve their goals? This presentation summarizes the topic of my Ph.D. Research at the HCI Games Group, University of Waterloo. Presented at the 2018 University of Waterloo 3MT…

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…

Octalysis Prime, the "gamified mentorship journey with Yu-kai Chou", was officially launched this February 1st, 2018. Octalysis Prime is a comprehensive platform aimed at teaching gamification and related concepts and practices. It is structured in the format of a real-life RPG (role-playing game), in which…

See also: Part 1 and Part 2
In part 1, I presented an overview of our research study that classified the most commonly used gameful design elements according to user preferences, and in part 2 I listed which elements make part of each group of user…

See also: Part 1
In part 1, I presented an overview of our research study that classified the most commonly used gameful design elements according to user preferences:
Groups of gameful design elements by user preferences.
Now, let’s dive into more detail and look at the complete list…

At the HCI Games Group, we have been working to understand user preferences in gameful applications in order to develop methodologies for personalized gameful design. Last year, we worked together with Andrzej Marczewski and the AIT to develop a new questionnaire for the Hexad user…