Most design advice for the development of successful gamification systems has focused on how best to engage the end user while imbuing the system with playfulness. This paper argues that it is also critical for designers to focus on the broad context of the system's deployment, including the identification of stakeholder requirements, requirements from the hosting organization, deep understanding of the diversity of the target population, understanding of limits in the agency of the target users, and constraints arising from the post-deployment environment. To illustrate the importance of such contextual and stakeholder analysis, the paper presents issues and associated solutions that were discovered through the creation of a children's nutrition and fitness education gamification system. The problems identified through a broad analysis of context significantly altered the design of the system and led to the realization that the initially conceptualized project would have been unusable. The paper concludes with concrete lessons for designers.Gamification, the use of design elements characteristic of games in non-game contexts [9], has become an increasingly popular research area. Gamification provides a novel way to engage users and solve real-world problems in areas such as defense [15], education [18], healthcare [11,31], and scientific research [30]. Research into successful gamification techniques has primarily focused on how best to engage the end user [1,8,17,27] using internal (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and external (badges, point systems, leaderboards, levels, and quests) motivators [1,8,17,27] and how to make the user's activity entertaining through gameplay [8,19,22,25,31]. In this paper, we argue that in addition to motivational constructs and entertainment value, gamification systems-tools used to gamify activities-need to consider their context of deployment. While this is well established in the field of computer-human interaction, context in design has, to date, received little attention in the field of gamification.To illustrate the importance of context in designing a gamification system, we report on our experience in the design of Edufitment, a framework for educating children in nutrition and fitness. For instance, Edufitment was initially intended for deployment in school classrooms. We aimed to improve the diets of the targeted children by teaching nutrition using a game. However, investigations with our stakeholders revealed that 94% of the targeted children were eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch programs. This reduced the children's ability to choose what they ate during school hours. Had we designed the framework as initially intended, there could have been a large disconnect between the types of foods our program taught the children to eat and the types of foods the children had the option of eating.This represents just one of numerous examples of how information gleaned from stakeholders and from consideration of the context of deployment was critically influential on...

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Participation rates in repetitive-motion exercise programs, such as programs for muscle-strengthening and physical rehabilitation, are low. Exergames show promise in encouraging people to exercise, but it is challenging to build compelling games around repetitive exercises. Games involve players making meaningful choices, but repetitivemotion workout programs are rigidly structured, making it difficult to find opportunities for such choices. As such, there is a struggle between providing players with meaningful choices and meeting the constraints of the exercise program. We discuss methods for enhancing agency in repetitivemotion exergames while still meeting these rigid constraints. We illustrate these methods through Brains & Brawn, a novel strategy card game for muscle-strengthening. Playtesting with eight participants demonstrated that players experienced agency during gameplay, were incented to exercise with correct form, and showed favorable attitude toward the game.

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