Investigating the Relationship Between User Ratings and Gamification – A Review of mHealth Apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store

Schmidt-Kraepelin, Manuel; Thiebes, Scott; Sunyaev, Ali

doi:10.24251/hicss.2019.181

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In this regard, additional measures for mHealth app popularity (eg, user rating or number of users) could be taken into account in order to include more niche mHealth apps in the analysis. Such research could additionally contribute to the upcoming research stream that aims to assess the potential effect that gamification may have on mHealth app success [ 25 ]. Fourth, the coding of each mHealth app by only 1 researcher might have led to false classification in terms of the gamification approaches, which then could have impacted the cluster analysis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, most studies investigate the psychological or behavioral effects that occur when introducing specific game design elements (eg, points, leaderboards) or a combination of different elements to a certain mHealth app [ 24 ]. The stream of research that is closest to our work has been concerned with investigating the extent to which game design elements have been implemented in real-world mHealth apps and analyzing their relationships to various other constructs such as app popularity [ 15 ], user ratings [ 25 , 26 ], or the use of health behavior theory constructs [ 15 ]. To the best of our knowledge, no research exists that has explicitly examined the emergence of specific dominant gamification approaches in the domain of mHealth apps and the relationship to their targeted health behaviors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Archetypes of Gamification: Analysis of mHealth Apps

Schmidt-Kraepelin¹,

Toussaint²,

Thiebes³

et al. 2020

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background Nowadays, numerous health-related mobile apps implement gamification in an attempt to draw on the motivational potential of video games and thereby increase user engagement or foster certain health behaviors. However, research on effective gamification is still in its infancy and researchers increasingly recognize methodological shortcomings of existing studies. What we actually know about the phenomenon today stems from fragmented pieces of knowledge, and a variety of different perspectives. Existing research primarily draws on conceptual knowledge that is gained from research prototypes, and isolated from industry best practices. We still lack knowledge on how gamification has been successfully designed and implemented within the industry and whether certain gamification approaches have shown to be particularly suitable for certain health behaviors. Objective We address this lack of knowledge concerning best practices in the design and implementation of gamification for health-related mobile apps by identifying archetypes of gamification approaches that have emerged in pertinent health-related mobile apps and analyzing to what extent those gamification approaches are influenced by the underlying desired health-related outcomes. Methods A 3-step research approach is employed. As a first step, a database of 143 pertinent gamified health-related mobile apps from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store is set up. Second, the gamification approach of each app within the database is classified based on an established taxonomy for gamification in health-related apps. Finally, a 2-step cluster analysis is conducted in order to identify archetypes of the most dominant gamification approaches in pertinent gamified health-related mobile apps. Results Eight archetypes of gamification emerged from the analysis of health-related mobile apps: (1) competition and collaboration, (2) pursuing self-set goals without rewards, (3) episodical compliance tracking, (4) inherent gamification for external goals, (5) internal rewards for self-set goals, (6) continuous assistance through positive reinforcement, (7) positive and negative reinforcement without rewards, and (8) progressive gamification for health professionals. The results indicate a close relationship between the identified archetypes and the actual health behavior that is being targeted. Conclusions By unveiling salient best practices and discussing their relationship to targeted health behaviors, this study contributes to a more profound understanding of gamification in mobile health. The results can serve as a foundation for future research that advances the knowledge on how gamification may positively influence health behavior change and guide practitioners in the design and development of highly motivating and effective health-related mobile health apps.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archetypes of Gamification: Analysis of mHealth Apps

Schmidt-Kraepelin¹,

Toussaint²,

Thiebes³

et al. 2020

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This information plays an important role in the decision process of choosing an app to download. Additionally, apps with higher user ratings and ranks have high visibility and installation (40,43). User ratings and frequency of app download are a measure of acceptability and popularity of the mobile app, indicating a favorable user experience (44), however, limited literature is available for evaluating the role of user ratings and quality of apps.…”

Section: This Study Highlights the Review Of Apps On Hypertensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Apps on Google Play Store to assist in self-management of hypertension in Indian context: features analysis study

Kaur¹,

Kaur²,

Rathi³

et al. 2022

mHealth

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“…The work [13] addressed one of the types of use cases to be attempted through learning user reviews. The authors proposed to examine whether the approach of gamification in the mHealth app could garnish positive response from the user.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognizing Child Unsafe Apps Through User Reviews on the Google Play Store

Dalvi

Siddavatam

Thakkar

et al. 2021

Advanced Computing and Intelligent Technologies

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Google Play Store serves as a platform to host, download, and review android applications. Many researchers have explored the user review section and worked on approaches and solutions that would prove a more effective pipeline to enable developer feedback on application issues and praised features proving the section's abundance of information. This work uses this same data to attempt a novel use case of determining child unsafe apps on Google Play Store. User reviews are collected using a crawler and categorized for selected keywords relating to child, media, and India. Since Google Play Store does not provide a definitive number of downloads, this work attempts to mitigate this challenge by instead calculating the user density for an application. The user density helps establish the engagement users have with an application and is calculated by the difference in the timestamps of the most and least recent reviews divided by the sum of total reviews and its upvotes for an application. 60,620 reviews from 1,600 applications were extracted to validate the proposed concept. This concept has proved effective in recognizing applications that present child unsafe content while also offering a novel concept of calculating user density.

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Investigating the Relationship Between User Ratings and Gamification – A Review of mHealth Apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store

Cited by 17 publications

References 27 publications

Archetypes of Gamification: Analysis of mHealth Apps

Archetypes of Gamification: Analysis of mHealth Apps

Apps on Google Play Store to assist in self-management of hypertension in Indian context: features analysis study

Recognizing Child Unsafe Apps Through User Reviews on the Google Play Store

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