What’s in the Game? Developing a Taxonomy of Gamification Concepts for Health Apps

Abstract

Gamification is a promising approach to tackle users' infrequent and decreasing use of health apps. For this purpose, extant research provides developers of health apps with a vast number of different game elements. By abstracting from the implementation of single game elements and choosing a more holistic approach to gamification concepts, we iteratively develop a taxonomy of gamification concepts for health apps using inductive and deductive approaches and discuss its transferability to other gamification contexts. We contribute to a profound understanding of the main characteristics of gamification concepts and enable researchers and practitioners to classify and distinguish them. Our results provide interesting insights into the essential characteristics of health apps' gamification concepts.

The Role of Gamification in Health Behavior Change: A Review of Theory-driven Studies

“…Practitioners need to bear in mind these different levels of context-sensitivity when designing gamification. Analyzing targeted behaviors confirmed the observations of other studies [47] that physical activity is the dominant health behavior targeted in published research on gamified interventions. While results of this application context are unlikely to be easily transferable to other contexts, this finding reveals the need for more theory-driven research on the role of gamification in health behavior change contexts such as smoking cessation or medication adherence.…”

“…Gamification is a recent trend in research and practice that aims to utilize people's inherent passion for games to evoke motivation or engagement by applying game design elements in non-game contexts. Especially in health and well-being, gamification is increasingly recognized as a valuable tool to foster the sustained usage of a system or to promote certain health behaviors [47] (e.g., through mobile health applications). Typical examples include systems that aim to promote physical activity, smoking cessation, or healthy eating habits [45].…”

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

“…Especially when it comes to bringing behavioral interventions into real life contexts, gamified mHealth apps are a promising approach to overcome barriers to health behavior change [10]. In particular, mHealth apps have the potential to, for example, facilitate the management and prevention of (chronic) diseases or supporting healthier lifestyles by promoting physical activity or a healthy diet [32]. In mHealth apps, gamification is primarily applied for motivating individuals to continue using an mHealth app more regularly or promoting the completion of activities or tasks that are associated with positive health outcomes [38].…”

A Configurational View on Avatar Design – The Role of Emotional Attachment, Satisfaction, and Cognitive Load in Digital Learning

“…In addition, most studies that focus on gamification try to understand its effects on behavioral outcomes that are oftentimes controversial and do not show direct effects (Super et al 2019). Referring to this, it is critical to take into consideration the purpose for which an avatar will be used while identifying the most effective design combinations (Mull et al 2015;Schmidt-Kraepelin et al 2018;Scott et al 2014). In digital learning, it is important to analyze in more detail if and how an emotional bond forms between a learner and an avatar (Thomson et al 2005).…”