Digitally enhanced advanced services (DEAS), offered currently by various industries, could be a challenging concept to comprehend for potential clients. This could result in limited interest in adopting (DEAS) or even understanding its true value with significant financial implications for the providers. Innovative ways to present and simplify complex information are provided by serious games and gamification, which simplify and engage users with intricate information in an enjoyable manner. Despite the use of serious games and gamification in other areas, only a few examples have been documented to convey servitization offers. This research explores the design and development of a serious game for the Howden Group, a real-world industry partner aiming to simplify and convey existing service agreement packages. The system was developed under the consultation of a focus group comprising five members of the industrial partner. The final system was evaluated by 30 participants from engineering and servitization disciplines who volunteered to test online the proposed system and discuss their user experience (UX) and future application requirements. The analysis of users’ feedback presented encouraging results, with 90% confirming that they understood the DEAS concept and offers. To conclude, the paper presents a tentative plan for future work which will address the issues highlighted by users’ feedback and enhance the positive aspects of similar applications.

The hip joint is highly prone to traumatic and degenerative pathologies resulting in irregular locomotion. Monitoring and treatment depend on high-end technology facilities requiring physician and patient co-location, thus limiting access to specialist monitoring and treatment for populations living in rural and remote locations. Telemedicine offers an alternative means of monitoring, negating the need for patient physical presence. In addition, emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) and immersive technologies, offer potential future solutions through virtual presence, where the patient and health professional can meet in a virtual environment (a virtual clinic). To this end, a prototype asynchronous telemedicine VR gait analysis system was designed, aiming to transfer a full clinical facility within the patients’ local proximity. The proposed system employs cost-effective alternative motion capture combined with the system’s immersive 3D virtual gait analysis clinic. The user interface and the tools in the application offer health professionals asynchronous, objective, and subjective analyses. This paper investigates the requirements for the design of such a system and discusses preliminary comparative data of its performance evaluation against a high-fidelity gait analysis clinical application.

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The provision of services instead of the actual products is becoming a major area of interest for the products provision companies involved in the manufacturing, electronics and construction industries amongst others. Current work in the dissemination of the benefits of this business strategy has highlighted significant issues particular in services that require complex planning and bespoke structure for each client. The provision of such services is gradually migrating from the manufacturing sector to fintech and consumer electronics. The latter is a key part of the automotive industry and the new emerging technologies adopted by the rising market of Electric Vehicles (EV). Based on previous work on gamification of fintech servitization, this work explores the use of gamification to promote and demystify new software services and technologies in the automotive sector. To gauge the impact of gamification for such complex servitization offers, this study employs a case study of a prototype Augmented Reality (AR) -Head-Up Display (HUD) system. The AR-HUD has been evaluated by 15 users in the Virtual Reality Driving Simulation Laboratory (VRDS Lab) aiming to identify user experience (UX) and educate the potential customers on the benefits of these technologies and the value of the relevant software upgrades.

The monetisation of the provision of consumer services rather than products is advantageous and leads to higher profit margins for the providing companies in comparison to the sole manufacturing of consumer products. This business model has gradually propagated in other areas that could offer customized services to their customers such as consumer electronics and fintech. However, the complexity of these offers could deter the potential customers as it could be difficult to understand and evaluate their benefits. Gamification of these offers is a newly adopted method with limited examples primarily in the manufacturing sector. This work presents the development of a serious game for the explanation of fintech servitization offers for the building construction industry. This work aims to identify the efficiency for improvement of user experience (UX) and behavioural intention of customers towards these offers. The project has been evaluated by ten users representing existing customers. The paper presents the evaluation results and concludes with suggestions for future applications and a tentative plan of work for enhancing the application.