Potential and effects of personalizing gameful fitness applications using behavior change intentions and Hexad user types

Abstract

Personalizing gameful applications is essential to account for interpersonal differences in the perception of gameful design elements. Considering that an increasing number of people lead sedentary lifestyles, using personalized gameful applications to encourage physical activity is a particularly relevant domain. In this article, we investigate behavior change intentions and Hexad user types as factors to personalize gameful fitness applications. We first explored the potential of these two factors by analyzing differences in the perceived persuasiveness of gameful design elements using a storyboards-based online study ($$N=178$$ N = 178 ). Our results show several significant effects regarding both factors and thus support the usefulness of them in explaining perceptual differences. Based on these findings, we implemented “Endless Universe,” a personalized gameful application encouraging physical activity on a treadmill. We used the system in a laboratory study ($$N=20$$ N = 20 ) to study actual effects of personalization on the users’ performance, enjoyment and affective experiences. While we did not find effects on the immediate performance of users, positive effects on user experience-related measures were found. The results of this study support the relevance of behavior change intentions and Hexad user types for personalizing gameful fitness systems further.

Positive and Negative Impacts of Gamification on the Fitness Industry

“…Recruitment and compliance [ 28 ], accessibility to technology and digital literacy [ 30 ], user responsiveness in particular contexts [ 22 ], ethical concerns [ 17 ], and the complex relationship between behavior change techniques and actual behavior change [ 37 ], I.T. identity mediating meaningful interactions [ 38 ], designing strategies that address different user preferences [ 39 ], physical limitations [ 36 ], aesthetics improvement [ 40 ], effective gamification implementation [ 41 ], and consideration of usability concerns for particular user groups [ 42 ] are just a few of the issues that need to be taken into account.…”

Exploring user profiles for healthy gamification

“…Manzano-Leon et al [19] show results from secondary school pupils (n=1345) that provide evidence of a valid and reliable six-factor instrument to measure the types of players in the Spanish adolescent population in public health. The two final studies found [20][21], both related to fitness gamification. The studies show the importance of target group identification.…”

“…The studies show the importance of target group identification. Altmeyer et al [20] had 50 prolific participants and the rest (128) from social media groups via tumblr and Facebook via one of the authors with a wide audience (personal communication). Sienel et al [21] distributed their survey via email and mainly had participants (almost 75%) in an adolescent age range (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30).…”

An ontology for modelling user’ profiles and activities in gamified education

“…For Palomino , one way to deal with this issue is to work with more subjective game elements, such as Narrative and Storytelling, to create the context and reason why the student should remain engaged, but focused on learning (that is, the reason for engagement needs to come from the learning process itself, thus making the instructional design of activities to be intrinsically linked to the design of gamification strategies). For Altmeyer et al (2021) and Mora et al (2018), it is necessary to personalize the strategies, to account for interpersonal differences in the perception of gameful design.…”