Investigating the influence of personalised gamification on mobile survey user experience

Abstract

Gamification in healthcare has shown to increase user motivation and treatment adherence. Personalisation strategies have the potential to create sustainable health change and user motivation. In striving for personalisation, surveys are often used as an easy tool to collect information about the user. But lengthy surveys are often tedious and demotivating, provoking bad respondent behaviour which results in a loss of data quality. Gamified surveys can enhance respondent behaviour but are labour-intensive to develop. This study explores the effect of a re-usable mobile survey application, using personalised gamification, on user experience. In an A/B study setting with 28 participants, The Hexad Player Type Framework is used to determine the player type of the user and personalise the survey accordingly. Results have shown that the overall user experience of the gamified application is higher than the traditional survey and 37.5% of gamified users perceived the duration of the survey as shorter than the actual time, compared to 20% of the respondents of the traditional survey. No significant difference in data quality has been detected, as loss in data quality remained limited in both versions. Future work should explore the influence of more elaborate game elements in a larger population.