Digital Health 2016
Designing Gamified Apps for Health: An integrative framework
Guido Giunti
Gamification is a term used to describe using game elements in non-game environments to enhance user experience. It has been successfully incorporated to generate behaviors in commercial platforms and this has made researchers theorize about potential uses in healthcare for chronic conditions. Behavior therapy is a broad term referring to psychotherapy, behavior analytical, or a combination of the two therapies. The methods focus on specific, learned behaviors and how the environment has an impact on those behaviors. Applied behavior analysis focuses on operant conditioning in the form of positive reinforcement to modify behavior and cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on the thoughts and feelings behind health conditions with treatment plans to lessen the issue. An overlap exists between gamification and behavior therapy, however there is a lack of evidence regarding gamification clinical outcomes.
Patient adoption of health applications requires understanding needs, barriers and facilitators for adoption. User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to designing systems informed by scientific knowledge of how people think and act, in order to achieve systematic discovery of useful functions grounded in an understanding of the work domain.
The present work provides a unifying framework for designing gamified applications for health using UCD techniques with measurable outcomes.
Designing Gamified Apps for Health: An integrative framework
Guido Giunti
Gamification is a term used to describe using game elements in non-game environments to enhance user experience. It has been successfully incorporated to generate behaviors in commercial platforms and this has made researchers theorize about potential uses in healthcare for chronic conditions. Behavior therapy is a broad term referring to psychotherapy, behavior analytical, or a combination of the two therapies. The methods focus on specific, learned behaviors and how the environment has an impact on those behaviors. Applied behavior analysis focuses on operant conditioning in the form of positive reinforcement to modify behavior and cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on the thoughts and feelings behind health conditions with treatment plans to lessen the issue. An overlap exists between gamification and behavior therapy, however there is a lack of evidence regarding gamification clinical outcomes.
Patient adoption of health applications requires understanding needs, barriers and facilitators for adoption. User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to designing systems informed by scientific knowledge of how people think and act, in order to achieve systematic discovery of useful functions grounded in an understanding of the work domain.
The present work provides a unifying framework for designing gamified applications for health using UCD techniques with measurable outcomes.