Gamefulness: Understanding User Psychological Experience With Game-Based Dual-Purpose Systems
Abstract:
Over the years, games have moved from the periphery of playgrounds, living rooms, and arcade halls to the center of our lives. Gaming and game-like applications are now used for various purposes, including learning a new language and instilling healthy habits. Despite their popularity, they have a high failure rate, prompting researchers to look into possible explanations for the ambiguous results. Scholars have recently suggested that the ambiguous results are primarily due to a narrow focus on the configurational features of these systems. This dissertation moves to answer calls for research on the abstract layers of these technologies, such as their spirit, symbolic expressions, and affordances. Motivated thus, this dissertation had two major objectives.
The first was theory-building. Currently, gaming applications and game-like applications are largely studied as two distinct phenomena. We have extended the current theorizing about the phenomenological experiences associated with these technologies. Rather than debating over empirical concepts such as gamification and serious games, we emphasize the importance of extending the ladder of abstraction and channeling theoretical energies into understanding the phenomenological experience they aim to elicit. We demonstrate that both technologies seek to elicit the same phenomenological experience known as gamefulness. While this concept has been defined in the HCI literature, its ontological nature remains unclear. Drawing from multiple data sources, we reconceptualize the concept of gamefulness and propose key attributes that we believe can explain the causal linkages between these technologies and their intended outcomes. The new conceptualization places the dual goals of these technologies--utilitarian and hedonic goals--at the heart of the concept.
A second major purpose of this dissertation was to develop an instrument to measure the refined conceptualization of gamefulness and assess the validity of the proposed scale. Following the recommended procedures in MIS, we employed a mixed-methods approach to develop and validate the proposed gamefulness scale. First, we used surveys to refine and purify the proposed scale. Second, we used a cluster-randomized field experiment to manipulate and measure the psychophysiological correlates of gamefulness (i.e., galvanic skin response).
Taken together, the dissertation demonstrates the theoretical and practical utility of the gamefulness construct. The contextualized conceptualization of gamefulness will contribute to the fields of IS and HCI alike.