Gamification and Senior Cyclo-tourism
My Master's Student in MCMM (Co-Supervision)
My Master's student in Multimedia Communication, Cláudia Ortet was challenged to prototype a gamified app for senior cycle-tourism. It was a pleasure to supervise her work and this work is available on the following publications:
Ortet C.P., Costa L.V., Veloso A.I. (2019) Jizo: A Gamified Digital App for Senior Cyclo-Tourism in the miOne Community. In: Zagalo N., Veloso A., Costa L., Mealha Ó. (eds) Videogame Sciences and Arts. VJ 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1164. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37983-4_15
Ortet, C. (2019). Gamification and Senior Cyclo-tourism: Design Proposal for the miOne Community. Dissertação de Mestrado em Comunicação Multimédia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal. http://hdl.handle.net/10773/27471
The sketches were based on the literature review, the inputs from the interviews and focus groups and what the researcher thought a cyclo-tourism app should be. In specific, the participants’ feedback on the app Strava (Session 2), co-design (Session 3) and the identified features that an app should have to motivate the end-users to cycle (Interviews).
Between May and June of 2019, a set of focus group sessions (Session 1 – 3) and interviews were carried out to assess the participants’ context and, subsequently, to create a gamified app that would motivate senior citizens to cyclo-tourism. Each focus group session had an average duration of 90 minutes and took place at the University of Third Age of Gafanha da Nazaré at 3.30 pm. Senior citizens, who participated in the study were endowed with different skills and their technical insight, and involvement in prototype development was important in order to meet the requirements of a user-centred approach.
Mock-up Design with the end-users
After assessing the end-users' context and motivation for cycling and riding bicycle with the use of existent cycling apps on the market, the end-users were also involved in the design process with the use of a visual presentation, mock-up cards and paper cut-outs of gamification elements.
Example of mock-ups cards and paper cut-outs of gamification elements from Focus Group Session 3
Prototype Development
After the design process and app sketching, a prototype was developed by the researcher based on the literature review and participants’ inputs from focus groups and cyclists’ interviewees.
Tools used: Photoshop, Adobe XD
Prototype Testing
A cognitive walk-through protocol was undertaken, in which the researcher instrumented a set of tasks to the participants while trying the app. The evaluation process was undertaken involving the following: (i) Focus Group session 4, (ii) Eye-tracking session and (iii) Cyclists’ evaluation.
