Gamification elements in tracking applications

Abstract

Mobile phones are highly effective to develop mHealth applications. The mHealth is the use of mobile communication for health services. There are various types of mHealth applications, one of which is the tracking application. The main feature of tracking applications is the process of tracking data. Users of tracking applications need to track data on a mobile phone repeatedly which can be monotonous. To solve such issue, gamification, the use of game elements in non-game context, can be included in tracking applications to convert a repetitive task into a more engaging one. A prototype of gamified tracking application has been developed to examine the effectiveness of gamification in mHealth tracking applications. The prototype includes three gamification elements, which are avatar, story and feedback. Two usability systems have been adapted to support the analysis of the usability of the prototype which are Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS) and Jakob Nielsen's heuristics. The MARS system contains twenty-three items and four of the items have been adapted to analyze and Jakob Nielsen's heuristics contains ten heuristics and three of which have been adapted. Three interviews were conducted to validate the usability of the prototype. The result of the research shows that the MARS total score for the prototype was three and they have little impact on the application’s usability.