Hello, if I understood you correctly you want to include users in the creative process when design ideas are developed, am I right? From my point of view, there is not much of a difference whether you aim at gamification or not. Users are rarely developers or designers or usability experts. So basically, users do not know how to make good software. If you want to include them in the creative process, you have to guide them through the process in any case. It might be a little more challenging when your goal is a gamification approach, because you want to have a final product that uses patterns the users are not familiar with. But the underlying problem is the same. Which is why I think it can be done.

When I would include users I would set up joint meetings with all the disciplines. It is the moderators job to explain the goal, establish an atmosphere of openness, and set up a methodology that everyone can comprehend and contribute to. Of course there should be a briefing during which the moderator explains what gamification means and give a few examples for everybody to grasp the concept. Of course users are never going to become gamification experts after a 20-minute "bleaching", but what you seem to see as a disadvantage might very well turn out to be a great advantage. Because the users might come up with totally new ideas by transferring patterns taken from card, board games, pen & paper role playing, even childs' play, ... you name it. The tricky part is exactly that briefing. It must be specific enough so that participants focus on creating software and abstract enough so that everyone can rely on their individual gaming/playing experience.

To ease the process it might be useful to select users: people who play in their free time, maybe because they have children, maybe because they simply love to play games. But while easing the process is a valid goal, selecting only a sub-group of users might cause additional problems. They may come up with ideas that will only be accepted within this particular sub-group of players. The non-players may not feel comfortable with it and, thus, reject a good piece of software because they find it "too playful".

Thank you Mark.

what I was thinking of is not SG but more about using the game design logic in designing usable and engaging services. In your case involving students in the process of designing integrated assessment in SG adds another challenge of having students capable to design forms of assessment. (I have research published in this context you can find the paper on my publications [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236258873_Assessment_in_serious_games_An_enhanced_approach_for_integrated_assessment_forms_and_feedback_to_support_guided_learning?ev=prf_pub])

I agree that training is important however I personally doubt the efficiency of UCD in gamification.

Conference Paper Assessment in serious games: An enhanced approach for integr...

Hello, if I understood you correctly you want to include users in the creative process when design ideas are developed, am I right? From my point of view, there is not much of a difference whether you aim at gamification or not. Users are rarely developers or designers or usability experts. So basically, users do not know how to make good software. If you want to include them in the creative process, you have to guide them through the process in any case. It might be a little more challenging when your goal is a gamification approach, because you want to have a final product that uses patterns the users are not familiar with. But the underlying problem is the same. Which is why I think it can be done.

When I would include users I would set up joint meetings with all the disciplines. It is the moderators job to explain the goal, establish an atmosphere of openness, and set up a methodology that everyone can comprehend and contribute to. Of course there should be a briefing during which the moderator explains what gamification means and give a few examples for everybody to grasp the concept. Of course users are never going to become gamification experts after a 20-minute "bleaching", but what you seem to see as a disadvantage might very well turn out to be a great advantage. Because the users might come up with totally new ideas by transferring patterns taken from card, board games, pen & paper role playing, even childs' play, ... you name it. The tricky part is exactly that briefing. It must be specific enough so that participants focus on creating software and abstract enough so that everyone can rely on their individual gaming/playing experience.

To ease the process it might be useful to select users: people who play in their free time, maybe because they have children, maybe because they simply love to play games. But while easing the process is a valid goal, selecting only a sub-group of users might cause additional problems. They may come up with ideas that will only be accepted within this particular sub-group of players. The non-players may not feel comfortable with it and, thus, reject a good piece of software because they find it "too playful".

"It might be a little more challenging when your goal is a gamification approach, because you want to have a final product that uses patterns the users are not familiar with. "

Thanks Jan for highlighting that as I thought the audience didn't get the problem behind my question.

Of course training and briefing could tackle the challenge in somehow but there still no evidence on that. The challenge comes from the gaming approach itself. we enjoy and engage good games if they challenge us and fit with our skills in addition to the story and graphics. However, turning user mindset to a game designer is a challenging process.

regarding the sample I agree with you on both cases and its risks as we cannot exclude non-gamers and we cannot also provide long training sessions as stakeholders not always have time and well to participate in long training.

I am looking for a research that gives an evidence on this challenge but I couldn't find, if you know any please share them with me.