Motivational Affordances for Older Adults’ Physical Activity Technology: An Expert Evaluation
Dennis Kappen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, and Lennart Nacke. 2019. Motivational Affordances for Older Adults’ Physical Activity Technology: An Expert Evaluation. In Human-Computer Interaction. Perspectives on Design. Proceedings of HCI International 2019. LNCS 11566. Springer.
Abstract
Gamification has become popular as a behavior change strategy to increase the motivation and engagement of users in a health and wellness applications. Motivational affordances or gamification elements can help to foster intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for an activity as mundane as achieving fitness and wellness goals. Research indicates that there are many motivations among older adults for playing digital games and exergames to encourage physical activity (PA). However, very few specific gamification elements (motivational affordances) have been defined for technology artifacts pertinent to older adults’ physical activity (PA). We designed Spirit50, a gamified PA technology app and conducted an expert evaluation using long form questionnaires and the Heuristics Evaluation for Gameful Design instrument. Content analysis and comparisons of expert ratings of the heuristics provided specific insights into motivational affordances for older adults’ PA technology.