Integration of Gamification Methods to Improve Design-to-Customer in Product Development: Use Case – The German Corona-Warning App

Introduction

The term gamification first appeared in 2002 in a paper by management consultant Andrzej Marczewski and has gained more and more attention in the past decade. In 2011, the first scientific conference on the topic was held by Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter at the University of Pennsylvania (Fleisch, 2018). Meanwhile, gamification methods are already being used successfully in many companies (Ellenberger, 2020; Reiners, 2015).

The concept of gamification aims at using the inherent potential of games in a meaningful and targeted way. The goal is to increase the motivation of users by offering new incentives that increase interest in activities and make overcoming challenges more attractive. The positive motivational potential is tapped through the systematic design of gamification strategies. When developing gamification strategies towards a specific application, motivating elements are taken from video games and redesigned according to the given context. Before gamification elements are implemented within a project, a comprehensive user analysis regarding the motivation during the use phase takes place.

For product development, this offers a novel opportunity to gain a broad understanding of user behavior to develop potentially more costumer-relevant products.

This chapter describes the integration of traditional product development with modern gamification methods. The goal is to provide guidance for developers regarding the design of products towards more customer relevance.

The following phases of product development with gamification are outlined:

• 1.

  in-depth user analysis regarding the customer behavior in the use-phase

• 2.

  ideation of suitable gamification techniques applicable to the product

• 3.

  detailed design of the chosen techniques for the individual use-case

A conducted project on gamification strategy development for the German Corona warning app is used as a best-practice example.

Background

The book “Engineering Design” by Pahl and Beitz is considered basic reading for students in engineering, especially design engineering and product development (Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2021).

Pahl and Beitz define product development as “a key success factor for companies […] The target system for the development of a product is […] characterized by interdisciplinarity and dynamics. [...] Product development means that new solutions have to be created” (Gericke et al., 2021). In the context of this chapter, product development is defined as the process of identifying and designing solutions to appearing problems in the form of physical or cyber-physical products.

The chapter “User needs” of the book “Engineering Design” deals with the optimization of the development of products concerning the optimal fulfillment of user needs. It explains various general qualitative and quantitative methods for eliciting user needs and presents approaches for integrating users into the product development process (Gericke et al., 2021).

The chapter “Industrial design and user-centered product development” then deals with the presentation and implementation of user-specific requirements, as well as the design with regard to the psychological and physiological perception of the product. Along the product life cycle, different methods are presented, which enable the integration of user needs. Typical examples are the persona, the sinus milieus, expert interviews, mood boards, and user stories (Gericke et al., 2021).

In real-life applications, problems regarding a lack of consistency, interconnection or interpretation of the results of these methods for the subsequent phase within the product development or design process often arise. Exemplarily, how to proceed with a persona once created or how to translate the sinus milieu of a customer into a specific product feature.