JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Cognitive tasks designed to measure or train cognition are often repetitive and are often in a monotonous manner presented, which finally these features lead to participant boredom and disengagement. In this situation, participants do not put forth their best effort to do these tasks well. As a result, neuropsychologists cannot make accurate conclusions about the data collected and intervention effects reduces. It is assumed that greater engagement and motivation will manifest data quality improvement. Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game settings, has been heralded as a potential mechanism for increasing participant engagement in cognitive tasks. Some studies have reported a positive effect of gamification on the participant performance, although most studies have shown mixed results. One reason for these contrasting findings is that most studies have applied poor and heterogeneous design techniques to gamify cognitive tasks which this indicates the need for an appropriate gamification design framework in these tasks.

Objective:

This study aims to propose a framework to guide the design of gamification in cognitive tasks.

Methods:

We employed a Design Science Research (DSR) approach to provide a framework for gamifying cognitive assessment and training by synthesizing existing gamification design frameworks, gamification works in cognitive assessment and training and, incorporating in the field experiences, resulted to a gamification design framework. The prototypes of the framework were evaluated with 17 relevant experts iteratively.

Results:

We proposed a framework consists of 7 phases: (1) preparation; (2)knowing users; (3) exploring existing tools for assessing/ training targeted cognitive context and determining the suitability of game-up and mapping techniques; (4) ideation; (5) prototyping using OMDE (Objects, Mechanics, Dynamics, Emotions); (6) development and; (7) disseminating and monitoring.

Conclusions:

We found that: (1) an intermediate design framework is needed to gamify cognitive tasks means that game elements should be selected by considering current cognitive assessment/ training context special characteristics since game elements may impose irrelevant cognitive load that in turn, they can jeopardize data quality; (2) in addition of developing a new gamified cognitive task from the scratch, two gamification techniques are widely used: first, adding game elements to an existing cognitive task, and second, mapping an existing game to a cognitive function/ impairment in order to assess or train it and; (3) further research is required to investigate the interplay of cognitive processes and game mechanics.