The Impact of Gamification Design on the Success of Health and Fitness Apps

Gamification has been increasingly employed in health-related apps in recent years. However, the effect of gamification design on the success of health and fitness apps remains unknown and has not been investigated before. This study attempts to identify what gamification elements are frequently used in the design of health and fitness apps and to empirically quantify their effects on app downloads and user ratings of these apps. We construct a rich dataset that includes information about the daily downloads, ratings and gamification design elements of 2,462 health and fitness apps on the Apple App Store. Our sample contains 924 paid apps and 1,538 free apps. This study contributes to both the gamification and mobile app literatures and provides important implications for app developers who intend to adopt gamification in mobile app design

Inclusion of Gamification Elements in the Context of Virtual Lab Environments to Increase Educational Value

Previous research on gamification and virtual laboratories has suggested that both produce successful educational outcomes, but few studies have looked at both gamification and virtual labs in tandem. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we investigate gamification in the virtual labs’ context to examine whether learners’ educational performance is enhanced. In particular, we employ leaderboards as a motivational gamification mechanism for more engagement and participation that can result in higher learning outcomes. Using a student sample, our results show that using gamification within a virtual lab environment results in higher student performance; specifically, it helps them complete more-complex tasks and increases their self-efficacy. Our findings show promising evidence that gamification in virtual lab learning environments positively influences learning