A Practice of Choosing Gamification-based Personas

Abstract

This study contributes our entire research project on museum user experience (UX), and the purpose of the paper is to provide knowledge in practice for choosing Gamification-motivated personas. As the player’s motivation fundamentally drives the outcomes, the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology reigning from types of players was employed as a persona tool for identifying personas representing distinct intrinsic motivations. Specifically, adhering to the philosophy of user-centric intrinsic motivation, Bartle drew on an extensive range of sources to identify four types of players: achievers, socializers, explorers, and killers (we re-name killers as attackers). By analyzing the gamer psychology, it can be connected the player types to the intrinsic needs in the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). From a methodological point of view, the combination approach of quantitative and qualitative methods with constantly narrowing the scope of candidate can benefit trustworthiness. As a practical study, this paper not only analyzes the principles, but also provides a detailed persona selection procedure.