The Player-Persona represents a variant of the user persona that includes gamification elements, such as Bartle's player types or company culture. This type of persona is used both in the gaming industry and in gamification designs. The player persona is an imaginary representation that facilitates the definition of gamification objectives based on the type of player, their behaviors, tastes, work culture, etc. With the player-persona technique, powerful and effective gamified learning experiences can be designed, and personalized content can be delivered based on the needs and background of each player. The objective of this research focuses on presenting a process of designing player profiles using gamification as an educational approach to promote intrinsic motivation for the achievement of pedagogical objectives.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a series of challenges to universities, and mainly to professors. Professors had to find strategies to move their face-to-face activities to the online modality. One of the main challenges faced by professors in this transition is how to create pedagogical designs called learning experiences that invite students to make sense of the academic content taught in these new online modalities. The teacher must be an active agent in maintaining students' motivation for learning and skill development. Therefore, it is necessary that the teacher can design learning experiences that are able to maintain the motivation of students for their own learning. Thus, one of the approaches that is becoming more and more relevant to achieve these objectives is Gamification.
Gamification has had a positive impact when there is a pedagogical design that
supports gamification, and it has been shown to promote various skills in learners[
Several authors define gamification as the use of mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning and solve problems. Other authors also add that gamification integrates game elements into non-game contexts. The benefits of gamification include an improved learning experience and environment, instant feedback, behavioral change, and the ability to be applied to most learning needs. By integrating game elements and reward mechanisms as part of a learning experience, gamification motivates and engages learners, and promotes healthy competition. Learners learn a concept and practice skills as if they were playing a game.
Although its use is widespread in many contexts, in the educational environment it still presents some challenges for its application. The main challenge for integrating gamification into the design of online learning experiences is to identify the goals, pain points, motivations and behaviors of students. In this sense, an indispensable technique to be able to create effective gamification environments is the use of playerpersona. The Player Persona represents a variant of the user persona that includes gamification elements, such as player types or company culture. This type of persona is used both in the gaming industry and in gamification design.
Therefore, this paper presents the use of a process to design a player profile that facilitates the teacher to design gamified learning experiences in online modalities. Likewise, a practical case of how to implement the process of designing gamified learning experiences based on the player-persona for the development of programming logic competencies in undergraduate students is presented.
To support and structure the gamification design process, different approaches have
emerged from practitioners and researchers, both in HCI and gamification. Over the
years, gamification has been increasingly used to deliver fun and engaging
experiences [
Gamification is usually defined as the application of game elements and mechanics
to non-game activities, in order to improve people’s engagement, and motivation, and
therefore get better results [
[
By integrating game elements and reward mechanisms as part of a learning
experience, gamification motivates and engages learners, and promotes healthy
competition. Students learn a concept and practice skills as if they were playing a game
[
In the world of product and service design, user experiences are created to improve the relationship with brands.
A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothetical group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from user interviews. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one of them should always be the primary design goal.
According to The Interaction Design Foundation: “The Player Persona is similar
to a user persona (which most UX researchers will be intimately familiar with), but it
also examines some gamification-specific elements which would not otherwise exist
in a standard user persona”. On the other hand, according to [
The Player Persona can be used both in projects for the gaming industry and in Gamification projects.
The competitiveness of the video game market has increased the need for understanding players.
In the work of [
Another application approach of using player-person is as a tool to train spatial
skills. [
When introducing gamification, it is recommended to go beyond the basics to understand the player's personality. This will provide insight into how to motivate him or her through gamification. When introducing gamification, it is recommended to go beyond the basics to understand the player's personality. This will provide insight into how to motivate him or her through gamification. In this regard, a process for designing player profiles (see figure 1) is presented that starts with identifying learning needs and gathering information to design the best gamification strategy. This process can be a starting point and can be modified according to your needs. Problem Definition. Defining the problem is about identifying situations that can be improved. Similarly, it is not enough to detect the problem; it must be stated correctly in order to provide a solution. To think about solution actions, it is important to analyze the teaching-learning processes.
Demographic Information. The demographic data relate to aspects of players' multifaceted personalities and provide fundamental information on how they can be attracted and motivated in an educational context.
Professional Information. The context of the school and the professional information of the actors consists of the following aspects: • Type of business: In the context of educational software, it refers to the educational level that the software targets. • Role Title: The role is an important part of a person's professional identity, both internal and external to the school environment. • Role Objectives: To truly understand the nature of the job, it is not sufficient to simply note the job title; it is needed to look into the details of the job goals. • Pain Points: Identifying user pain points uncovers design opportunities.
Incorporating these pain points into the player's persona can inspire the team to find creative solutions or to incentivize the player through gamification. • Aspirations: Aspirations, in the school context, could refer to the career and educational aspirations of the players, or to the wish list for the product. • Individual Achievement vs Team Achievement: The culture of the player's environment has a major impact on the success of gamification. Does the culture emphasize harmony over competition? or does the culture reward individual achievement over group achievement? These are very important aspects to consider when designing game mechanics.
Work Culture. An effective educational gamification strategy must be based on a solid understanding of work culture. Work culture has the following aspects: • Formal vs Informal: A mathematics subject can be more formal than an arts subject. A basic education school is more informal than a university. This information is useful for designing the general tone of gamification activities. • Competitive vs Cooperative: Interestingly, competition is not always motivating for all types of players. Cooperation and collaboration may be more motivating in some subjects. Understanding the player's response to competition provides valuable information for selecting the appropriate gamification strategy. • Structured vs Unstructured: Some school cultures are more structured than others. While some may provide strict guidance to their students about their assignments and responsibilities, other school environments may hold them accountable for the outcome of a given subject and allow students more freedom over assignments. 4
In order to carry out this study, a qualitative research was conducted and an
exploratory analysis was carried out using in-depth interviews according to Kumar &
Herger's methodology [
Participants. The sample consisted of four participants, two of them were high school students, and the other two were undergraduate students. The 4 participants belonged to a subject that is related to learning programming logic. All 4 participants belonged to the female gender.
Instrument. An in-depth interview was designed for the study. Through the analysis of qualitative data from the results of the in-depth interviews it will be possible to define the player-persona. Demographic Information, Professional Information and Work Culture.
Procedure. For the data collection process, interviews were conducted through the Zoom platform, due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The interviews were recorded to transcribe the comments of the interviewees and facilitate the qualitative analysis.
Data analysis. The analysis of the qualitative data consisted of identifying categories and codes based on the constructs to find relevant information to design the playerpersona. The stages followed for the data analysis were: • Simple analysis. The 4 interviews were analyzed separately to form a first block of categories and codes based on the constructs of professional information and work culture related to gender and educational level. This type of analysis allowed us to identify some insights such as pain points that student who are taking a subject have about learning programming logic. • Axial analysis. Axial analysis consisted of taking the categories resulting from the simple analysis and cross-checking the four comments of each interviewee. This analysis made it possible to identify new emerging categories and eliminate others. In this analysis, insights were obtained that were mainly associated with the work culture. 4.1
The qualitative data analysis allowed us to identify the goals, pain points and aspirations that participants commented on in the in-depth interviews, as shown in Table 1.
Based on the results of the work culture analysis, the most relevant data to highlight is that high school students prefer a more relaxed (informal) work environment and when performing practice activities or evaluations, they like to compete to get the highest grade. The undergraduate students expressed that a more formal and structured environment fosters learning programming, however, they consider that at the bachelor's level, it is necessary to be more cooperative to foster learning.
After realizing and reflecting on the results obtained, it can be established that one player-persona profile does not cover the needs and motivations of high school and undergraduate students. So, to create gamification projects it will be necessary to define a player-persona for high school students and another player-persona for undergraduate students.
Based on the results obtained, a player-persona has been designed for a profile of an undergraduate student, as shown in Figure 2.
In order to describe the implementation of the player-persona in a gamification activity, a case study on the development of programming logic skills for high school students is shown.
The purpose of the Programming Logic workshop is to understand the use of flowchart symbols as a tool for solving computational problems.
The dynamics of gamification consists of designing a workshop for learning flowchart symbols at three levels: sequential structures, conditional structures, and iterative structures.
The learning objective of the dynamics is for participants to develop computational thinking by identifying the inputs, processes and outputs that solve a problem at the computational level.
The participant will start with a beginner avatar, where he/she will have to complete the proposed challenges to understand the flowchart symbols. Subsequently, the participant will unlock the challenges to learn the different logical structures. During the challenges, participants can solve them individually or in groups (clans).
The dynamics of gamification consists of designing a workshop for learning flowchart symbols at three levels: sequential structures, conditional structures, and iterative structures.
To achieve the implementation of the designed dynamics, three levels of activities that users must complete have been defined: • Level 1: Sequential Structure, corresponding to a beginner user level. • Level 2: Conditional Structures, corresponding to an intermediate user level. • Level 3: Iterative Structures, corresponding to an advanced user level.
Levels 2 and 3 remain locked until the participant completes all the challenges of the previous levels.
To increase user motivation, a system of rules and challenges has been established based on the culture of working in a structured, cooperative approach, but with a sense of individual achievement.
Challenges: For level 1, 2 challenges have been established and are described below: • •
Challenge 1: Order the steps to build a flowchart to prepare a sandwich. Challenge 2: Identify the inputs, processes, and outputs to build a flowchart to buy a book on Amazon.
Structural rules: For challenge 1, the student has visual support by describing the symbols and rules of use to build the flowchart.
Action Flow Rules: For the construction of the flowchart, users can perform the activity individually, or they can form teams (clans) to solve the challenges.
A help system for users has been established. In each of the challenges, a button will be available that has the function of providing feedback to the user.
The feedback system can show the description of the flowchart symbols, and the rules for constructing a diagram. However, with this type of help, the system subtracts points from the rewards obtained so far. The system can offer some hints for ordering the flowcharts.
Based on the player-persona profile, game mechanics have been analyzed and defined to achieve the learning objectives.
One of the mechanics established for gamified learning activities is the design of a scoring scheme that is established based on the rewards obtained by solving the challenges posed, from an individual achievement approach.
Scoring scheme (rewards). The scoring scheme is a fundamental element to keep the user engaged with the game mechanics and increase their motivation to reach the challenge objectives. To unlock more advanced challenges, users must earn certain points, which are earned as a reward for solving a challenge using the fewest steps to design a flowchart. The scoring scheme can show an overall position of the status achieved by an individual. The status scheme is also a key factor to consider when it comes to increasing the motivation of individuals.
Reinforcement and punishment mechanics. To reinforce the learning of the individuals, at the end of each challenge a round of questions is asked so that the individuals reinforce the learning obtained and really develop the competencies defined in the dynamics section: develop competencies in the use of flowcharts as tools to solve problems of daily life. Some of the questions are: What type of structures did you use to solve the problem? What was the process used?
With the COVID-19 pandemic situation, universities had to adapt their face-to-face schemes to distance or online modalities. However, this situation revealed that some professors do not have the technological and pedagogical skills to transform their traditional teaching practice to an online modality.
One of the challenges faced by the teacher is to create pedagogical designs based on the use of technologies and that also invite students to make sense of the academic content taught within the learning experiences. Thus, teachers must increase their educational vision, not only must they be concerned with the strategies they will use to increase knowledge acquisition, but also with how they will promote the development of additional skills that cannot be easily developed in distance models. In other words, the main challenge of the teacher in a pandemic situation focuses on how to maintain the students' motivation for their own learning.
This is how gamification becomes a relatively innovative approach to solve some of the challenges that the pandemic has brought in the educational context. It is vital that in a post-pandemic future one of the core competencies of the teacher is to be able to convert traditional learning experiences into gamified environments to reinforce students' motivation and attitudes towards their own interest in achieving meaningful learning.
This paper presented a process that can guide the teacher to design a playerpersona profile as a fundamental basis for transforming a traditional learning experience into a gamified environment that facilitates the development of the skills required by students in a given subject.
The post-pandemic situation will require teachers to increasingly integrate new innovative strategies to keep students motivated to learn, and gamification will be a useful tool to meet the new challenges.
Acknowledgments. We thank CONACYT for the opportunity to receive a scholarship for the development of the research project on gamification environments as part of the postdoctoral stay at CIMAT Zacatecas.