=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3070/paper08
|storemode=property
|title=Designing a Player-Persona for Gamification Learning Experiences
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3070/paper08.pdf
|volume=Vol-3070
|authors=Guzman-Mendoza José Eder,Muñoz Mirna,Cardona-Reyes Héctor,Mejía Jezreel
}}
==Designing a Player-Persona for Gamification Learning Experiences==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3070/paper08.pdf
Designing a Player-Persona for Gamification Learning
Experiences
Guzman-Mendoza José Eder1, Muñoz Mirna 1, Cardona-Reyes Héctor1, Mejía
Jezreel1,
1
CIMAT A.C., Zacatecas, México
{jose.guzman, mirna.muñoz, hector.cardona, jmejia }@cimat.mx
Abstract. 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.
Keywords: Gamification, Player-Persona, Learning Activity, Game-design
1 Introduction
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[1].
Gamification was first used to describe a game-like interface that would make
business transactions fast and fun [2], [3].
Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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 player-
persona. 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.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Gamification
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 [4].
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 [5], [6].
[3] Defines gamification as “using of game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game
thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning and solve problems”.
Through numerous afterward studies, the simplest and most widely-used definition of
gamification is “the use of game elements in non-game contexts”. According to
Kiryakova, Angelova & Yordanova, to identify gamification, the key elements that
we should be looking for include [7]:
• users are all participants – employees or clients (for companies), students (for
educational institutions),
• challenges/tasks that users perform and progress towards defined objectives,
• points that are accumulated as a result of executing tasks,
• levels which users pass depending on the points,
• badges which serve as rewards for completing actions,
• ranking of users according to their achievements. Adapted from [8]
The benefits of gamification include better learning experience and environment,
instant feedback, prompting behavioral change, and the possibility to be applied for
most learning needs [9].
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
[10].
2.2 Player-Centred Design
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 [11] Play-Personas are
the models of players created from the evaluation of real users playing
experiences. For the construction of a play-persona, players are observed and
patterns are identified in terms of player navigation and their interaction with the
game mechanics [12].
The Player Persona can be used both in projects for the gaming industry and in
Gamification projects.
3 Related Works
The competitiveness of the video game market has increased the need for
understanding players.
In the work of [13], the authors generated player personas from survey data on the
195,158 gambling preferences reported by 15,402 gamblers, using the automatic
persona generation methodology. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the
potential of data-driven personas to segment gamers according to their gaming
preferences. The prototypes of personas obtained by the authors have potential value
for game marketing, for example, for targeting gamers with social media advertising,
although they can also be used to understand demographic variation among different
gaming preference patterns.
Another application approach of using player-person is as a tool to train spatial
skills. [14] conducted a study as 350 participants to learn the game preferences of
students with poor spatial skills. Study participants took a timed test of spatial skills
and then answered questions about demographics, gaming habits, preferences, and
motivations. The results obtained provided design recommendations for game-based,
spatially targeted, spatial skill interventions for students with low spatial ability. With
the results obtained, a regression analysis was performed to identify the subset of the
sample with the lowest spatial skills and to characterize their play habits and
preferences, to develop a set of recommendations for designers of spatial skills
training games.
3 Player-Persona Design Process
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.
Fig. 1. Player-Persona Design Process – knowing the player. Adapted from [15].
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 Methodology
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 [15].
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 player-
persona. 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 Player-Persona Result
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.
Table 1. Player-Persona Insights
Category High school students Undergraduate students
Goals They want to learn how to use They want to acquire skills that will
technology more efficiently to help them get a job immediately
accomplish their assignments in after finishing college.
other subjects.
Paint Points Supporting materials are difficult to The teacher does not consider prior
consult learning. The exercises are too
complex
Aspirations Better use of technology Finding a good job
As can be seen in Table 1, the perceptions of a high school student are very
different from those of an undergraduate student. High school students express the
need to master technologies for educational purposes, while undergraduate students
wish to obtain technological competencies for professional work. From the point of
view of ways of learning, a high school student considers that the out-of-class
materials are complicated to do autonomous study. On the other hand, undergraduate
students consider that teachers do not consider previous skills and knowledge in
programming logic to establish a starting point.
The first step in the player centered design approach is to understand the player
and his/her context. An effective educational gamification strategy must be based on a
solid understanding of work culture. The work culture has the following aspects
according to Table 2.
Table 2. Work Culture Insights
Category High school students Undergraduate students
Formal vs Informal Informal Formal
Competitive vs Cooperative Competitive Cooperative
Structured vs Unstructured Structured Structured
Individual Achievement vs
Individual Achievement Individual Achievement
Team Achievement
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.
Fig. 2. Player-Persona of undergraduate student.
5 Case Study
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.
5.1 Defining the Dynamics.
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).
5.2 Defining the Activities.
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.
5.3 Motivation
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.
5.4 Feedback
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.
5.5 The Mechanics
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?
6 Conclusions
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 player-
persona 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.
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