Integrating gamification to modern web fitness services

Abstract

Gamification has been widely applied to information technologies industry, especially to fields where motivation and user engagement are difficult to maintain. Thus, many fitness providers have integrated gamification to their own services. However, due to lacking unified gamification convention in Fitness convention, choosing what game-like elements to integrate seems like an impossible task. In addition, there is no valid guideline available for integrating gamification to web fitness application for the industry to follow. Aiming at these questions this thesis summarizes thirteen most commonly used game-like elements in different web fitness services, and generates guidelines for implementing gamified web fitness services. Results from validating the guidelines to three example fitness services indicate promising percentages of gamification integration, although future work on the topic would significantly increase the validity of the guidelines