Gamified Mobile Application to Raise Awareness and Support Energy Efficient Behavior

Abstract

Climate change is a fact, and our human activities are part of the cause of it happening. CO2-emissions from our daily activities, like transportation and heating, are a big part of the problem, and change is needed to meet UN s temperature goal. However, not many people know how their everyday choices and activities affect the environment. This master thesis seeks to explore the possibilities of using gamification and behavior change models together, to design a mobile application that aims to raise awareness and change peoples behavior to be more sustainable.

The master thesis is part of a European research project called DESENT. The project partners were active in the requirements and design phase by attending a workshop and completing a survey that helped to co-design the specifics of the game mechanics in the application.

This master thesis starts by presenting the research strategy chosen together with the research questions that are the focus of the research. The background study done on the relevant topics for the work, namely gamification, behavior change models, co-creation, data privacy and evaluation of applications are presented next. Furthermore, the process of defining the requirements where a survey and a workshop were conducted, are presented. After the requirements are defined, design choices and technology choices are described and justified along with a presentation of the architecture and how the new features of the app were implemented. Finally, a user evaluation was conducted, and this is described together with the results and analysis from this.

Findings from the user evaluations suggest that the game mechanics elicited in the co-creation session with the stakeholders worked well in the app. It also confirmed that ease of use is essential to create an intention to use the app. It also showed that amusement and ease of use are not enough in all cases to make people use the app, as some people may also need to have a certain interest in the topic to want to use it. Although the feedback from the evaluation was positive for some aspects of the app, there are still some improvements with the concept and the user interface that must be done before the app is ready to be put into use.