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Policymakers and environmental organizations are increasingly implementing gamification because of its ability to stimulate playful learning and transform human attitudes and behavior. Although it has become a prominent development for climate change engagement, the literature does not adequately address how the underlying motivational systems depend upon user-centered design mechanisms. If gamification is to realize its potential for climate change engagement, it is crucial for designers to apply solid user-centered design principles, as suboptimal designs may do more harm than good. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review on gamification for climate change engagement to investigate the application of user-centered design and find key links between design choices and outcomes in 64 articles. We develop the findings into a user-centered design agenda and framework for game-based climate change engagement. This agenda includes design aspects–team multidisciplinarity, context dependence, user involvement, iterative testing, and design choice explication–and outcome aspects–value to users, game mechanics for learning, game content for learning, affective engagement, social engagement, changing real-world behavior, and using game data for research. The agenda is intended to inform gamification academics and practitioners aiming to design effective games for climate change engagement and its recommendations may apply to other complex issues.

This paper proposes the notion of ‘Organized User Experience (UX) Professionalism’ to describe the nature of the UX work in organizations and support the development of the UX profession. The conceptual model of Organized UX Professionalism is observed in practice and evaluated using data from a survey of 422 UX professionals in five countries. The model recognizes that the UX profession and work are guided not only by the principles of user experience and usability, but also by organization and management issues. The empirical evidence shows that indeed Organized UX Professionalism consists of a management-minded work orientation, innovative tool use, highly social best practices, organizational user centeredness, community participation, and the maturity of the UX and usability concepts in the local society. The study also shows that UX professionals largely adopt system-oriented definitions of usability and UX, rather than changing their conceptions towards organizational and human-oriented definitions. We discuss implications of the findings and possible actions of returning to ‘certified usability professionalism’ versus ‘going beyond the idea of the UX professionalism’ towards organization specific UX only. From the human work interaction design perspective, we believe that the notion of Organized UX Professionalism helps conceptualize, measure, develop, and manage the work of UX professionals in different social contexts as well as understand the outcomes and role of this work in the organization. Further, we propose a few concrete research directions to continue this research.

This paper presents preliminary ideas, process and results related to the design of a learning analytics dashboard for supporting student engagement with learning during a course. Understanding students’ needs is important in designing effective learning analytics dashboards. Thus, the design should follow a user-centred or student-centred approach as understanding the needs of the user represents a significant part of the first stage in a user-centred design approach. Students needs are defined in relation to students’ activities and context of use of the system to be designed. A learning analytics dashboard (LAD) is designed to support students’ learning in a course scenario. Students needs are conceptualized based on literature and collected evidence. Among other things, students need meaningful feedback on their performance in various study tasks and support of progression of studies. These student wishes are discussed in what follows from the perspective of LAD design. The paper proposes a student-centred, theory-driven design framework for eliciting and including the students’ needs in the design. Implications for design and pedagogical practice and research are discussed.

We examine the use of 360-degree video technology in a live music event with the aim to explore the factors leading to acceptance of the VR use case and technology, to reduce the knowledge gap about this topic. We collected self-reported, quantitative data from 23 participants and investigated the user experience during the VR mediated 360-video concert and the acceptance of the 360-video for concert participation and VR technology use. We found that acceptance of the novel VR-based communication approach was correlated mainly with perceived usefulness. Furthermore, the perceived usefulness was only correlated with fun, but not flow and immersion. We outline the results in a new theoretical framework for studying and predicting the relationships between individual characteristics, user experience, VR evaluation, content and device, and the acceptance of 360-video mediated musical events and VR technology. Implications for VR acceptance theory and design practice are discussed.

Engaging citizens with climate change is an urgent and complex issue. Gamified initiatives such as game-based learning are used to promote awareness, emotional connection, and action, but we would benefit from more examples of how players truly play serious games and learn through them, especially regarding climate change, which presents unique characteristics as a learning topic. Thus, we developed a digital game about climate change and pandemics and thematically analyzed 12 players’ experiences with it, including their relationship with the designed path, their possible deviations, and their engagement with the topic. Among our findings, we observe that progressing does not always involve interacting exactly as designed, and that game features that would be problematic otherwise can be accepted in the context of education. We also found that players may resist engaging in morally controversial in-game actions, give up in advance, or progress without understanding their actions’ meaning. They also take actions diverging from a purely learning-oriented purpose, such as talking to and trying to interact with characters. Furthermore, game-based climate change engagement is complex and transcends learning new information. The results imply that game-based learning experiences cannot be completely guided, but designers are encouraged to clarify instructions to avoid moments of confused progress. In addition, players can frame educational games as different from entertainment ones in, e.g., their acceptable text amount, but not necessarily in terms of playful affordances. Accessibility and transparency should be addressed too. Importantly, the pedagogical and engaging value of adding playful interactions allowing for player autonomy, surprise, and character attachment should be considered. These can support player engagement and therefore maximize the educational value of games. Regarding climate change, we provide cognitive, affective and behavioral implicatio

There is a shortage of employees in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field, including Information Systems (IS). Student recruitment is a challenge in IS in many countries despite different student marketing efforts and extensive research on the topic. We conducted a survey with first year students in a Finnish university to understand what factors seem to affect their career choice. Our findings indicate that ICT students mostly share their view of ICT with other students, with the exception that they seemed to see the field as more creative, and people oriented. We highlight the creative aspects of the work in IS to potentially attract new students, including more women, to study in IS.

Researchers in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field study, design and encapsulate the rich interaction between different kinds of users, information technology systems, and contexts of use in personal and organizational levels with implications to shaping society at large. HCI addresses different levels of analysis in human-technology interaction, utilizes different theoretical perspectives, practices, and paradigms from other disciplines, cooperates with other academic disciplines to study human-technology interaction, crossing boundaries and contributing to other disciplines, and has the design of human-technology interaction in its core. As research and practice field, HCI is very suitable for and oriented towards inter- and multi-disciplinarity, but transdisciplinarity in HCI is not yet fully explored. This paper outlines and reflects upon the concepts of transdisciplinarity, HCI, and transdisciplinarity in HCI.

This editorial summarizes the background and findings of the First Mini-Conference on Transdisciplinary Research and Design (TRaD 2022) held in Oulu. We describe the aim and vision of the conference, the conference theme, the articles presented and published in the conference proceedings, and the history of the research groups organizing the conference. Furthermore, in the editorial we highlight the main findings in relation to the conference aim. We discuss the conceptualization of transdisciplinarity and directions for further research and collaboration on this topic.

Course workspace represents the interface between the teacher, the course content, and the student. Both student engagement and student learning are influenced by the course workspace in a similar way as the end-user experience is influenced by system interface. However, course workspaces are typically designed by teachers without a specific input from students, which contrasts the practice in end-user computing and instructional design where users are or should be involved in the early stages of interface design and evaluation. In this paper, we develop a heuristics framework for being applied in a participatory manner involving the student perspective in the evaluation of course workspaces. The framework has been validated on three Moodle course workspaces. The results showed that the framework and the participatory approach provided valuable insights into student experience with the course workspace, while keeping the evaluation effort manageable in terms of data analysis and interpretation. We believe that the heuristics framework and participatory approach could be valuable for teachers, academics, and practitioners that use e-learning platforms for designing course workspaces. The paper provides also examples of improvement areas that have been identified in the evaluation and highlights new research directions in this area.

There is a lack of safety culture in digital fabrication context which can create hazards to humans, machines, and environment. We outline a research roadmap and call for action for assessing and building safety culture and safety consciousness in the digital fabrication context based on our experiences in studying this topic from practical and theoretical perspectives. Our approach for both mapping the status of safety in digital fabrication practice, as well as advocating the safety consciousness within digital fabrication scene consists of three methods, which provide insights from qualitative, quantitative, and design science perspectives. We believe that the three research methods described provide a holistic understanding on the status of, discourses about, and methods for implementing safety in Fab Labs and other makerspaces worldwide. This understanding will further help in building theories, methods, concepts, and processes for studying and shaping safety culture.

Usability as a concept is well established, encapsulating the rich interaction between different kinds of users, information technology systems, and contexts of use. In the context of socio-technical systems, technology shapes societies and human interactions, and likewise technology itself is shaped by social, economic, and political forces. Therefore, the socio-technical landscape is constantly evolving. Usability professionals have developed new usability methods and processes in order to address these changes in the socio-technical landscape. Likewise, the very concept of usability has been evolving to better fit into this ever changing socio-technical landscape. The evolved and adapted concept of usability has been feeding back to its socio-technical environment, thus creating a feedback loop. This position paper reflects this feedback loop and the concept of usability as a means of communication and shared language between stakeholders in the socio-technical systems development context from the cybernetics perspective.

User experience (UX) professionals are key actors in promoting inclusion in the digital society. They are responsible for ensuring that web pages and digital services are in line with regulatory frameworks and that digital accessibility for all is incorporated into their designs. Still, there are few dedicated professionals that specialize only in accessibility. In this paper, we explore how UX professionals in Nordic countries view and practice digital accessibility. We collected data from 167 UX professionals in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden using an online survey. Our results show that, generally, the UX professionals consider digital accessibility to be important and their organizations include accessibility in their projects. However, they spend limited work time on accessibility issues and have limited knowledge about accessibility guidelines and standards. Their main challenges in creating accessible systems are related to time constraints, lack of training, and cost.

Usability covers the breadth and depth of the rich interaction of users and technology in the socio-technical context. Though the concept of usability is well established, the integration of usability thinking in system development is challenging, partly due to the difficulty in understanding the importance of usability and justifying the costs incurred by usability work. This article aims to bring forth three fundamental attributes of usability that originate in classical architecture design, namely, utilitas, firmitas, and venustas. We provide a model of conceptualizing usability as speculum mundi, a lens through which the impacts of interaction at all levels of the organization and society can be identified by drawing parallels between the Vitruvian design principles and the paradigms of usability conceptualization. We restate the importance of the concept of usability in the context of socio-technical systems.

This paper restates the importance of the concept of usability in the socio-technical systems development. Usability covers the breadth and depth of the rich interaction of users and technology in the socio-technical context. By drawing parallels between the Vitruvian design principle of suitability and usefulness, and the paradigms of usability conceptualization, this paper argues that usability can act as speculum mundi, a lens through which the impacts of interaction at all levels of the organization and society can be identified.

This workshop is intended to anyone (students, teachers, practitioners, technologists, designers, academics, etc.) working within or interested in the digital fabrication field. The workshop focuses on promoting, adopting, and developing a safety culture in digital fabrication. During the workshop, the participants will share information and experiences about safety in digital fabrication. A co-creation activity is organized where participants engage in the ideation, design, and prototyping of a storyboard for promoting safety in digital fabrication.

Climate change is a global issue with impacts that span across ecological, social and economic systems. Climate change literacy and engagement are crucial in implementing successful adaptation and mitigation strategies to overcome the negative impacts of climate change. Gamification is one communication and educational approach that can be used to increase both literacy and engagement. This paper provides a state-of-the-art of climate change gamification research through a systematic literature review. The findings from reviewing 14 primary studies show that climate change gamification is a research area that deserves more attention from researchers as there is a limited number of studies addressing this important issue. More quantitative studies as well as longitudinal studies are sought, as they provide a higher strength of evidence of how gamification can enhance engagement. Only two controlled experiments were identified, while majority of studies relied on qualitative and cases study approaches. Gamification applications covered all functions of climate change engagement, namely delivering information, raising ethical awareness, and eliciting decisionmaking and behavioral changing through simulation. All studies, except two, showed successful application of gamification approach to climate change communication. Our literature review indicates also that more studies are necessary to advance the research area and we provide a research agenda with specific directions to follow.

Game development business has become very competitive, therefore it is very important to develop games that stand out from the vast amount of other competing game titles. Usability of the game is crucial to ensure game acceptance, which in turn will contribute to more sales and profit for the game company. Game usability can also contribute to better player engagement and better accomplishment of individual and organizational objectives in the case of gamification. One successful method to ensure good usability is heuristic evaluation, which has been proven useful also in game development. However, the existing heuristics are criticized for being too general to suit specific games. This study investigates the views and practices of the game companies regarding game usability heuristics and the extent to which they utilize heuristic evaluation as a game usability method. A series of surveys was conducted in the North American and North European companies and the results show that all game professionals view usability as being very important in games, however the extent of utilization of heuristic evaluation in game development is overrated. Implications for the development practice and research in games and gamification are discussed.

This paper examines the views of user experience (UX) professionals on the definitions of usability and UX, and compares the findings between countries and within different socio-cultural groups. A mixed-method analysis was employed on data gathered on 422 professionals through a survey in Turkey, Finland, Denmark, France, and Malaysia. Usability appears to be an established concept, respondents across all countries agreeing on the importance of the ISO 9241-11 definition. There is also a tendency that UX professionals attach organizational perspective to usability. UX professionals diverge when defining UX, and there are systematic differences related to socio-cultural conditions. UX professionals in Finland and France incline more towards the definition highlighting the experiential qualities, when compared to Turkey and Malaysia that incline towards the definition reflecting the ease of use, utility, attractiveness, and degree of usage. Further research should address the implications of the diverse meanings and contexts of usability and UX.

We examine the factors predicting behavioral intention to use wearable devices for personal healthcare with the aim to understand the role of personality characteristics in adopting digital life technology. A web survey was conducted among consumers in China. Mobile affinity and compatibility, two facets of technological personality, have positive influences on acceptance of smart bands; individuals who value mobile phones to a high degree will adopt smart bands for health monitoring and improvement, and individuals will use digital life technology which performs similar functions as the technology already adopted. Behavioral-disposition traits, namely fun seeking and reward responsiveness, moderate the relationships of use intention with perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, respectively. Fun seeking personalities will use smart bands when their perceived ease of use is low, while reward responsiveness personalities will use smart bands when their perceived usefulness is high. Implications to research and development of digital life technology are discussed.

This paper proposes model for introducing personalized game-design elements in a gamification system. The model is based on user-centred design, human values theory, and gamification design framework. The proposed model promotes the idea of a baseline game component that is meant to acquire online, real-time data about the cognitive and emotional state of the individual, and based on the collected data to adjust the gamified system to the state of the user. This framework, which we name Play Data Profiling (PDP), describes a model of collecting and processing data before, during and after the actual use of the gamified application in order to optimize the subsequent user experience and outcome. Implications and future work are discussed

This paper contrasts the user-centred design with the gamification design framework and proposes a model of usability benefits adapted to gamification. The model is useful for selling the usability activities to management and strategists when developing gamified solutions, services, and software. In this paper, we focus on identifying the benefits since they can be used to legitimise the usability activities in a development project. The user-centred design process focuses on understanding the user, their needs and requirements, and the paper shows that the benefits of this approach transcends the user dimension and reaches towards the developing organization by providing competitive advantage and reduced developing costs.