In Hsu and Chen’s How Does Gamification Improve User Experience, the concept of gamification is introduced and an empirical investigation is carried out regarding the role of user experience when looking at perceived ease, mobility, and brand value.

The introduction of this study begins by defining user experience and gamification to show how gamification can “foster a positive user experience by using game elements in a commercial context.” Brands typically apply gamification to engage users more and to increase the interactivity of their online platforms. While the beginning of this study primarily focuses on gamification and the positive attributes of the topic, the rest of the study is focused on the data-driven aspect of brand benefit, value, and equity. A large portion of this article is focused on external literature reviews and previous studies that have been conducted. Mobility, hedonic experiences, and utilitarian experiences are all discussed in shaping the way one may perceive a site. In specific, 15 hypotheses are discussed regarding the positive influence perceived mobility, user experience, hedonic features, and utilitarian features have on each other. A questionnaire survey approach was used to survey 400 participants. Out of the 400 distributed surveys, 315 were used to gather quantitative data. A Partial Least Squares (PLS) method was applied to assess the hypotheses and quantify the responses. It was found that perceived mobility had a positive influence on utilitarian features, hedonic features, and user experience. Hedonic and utilitarian features had a positive effect on social benefit. User experience had a positive effect on social benefit, and user experience was a predictor of brand value. 

Primarily, these studies analyze different marketing tactics but overall, gamification was not heavily focused on how it improves user experience. The research provides empirical evidence on how gamification can be applied in an online context, but there is no specific research in this study surrounding the topic of gamification in online platforms. I thought this part of the discussion was interesting because such a large focus of the introduction was around the topic of gamification. From this article, I wish we understood the benefits of gamification to a larger extent and I am curious to see how gamification specifically affects these other hypotheses.