Blog post 3: Content and Creativity Audit
- Hoang Viet Nguyen
- Apr 17, 2025
- 3 min read
In this post, I will reflect on the development of my two blog posts, examining how gamification can drive engagement and motivation in various contexts, such as physical fitness and life skills education. I will also review feedback, refine my concepts, and highlight key insights that have emerged throughout the process.
In Blog Post 1, I introduced FantasyQuest, a gamified fitness and well-being app designed to help users improve both their physical and mental health. The app challenges users to complete daily tasks, such as running, push-ups, or mindfulness exercises, rewarding them with in-game bonuses like stat boosts (e.g., +1 STR or +1 AGI) that reflect improvements in their overall well-being. Additionally, the app encourages users to build healthy habits through a virtual avatar that grows stronger as they progress through challenges.
Blog Post 2 focused on Skill Trek, a mobile platform that teaches life skills such as budgeting, cooking, and digital safety through gamified challenges. Users earn XP and unlock achievements like "Am I Gordon Ramsey?" or "Make your money work for you!" by completing real life tasks and quizzes. This app is particularly aimed at teens and young professionals, offering practical tools to manage everyday tasks while engaging them with a fun and rewarding system.
Gamification can be a powerful tool for fostering engagement, motivation, and long-term change. As highlighted by Sailer et al. (2014), effective gamification leverages psychological drivers such as competence, autonomy, and relatedness to keep users motivated and involved. In FantasyQuest, avatar growth and stat boosts are designed to provide users with a sense of competence, allowing them to see tangible evidence of their progress. Meanwhile, Skill Trek taps into the concept of autonomy by offering users the freedom to choose their learning goals while earning rewards for their achievements.
However, as Dichev and Dicheva (2017) caution, gamification can falter if it becomes too focused on extrinsic rewards, potentially diminishing the intrinsic motivation that fuels long-term engagement. This creates the risk of "gaming the system," particularly if users concentrate solely on rewards like XP points rather than internalising the lessons of the tasks. Both concepts need to ensure that gamification remains a method for fostering genuine development and achievement rather than becoming an exploitative tool.
To address this, I am working to balance rewards and challenges in a way that supports both personal growth and motivation. For example, in FantasyQuest, I plan to introduce varied difficulty levels for tasks, enabling users to select challenges based on their fitness levels. This personalisation ensures that users feel both competent and motivated without being forced into unattainable or irrelevant goals. Similarly, in Skill Trek, I’ll provide users with the option to create custom learning paths that align with their personal goals, which will help sustain their intrinsic motivation over time.
Peer feedback has provided valuable insights into improving both concepts. For FantasyQuest, incorporating mindfulness exercises and other stress-relief techniques directly stems from this feedback. This addition enhances the app's focus on mental well-being, equipping users with holistic and practical tools to manage their physical and emotional health. In the case of Skill Trek, the suggestion to prioritise intrinsic motivation has prompted design changes, such as allowing users to set personalised goals and create more meaningful challenges.
Additionally, the feedback emphasised the need to balance fun and functionality. By refining the reward systems in both apps, I have shifted my focus towards long-term engagement rather than short-term satisfaction, ensuring that users remain committed to their personal development.
In this critical audit, I reflect on the development of two gamified concepts, FantasyQuest and Skill Trek, and examine how peer feedback and academic research have influenced these ideas. Both concepts aim to foster long-term engagement by balancing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, offering users meaningful rewards for both physical activity and personal growth. Moving forward, I will continue to refine these concepts by incorporating additional feedback and ensuring that the gamification elements focus on encouraging real-life benefits rather than superficial rewards.
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References
Adukaite, A., van Zyl, I., Er, Ş., & Cantoni, L. (2017). Teacher perceptions on the use of
digital gamified learning in tourism education: The case of South African secondary schools. Computers & Education, 111, 172–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.04.008
Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games : The Expressive Power of Videogames: EBSCOhost.
In Ebscohost.com. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.
Dichev, C., & Dicheva, D. (2017). Gamifying education: What Is known, What Is Believed
and What Remains uncertain: a Critical Review. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0042-5
Sailer, M., Hense, J., Mandl, H., & Klevers, M. (2014). Psychological Perspectives on
Motivation through Gamification. Interaction Design and Architecture(S), 19, 28–37. https://doaj.org/article/35d52233cd05402e8f15cbfa3553fe0a
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