Usually we play to have fun. A good game creates user engagement in the game tasks, involving high levels of motivation that promote concentration and performance.
Within this research area, we study the game mechanisms that gives enough challenge to user skills and recognized renewals, that absorb the user in the game activities reaching to a subjective experience of total involvement with the game.
In non-ludic contexts, particularly in work, training and teaching situations, we the study of the best ways to use game mechanics to motivate workers and / or students to become engage with the organization and consequently improve their happiness and performance.
Some developed projects in this area
- Ergoshow 1 and 2
Ergoshow 1 and 2 are a pedagogical game for young people, developed in a User Centred Design perspective. The main objective of those games was to engage the students in the areas of safety and health, so that in the future they are more responsible adults.
Bone, is a sympathetic character from Ergoshow 1, used to communicate to the youngers, knowledge about manipulation of loads and sitting work and their relationship to the occurrence of musculoskeletal problems.
The characters in Ergoshow 2, that corresponds to Personas in the worker population.These characters will experience various adventures in a virtual factory, to solve the problems of safety and health at work, becoming at the end of the game successful entrepreneurs.
Sharinna Venturim Zanuncio; Simone Caldas Tavares Mafra; Maria de Lourdes Mattos Barreto; F. Rebelo (2013).A Tecnologia Multimídia Ergoshow como Prática no Processo de Ensino-Aprendizagem sobre Saúde e Segurança no Trabalho: Uma Revisão. Revista Cesumar Ciências Humanas e Sociais Aplicadas, v.18, n.1, p. 125-143, ISSN 1516-2664
Zanuncio, S. V., Mafra, S. C. T., Rebelo, F., & Filgueiras, E. (2012). The use of software ERGOSHOW in the education of health and safety at work to regarding the safety to children. Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment and Rehabilitation, 41(Supplement 1), 915-921. doi: 10.3233/WOR-2012-0263-915
Rebelo, F., & Filgueiras, E.V. (2012). Ergoshow: A user-centred design game to make children aware of ergonomics and occupational safety and health. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 13, 4-17. doi: 10.1080/1463922X.2010.525761
- SmartCity Sense
Rebelo F., Noriega P., Oliveira T., Santos D., Oliveira S. (2018) Expected User Acceptance of an Augmented Reality Service for a Smart City. In: Marcus A., Wang W. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability: Users, Contexts and Case Studies. DUXU 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10920, 703-714. Springer, Cham -https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91806-8_55
Rebelo F., Noriega P., Oliveira T., Santos D., Carvalhais J., Cotrim T. (2018) Applications and Interface Requirements to Engage the Citizens to Share Information in a Smart City Project. In: Rebelo F., Soares M. (eds) Advances in Ergonomics in Design. AHFE 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 588, 712-721. Springer, Cham -https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60582-1_71