Effect of Gamification on the emotions of users of an online advertising platform

Abstract: This research investigates which emotions are elicited to the users through gamifying a process of an online advertising platform and further, what is the difference between these elicited emotions and the ones that are elicited when gamification is not used, on the exact same platform. For this purpose, two different designs, a non-gamified and a gamified one, were developed and tested, getting users’ feedback through interviews. The results, after being analyzed, indicated that the design which did not use gamification concepts elicits not only less emotions, but less intense ones as well, and more specifically serenity, trust, acceptance and apprehension. The second design, which was based on the first one but with two gamification concepts integrated, elicited interest, anticipation, joy, admiration, annoyance, contempt, competence as well as two emotions that were elicited by the non-gamified design, namely apprehension and trust. An interesting insight that was collected was also the fact that some of the users that had negative emotions throughout their experience with the gamified design preferred it to the non-gamified one, something that showed that the gamified experience was more complete “both cognitive and emotional” as two users stated. Thus, gamification concepts can elicit a wide range of feelings including negative ones, like annoyance, something that should be taken care of, when designing for gamification, giving users the option to turn off any frustrating concept. To conclude, companies can take advantage of gamified concepts to create a more complete experience and elicit desired feelings to the users of their products or services.