Driven to drive : designing gamification for a learner logbook smartphone application

Driving can be dangerous, especially for young and inexperienced drivers. To help address the issue of inexperience a gamified logbook application was developed for Learner drivers. The application aims to encourage learners to undertake a wider range of practice, while also making it easier to record their mandatory practice sessions. This paper reports on the design of this application, focusing on the effect that adding gamification can have on the usability and user experience of the application and the importance of playability testing for gamified systems. Two versions of the application were developed, one with game elements and one without game elements. This paper presents findings from a study that compares the user experience of these two versions of the application with twelve recent Learner drivers. Overall, participants reported that the gamified version was more engaging and motivating than the non-gamified version, however neither versions were preferred over the other. We theorise that this may have occurred due to a number of usability issues that arose, including an increased difficulty in learnability due to the added game elements. These design issues are important to address in future gamified system designs.