To Gamify or Not to Gamify? Gamification in Exercise Applications and Its Role in Impacting Exercise Motivation

Gamification and different exercise applications have become increasingly popular in recent years. The common purpose of gamification is to enhance one’s motivation and engagement to certain activities. Gamification has been commonly understood as the use of game elements in non-game context. In this paper, we propose a divide between the process and the experience of gamification. This paper is the first to propose such division and the results demonstrate its necessity. Gamification exists also in many exercise applications. The purpose of this study is to explore how the use of an exercise application affects users’ exercise motivation and behaviour by concentrating especially on the role of gamification in terms of these effects. Empirically, the study is based on 11 qualitative interviews. The results show that the use of an exercise application can enhance the awareness of one’s physical activity and progress, and in many cases it can also increase one’s motivation to be physically active. Gamification is found to have potential impact on exercise motivation, although individual differences occur.