Overview
I’m not sure how much I am allowed to say about this project. During my final semester of university, I was on contract to recreate as well as gamify an existing project using Unity. The original project was created using a software called Labview. The study tests the forward motor learning of participants by making them push down on a load cell connected to an Arduino. Participants must attempt to match their force to that of the white lines.
Furthermore, there is a second mode for both the gamified and original versions. This is called the transfer task. In the transfer, task players cannot see their location on the Y-axis and must remember how hard to press. The goal is to see if participants will learn or maintain more information about how hard to press in the gamified or the original versions.
Design
Unfortunately, I did not have a significant amount of design input on this project. The Ph.D. students I was working with didn’t want players to lose focus on the task and wanted to keep the gamification relatively simple.
At the end of the day, we decided to put coins on the white lines. This removed the need for the red margin of error lines as well as gave participants more incentive to hit the white line. At the end of the task, participants can see how many coins they managed to collect. Originally they were also able to view their coins collected in the top right-hand corner as they played, but this was removed after it was thought to be too potentially distracting (although can be toggled on in the menu.) The only other gamified elements are visual. These consist of clouds that scroll past during play, as well as the player taking the form of a bird.
Robert Andersen Games 