Design, implementation and evaluation of a gamified digital cultural probe in the context of energy consumption

Abstract

[en] Cultural Probes (CP) is a HCI technique used to gather data about people (feelings, thoughts, interactions, knowledge, etc) in order to inspire the design of applications. It consists in giving participants a series of tasks to perform, which they return after some time so the information can be analyzed by the design team. This project proposes the design and implementation (as a mobile application) of a gamified Cultural Probe in the context of energy consumption. Given that one of the drawbacks of CP is the low completion rate and, therefore, the lack of data gathered, the use of gamification is believed to enhance the participation of users by motivating them to complete the tasks. The particular approach of this CP is that participants not only provide data about themselves, but also about other people. Specifically, it is designed to be completed by children, who have to perform four different tasks taking the role of a psychologist, a detective, an electrician and a journalist (depending on what the task is about) to gather information about their own and also their families’ electric consumption. Additionally, the realization of the CP might raise awareness on them about energy and environmental related issues. After the implementation of the proposed design as an Android app, the CP has been evaluated with children from two primary schools in Barcelona, who have interacted with two different versions (gamified and non gamified) of the app, to test the hypothesis that gamified Cultural Probes may show better results than non gamified ones. Even though the evaluation showed slightly better results for the non gamified CP, the difference is not statistically significant, opening a door to do more research on the subject.