Game for PLAYability Heuristic Evaluation (G4H-PLAY): Adapting G4H Gamification to Allow the Use of Playability Heuristics

Several initiatives have applied the Collaborative Heuristic Evaluation to minimize the discrepancy between the severity ratings made by different evaluators. G4H (Game for Heuristic Evaluation) is one of these proposals and its a gamification developed to engage and motivate the evaluators in the Heuristic Evaluation process. This gamification was designed considering only the Nielsen’s usability heuristics. This article presents G4H-PLAY (Game for PLAYability Heuristic Evaluation), an adaptation of G4H to allow the use of playability heuristics. For the definition of this new gamification, the first step is to select the playability heuristics to support. There are many playability heuristics proposals, but G4H-PLAY uses one study that summarizes a set of playability heuristics into a general set of heuristics. Then, information on the specification and use of the heuristics was extracted, which allowed identifying the necessary adaptations to adapt the G4H to the set of chosen playability heuristics. Finally, solutions were developed for these adaptations, thus achieving the adaptation of gamification. G4H-PLAY enables to obtain the motivation and engagement benefits provided by the G4H with the Playability Heuristic Evaluation. This gamification needs to be validated in future empirical studies to ensure that the benefits of G4H can also be achieved by G4H-PLAY.