Gamiflow: Towards A Flow Theory-Based Gamification Framework For Learning Scenarios

Participating in gamified learning scenarios increases students’ motivation and engagement, leading them to improve their learning outcomes. Nevertheless, these benefits are only accomplished when gamification is grounded in theories of human motivation and behavior. In this paper, we present a gamification design framework based on Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, as well as its empirical validation in eight different real-world contexts. These results indicate that our framework is usable, pertinent, and yields high-quality outputs, enabling gamification of learning scenarios that effectively promote the flow state and learning. his framework also facilitates the systematization of the application of flow theory, which is the first step in the development of intelligent gamification recommendation systems. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.