Motivation theory is indispensable when discussing processes of learning. Learners who are motivated can learn almost everything. Students’ motivation is probably one of the most important factors for teacher effectiveness both for engagement in the learning process and high academic performance. To have effective environmental education, it is not only necessary to inform the public about the ocean but also to involve and engage them is essential. Motivation and engagement are some of the most commonly mentioned concepts in gamification, thus, a gamified application seems to have the necessary features to improve the motivation of students in the learning context of Ocean Literacy topics. The main aims of this work were: i) to understand through a systematic evaluation, how game elements affect the different motivation layers; and ii) to compare them in terms of enhancing the motivation to recycle among secondary school students (11-14 years). To measure students’ motivation, a pre-test and a post-test using a recycling situational motivation survey were administered in a classroom environment in Portugal and the UK. Findings show a trend regarding the effect of game elements mainly on the most autonomous forms of motivation. The different game elements, each one with different degrees of effects, were shown to have potential to increase motivation.

This paper focuses on the relationship between the socio-technical system and the user-technology interface. It looks at specific aspects of the organisational context such as multiple user roles, job change, work processes and workflows, technical infrastructure, and the challenges they present for the interaction designer. The implications of trends such as more mobile and flexible working, the use of social media, and the growth of the virtual organisation, are also considered. The paper also reviews rapidly evolving technologies such as pervasive systems and artificial intelligence, and the skills that workers will need to engage with them.

Smart Home technology looks set to become an increasingly common feature of domestic life. However commercial desire for technical innovation rather than explicit user needs are often the driving force behind the development of Smart Home products and services. This study adapts the Cultural Probe approach developed by Gaver et al. [2] to collect primarily visual data about what people value within their home environment. Whereas Cultural Probes are predominantly used to build empathy with users when designing product concepts, this approach attempted to provide similarly fun and engaging prompts for data collection when the design process and project context required more structured consideration of user needs. This paper presents the method developed, project findings and recommendations on how the method should be applied.

This study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of two usability testing methods, user testing and heuristic evaluation. Thirty two participants took part in the study, sixteen for each of the two methods. Four measures were used to compare their performance: number of problems identified, severity of problems, type of problems and time taken to find problems. It was found that heuristic evaluation found nearly 5 times more individual problems than user testing, so could be seen as more effective. However, user testing found on average slightly more severe problems and took less time to complete than heuristic evaluation. Heuristic evaluation had a faster problem identification rate (number of seconds per problem found), so could also be seen as more efficient. While each method had advantages in the test both methods are seen as complementary to each other in practice.