Table 8 Research agenda

Personalization based on different interface aspects (e.g., gamification elements colors and position, interface components and colors)

Surveys (to investigate which interface aspects can be personalized); Design science research (to provide test applications)

Monterrat et al. (2015), Böckle et al. (2017), Lavoué et al. (2018), Oliveira et al. (2018), Koivisto and Hamari (2019), Hallifax et al. (2019)

Personalization based on different user characteristics (e.g., gender, age, and demographic aspects)

Surveys (to investigate which user characteristics can influence their preferences); Design Science Research (to provide test applications); experiments/quasi-experiments, field studies, case studies and focus groups (to examine the users’ preferences and evaluate proposed approaches)

Lavoué et al. (2018), Oliveira and Bittencourt (2019c), Hallifax et al. (2019)

Personalization considered multiple gamer types (e.g., second user gamer type or gamer types characteristics percentage)

Design Science Research (to provide test applications); experiments/quasi-experiments, field studies, case studies and focus groups (to evaluate proposed approaches)

Hallifax et al. (2019), Koivisto and Hamari (2019), Bai et al. (2020)

Personalization considering modern player models and appropriate to the gamification domain (e.g., Hexad)

Experiments/quasi-experiments, field studies, case studies and focus groups (to evaluate the users’ preference based on these player models)

Hallifax et al. (2019), Oliveira and Bittencourt (2019c), Bai et al. (2020)

Personalization based on educational activities

Surveys (to investigate which most suitable gamification design for each type of activity); Design Science Research (to provide test applications); experiments/quasi-experiments, field studies, case studies and focus group (to evaluate proposed approaches)

Baldeón et al. (2016), Rodrigues et al. (2019), Bovermann and Bastiaens (2020)