Erhöhung der Usability des gamifizierten LEGO®-Modells 'grüne Transporte' mittels menschenzentriertem Designprozess

  • Sabina Rauscher

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

Abstract

Climate change is a hot topic that is having a noticeable impact on people, the animal world and vegetation. For example, 1,634 heat-related deaths were reported between 2016 and 2023 and the threat to animal and plant species from increased temperatures is also rising. These impacts have been triggered by greenhouse gas emissions, with a quarter of European emissions coming from freight and passenger transport, according to a report by the European Commission. A third of these emissions are attributable to road transport. The basic aim of green transport is to make freight transport as environmentally friendly as possible. In order to implement green transport, companies need knowledge about the measures and possible applications. One way of passing on knowledge is by means of gamified systems. With gamification, content is conveyed in a playful context. Gamification was used by the Steyr University of Applied Sciences for the Lego Mindstorms model, which attempts to convey content about green transport with the help of Lego vehicles. The aim of this master's thesis is to identify and realise potential improvements to the current Lego Mindstorms model in order to increase usability. In addition to the usability factor, the topics conveyed on green transport are to be expanded. The basis for the empirical research in this thesis is a literature review. The topics of green transport, emissions calculation, usability and gamification in knowledge transfer are addressed. A humancentred design process to improve the usability of the Lego Mindstorms model was chosen for the empirical research. In the empirical research, two workshops (pre and post) were conducted with six people each. These workshops consisted of the Lego Mindstorms model, a group discussion, the System Usability Scale (SUS) and a short survey on the main findings. The first workshop defined challenges and potentials. Based on these results, improvements were defined: (1) new tasks, (2) labelling and (3) CO2 dashboard. In the second workshop, these implementations and their effect on usability were evaluated. The results of the workshops are compared in the research section and statistically analysed during the process using the Wilcoxon sign rank test. When comparing the results of the SUS, significant changes were found in system integration, consistency and clarity of handling. The malfunctions of the gantry crane led to a reduction in the system integration score. New tasks and labelling of the containers improved the scores for consistency and clarity of use. The CO2 dashboard had no effect on the usability ratings. Overall, usability was rated as good or excellent in both workshop rounds. The CO2 dashboard enabled the topics of emissions calculation and the benefits of multimodality to be added to the topics covered. In general, the realization of the improvement potential made minor problems from the first workshop more present. It is therefore recommended that a further round of the human-centered design process be carried out. This repetition of the workshops should work out these smaller problems and further improve the Lego Mindstorms model.
Date of Award2024
Original languageGerman (Austria)
SupervisorLisa-Maria Putz-Egger (Supervisor)

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