Can gamification reduce the burden of self-reporting in mHealth applications? A feasibility study using machine learning from smartwatch data to estimate cognitive load

Michal K. Grzeszczyk, Paulina Adamczyk, Sylwia Marek, Ryszard Pręcikowski, Maciej Kuś, M. Patrycja Lelujko, Rosmary Blanco, Tomasz Trzciński, Arkadiusz Sitek, Maciej Malawski, Aneta Lisowska

The effectiveness of digital treatments can be measured by requiring patients to self-report their state through applications, however, it can be overwhelming and causes disengagement. We conduct a study to explore the impact of gamification on self-reporting. Our approach involves the creation of a system to assess cognitive load (CL) through the analysis of photoplethysmography (PPG) signals. The data from 11 participants is utilized to train a machine learning model to detect CL. Subsequently, we create two versions of surveys: a gamified and a traditional one. We estimate the CL experienced by other participants (13) while completing surveys. We find that CL detector performance can be enhanced via pre-training on stress detection tasks. For 10 out of 13 participants, a personalized CL detector can achieve an F1 score above 0.7. We find no difference between the gamified and non-gamified surveys in terms of CL but participants prefer the gamified version.