Gameful design for skills development among urban youths in South Africa

Abstract

Numerous youths residing in marginalised urban communities in South Africa lack the necessary skills to obtain employment in a digital economy that requires highly skilled individuals. The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) further exacerbates the situation for these youths if they remain unskilled. While training with digital technologies has become the norm, motivating and engaging youth to learn new skills remains a challenge. Gameful design can be an effective tool for creating engagement and motivation, but there is a dearth of literature on how to use gameful design to train youths in non-formal education contexts in marginalised communities, particularly in developing countries. Additionally, designing a system for "effective use" necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding these youths in their context. As a result, this study aimed to investigate the considerations, both social and technical, required to design a gameful system that can motivate and engage youths in marginalised urban communities in South Africa to acquire skills, thereby mitigating the challenges of skills acquisition for opportunities in the digital era and supporting the goal of the national development plan for 2030. The study drew on the theoretical perspective of constructivism, a learning theory, and explored what gameful elements can engage and motivate youths in marginalised communities to learn employable skills and how these elements can be incorporated into a system from the participants' perspectives and lived experiences. Design anthropology was used as the methodology, and a series of workshops were conducted with some youths from Mfuleni, Western Cape, South Africa, which included observations and self-reflective tasks. The first two workshops highlighted the complex challenges facing the youth and how these could be transformed into solutions. The youths also reflected on the games they played and social media applications they used to identify gameful elements that resonated with them. Further workshops were conducted to understand how to incorporate these gameful elements into the gamified system. The research study identified thirty-one factors grouped into six themes as complexities surrounding the youth group: Knowledge and use of technology, Funding and capital, Resources for upskilling, Training and education, Opportunities, and Physiological and psychological issues. Furthermore, the study found twenty-three system-based gameful design elements and three non-system-based elements to engage and motivate youths. Using these findings, the study proposed a conceptual and user flow framework demonstrating how to incorporate and combine these elements in a gameful designed system. The results provide valuable insights for gameful designers, development centres, and policymakers involved in youth skills development.