Enhancing Business Software through Fun-of-Use: A Pattern-based Approach

Buying decisions for software products can be influenced by arousing positive emotions, as they increase acceptance of the software product. Therefore we will present a way, how these positive emotions can be generated within business applications. By capturing design knowledge about joyful user interfaces in interaction pattern, we provide systematic guidance on engineering fun. Our patterns base on psychological theories dealing with intrinsic motivation and derived from principles known form game design and e-learning. Implementing the patterns in real business applications we made experiences amongst others in describing them properly and their feasibility in practice.