Hanken researcher's doctoral thesis awarded

Lobna Hassan was rewarded for her doctoral thesis Means to Gameful Ends: How Should Gamification Be Designed? Her thesis concerns how to design systems and activities through gamification in order to make them as engaging as possible.

Hassan received her award at the Finnish Service Alliance (FSA) award ceremony in November. According to the statement, Hassan's research introduces important findings in service design practices and research, and the dissertation has been executed in a scientifically high-quality level.

“I see this award as a recognition of the work that everyone contributed to my dissertation; my supervisors, my co-authors, research group; The Gamification Group, and my friends and family who were with me throughout this process. There were many roadblocks in terms of funding and research work that did not pan out but we were always conscious that we needed to persevere and not only be scientifically rigorous, but also contribute work that would be useful to society” says Hassan. 

“Being an Egyptian woman who is also 80 % blind and who immigrated to Finland for this PhD research, also presented its own challenges. I am very happy and proud to see our tedious research work recognised. But I also see this award as a recognition to all individuals belonging to different disadvantaged groups in the world who have the potential to achieve great things”, Hassan continues.

Lobna Hassan defended her thesis at Hanken in Information Systems Science in October 2018. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Gamification Group, Tampere University and University of Turku.