  In recent years, studies in different areas have used gamification to improve
users' flow experience. However, due to the high variety of the conducted
studies and the lack of secondary studies (e.g., systematic literature reviews)
in this field, it is difficult to get the state-of-the-art of this research
domain. To address this problem, we conducted a systematic literature review to
identify i) which gamification design methods have been used in the studies
about gamification and Flow Theory, ii) which gamification elements have been
used in these studies, iii) which methods have been used to evaluate the users'
flow experience in gamified settings, and iv) how gamification affects users'
flow experience. The main results show that there is growing interest to this
field, as the number of publications is increasing. The most significant
interest is in the area of gamification in education. However, there is no
unanimity regarding the preferred method of the study or the effects of
gamification on users' experience. Our results highlight the importance of
conducting new experimental studies investigating how gamification affects the
users' flow experience in different gamified settings, applications and
domains.
