Examining and designing gamified crowdsourcing systems

Gamification approaches are not always effective and vary in their success. Several studies suggest that unexpected results of effectiveness are related to a dearth of personalization of gamified systems following a one-size-fits-all (OSFA) approach. Although research indicates that gamification design that is dynamically adjusted to the preferences of the person using the system (i.e., adaptive gamification) can positively impact behavioral or motivational outcomes, there is still a gap in understanding the effectiveness of adaptive gamification. This work aims to advance our understanding on the impact of adaptive gamification on motivational and behavioral outcomes in the context of gamified crowdsourcing. To this end, an experiment (n=135) is conducted with a text-based adventure game that employs different versions of a narrative designed to address the specific needs of previously conceptualized distinct types of users (i.e., Hexad user types). The results show that adaptive gamification does not lead to higher behavioral outcomes, i.e., increased crowdsourcing participation, or motivational outcomes. Conclusively, this work challenges the common assumption of adaptive gamification based on player types being worth the effort. Moreover, the results show that general need satisfaction is associated with increasing motivational outcomes, independent of a user’s player type. Therefore, this work suggests focusing on different perceptions of need satisfaction being required by individuals rather than focusing on player types which are abstractions of reality.

Information technology is being increasingly employed to harness under-utilized resources via more effective coordination. This progress has manifested in different developments, for instance, crowdsourcing (e.g. Wikipedia, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and Waze), crowdfunding (e.g. Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and RocketHub) or the sharing economy (e.g. Uber, Airbnb, and Didi Chuxing). Since the sustainability of these IT-enabled forms of resource coordination do not commonly rely merely on direct economic benefits of the participants, but also on other non-monetary, intrinsic gratifications, such systems are increasingly gamified that is, designers use features of games to induce enjoyment and general autotelicy of the activity. However, a key problem in gamification design has been whether it is better to use competition-based or cooperation-based designs. We examine this question through a field experiment in a gamified crowdsourcing system, employing three versions of gamification: competitive, cooperative, and inter-team competitive gamification. We study these gamified conditions’ effects on users’ perceived enjoyment and usefulness of the system as well as on their behaviors (system usage, crowdsourcing participation, engagement with the gamification feature, and willingness to recommend the crowdsourcing application). The results reveal that inter-team competitions are most likely to lead to higher enjoyment and crowdsourcing participation, as well as to a higher willingness to recommending a system. Further, the findings indicate that designers should consider cooperative instead of competitive approaches to increase users’ willingness to recommend crowdsourcing systems. These insights add relevant findings to the ongoing discourse on the roles of different types of competitions in gamification designs and suggest that crowdsourcing system designers and operators should implement gamification with competing teams instead of typically used competitions between individuals.

Since its inception around 2010, gamification has become one of the top technology and software trends. However, gamification has also been regarded as one of the most challenging areas of software engineering. Beyond traditional software design requirements, designing gamification requires the command of disciplines such as (motivational/behavioral) psychology, game design, and narratology, making the development of gamified software a challenge for traditional software developers. Gamification software inhabits a finely tuned niche of software engineering that seeks for both high functionality and engagement; beyond technical flawlessness, gamification has to motivate and affect users. Consequently, it has also been projected that most gamified software is doomed to fail. This paper seeks to advance the understanding of designing gamification and to provide a comprehensive method for developing gamified software. We approach the research problem via a design science research approach; firstly, by synthesizing the current body of literature on gamification design methods and by interviewing 25 gamification experts, producing a comprehensive list of design principles for developing gamified software. Secondly, and more importantly, we develop a detailed method for engineering of gamified software based on the gathered knowledge and design principles. Finally, we conduct an evaluation of the artifacts via interviews of ten gamification experts and implementation of the engineering method in a gamification project. As results of the study, we present the method and key design principles for engineering gamified software. Based on the empirical and expert evaluation, the developed method was deemed as comprehensive, implementable, complete, and useful. We deliver a comprehensive overview of gamification guidelines and shed novel insights into the nature of gamification development and design discourse. This paper takes first steps towards a comprehensive method for gamified software engineering.

Seamless cooperation between individuals is essentially a crucial aspect of any successful endeavor. A host of literature has been published in the academic realm about how cooperation could be cultivated. However, true cooperation often forms organically without external enforcement. Recently, there has been one special example of a context where cooperation seemed to have effortlessly sprung up between people who might not even have had previous connections. The context is video/online games; games such as Ingress, Pokémon Go, and World of Warcraft bind people together to work against insurmountable odds and to overcome jointly held challenges. Organizations of many types have recently begun to gamify their structures and services in order to cultivate such seamless cooperation. However, before this potential of games can be successfully wielded outside video games, we need to understand better how games are able to cultivate such cooperation. Therefore, in this study we investigate how games can induce and cultivate we-intention of working as a group. Specifically, we investigate how cooperative game features affect different forms of group dynamics and how they further translate into we-intentions. We employ data from users of the augmented reality game Ingress (N = 206). The results show that cooperative game features induce we-intentions via positively increasing group norms, social identity, joint commitment, attitudes toward cooperation, and anticipated positive emotions. The findings imply that practitioners who are looking to increase cooperation should find that gamification inspired by cooperative game design is beneficial and preferable over individual-based gamification efforts.

Two parallel phenomena are gaining attention in human-computer interaction research: gamification and crowdsourcing. Because crowdsourcing's success depends on a mass of motivated crowdsourcees, crowdsourcing platforms have increasingly been imbued with motivational design features borrowed from games; a practice often called gamification. While the body of literature and knowledge of the phenomenon have begun to accumulate, we still lack a comprehensive and systematic understanding of conceptual foundations, knowledge of how gamification is used in crowdsourcing, and whether it is effective. We first provide a conceptual framework for gamified crowdsourcing systems in order to understand and conceptualize the key aspects of the phenomenon. The paper's main contributions are derived through a systematic literature review that investigates how gamification has been examined in different types of crowdsourcing in a variety of domains. This meticulous mapping, which focuses on all aspects in our framework, enables us to infer what kinds of gamification efforts are effective in different crowdsourcing approaches as well as to point to a number of research gaps and lay out future research directions for gamified crowdsourcing systems. Overall, the results indicate that gamification has been an effective approach for increasing crowdsourcing participation and the quality of the crowdsourced work; however, differences exist between different types of crowdsourcing: the research conducted in the context of crowdsourcing of homogenous tasks has most commonly used simple gamification implementations, such as points and leaderboards, whereas crowdsourcing implementations that seek diverse and creative contributions employ gamification with a richer set of mechanics.

During recent years, gamification has become a popular method of enriching information technologies. Popular business analysts have made promising predictions about penetration of gamification, however, it has also been estimated that most gamifica-tion efforts will fail due to poor understanding of how gamification should be designed and implemented. Therefore, in this paper we seek to advance the understanding of best practices related to the gamifica-tion design process. We approach this research problem via a design science research approach; firstly, by synthesizing the current body of literature on gamification design methods and interviewing 25 gamification experts. Secondly, we develop a method for gamification design, based on the gathered knowledge. Finally, we conduct an evaluation of the method via interviews of 10 gamification experts. The results indicate that the developed method is comprehensive , complete and provides practical utility. We deliver a comprehensive overview of gamification guidelines and shed novel insights into the overall nature of the gamification development and design discourse.

Organizations deploy gamification in CSCW systems to enhance motivation and behavioral outcomes of users. However, gamification approaches often cause competition between users, which might be inappropriate for working environments that seek cooperation. Drawing on the social interdependence theory, this paper provides a classification for gamification features and insights about the design of cooperative gamification. Using the example of an innovation community of a German engineering company, we present the design of a cooperative gamification approach and results from a first experimental evaluation. The findings indicate that the developed gamification approach has positive effects on perceived enjoyment and the intention towards knowledge sharing in the considered innovation community. Besides our conceptual contribution , our findings suggest that cooperative gamification may be beneficial for cooperative working environments and represents a promising field for future research.