Gamification

Playing public health: Building the HIVe

by Thomas Apperley

Co-authored with Chris Walsh

In thinking through the impact of digital media on how frontline workers, activists, practitioners and researchers... more In thinking through the impact of digital media on how frontline workers, activists, practitioners and researchers understand and fight HIV and AIDS, it is important to acknowledge that digital media does not only provide new channels and strategies for communicating information around HIV prevention and education. It also establishes innovative domains for conceiving of, and building, ‘resilient communities’ like The HIVe. Such digital interventions are cultural assets that confront biomedical and
behavioural approaches to HIV prevention and education. Immersive and social technologies, network ubiquity and low cost mobile phones provide new tools for aggregating, representing, collecting and disseminating community-based and led data that ‘plays’ public health differently. This play involves fore-fronting the success of social science HIV prevention and education against the essentialist logic of dominant biomedical approaches. ‘Playing public health’ provides an entirely new and comprehensive picture of the agency of the HIV virus that goes beyond the pathology of the individual. This paper proposes the goal of putting HIV prevention back into the ‘game’ of public health and playing it to win
by building The HIVe.

Motivating Participation in Social Computing Applications: A User Modeling Perspective

by Julita Vassileva

User Modeling and User Adapted Interaction (UMUAI), 22(1-2), 177-201 (2012).

The explosive growth of Web-based social applications over the last 10 years has led people to engage in online... more The explosive growth of Web-based social applications over the last 10 years has led people to engage in online communities for various purposes: to work, learn, play, share time and mementos with friends and family and engage in public action. Social Computing Applications (SCA) allow users to discuss various topics in online forums, share their thoughts in blogs, share
photos, videos, bookmarks, and connect with friends through social networks. Yet, the design of successful social applications that attract and sustain active contribution by their users still remains more of an art than a science. My research over the last 10 years has been based on the hypothesis that it is possible to incorporate mechanisms and tools in the design of the social application that can motivate users to participate, and more generally, to change their behavior in a desirable way, which
is beneficial for the community. Since different people are motivated by different things, it can be expected that personalizing the incentives and the way the rewards are presented to the individual, would be beneficial. Also since communities have different needs in different phases of their
existence, it is necessary to model the changing needs of communities and adapt the incentive mechanisms accordingly, to attract the kind of contributions that are beneficial. Therefore User and Group (Community) Modeling is an important area in the design of incentive mechanisms. This paper presents an overview of different approaches to motivate users to participate. These
approaches are based on various theories from the area of social psychology and behavioral economics and involve rewards mechanisms, reputation, open group user modeling, and social
visualization. Future trends are outlined towards convergence with the areas of persuasive systems design, adaptive/personalized systems, and intelligent social learning environments

Check-in Everywhere. Places, People, Narrations, Games

by Gabriele Ferri

with Giovanni Caruso, Riccardo Fassone and Mauro Salvador

Gamifying Archives, a Study of Docugames as a Preservation Medium

by Lindsay Grace

This paper introduces a novel concept in the use of game technology and education. Instead of employing gaming... more This paper introduces a novel concept in the use of game technology and education. Instead of employing gaming technology to create entertaining fictions or develop practical training environments, this paper introduces the concept and demonstrates the practical benefits of docugames for preservation. A docugame for preservation is a simulation that incorporates historical or culturally relevant artifacts to offer multiple perspectives on an historical or culturally relevant experience. Current trends in the growth of games, lowering production costs, and an increase in global collaborative production models have supported opportunities to employ games as a medium for preservation. As such, docugames for preservation demonstrate the promise of offering a 21st century educational experience for future learners. This research provides an analysis of existing docugames, overview of gamification principles and heuristics for improving the potential of docugames as a preservation medium.

A Social Gamification Framework for a K-6 Social Network

by Jorge Simões

Co-authored with Rebeca Díaz Redondo, Ana Fernández Vilas (University of Vigo, Spain). To be presented in TechEDUCA2012, July 2012, Barcelona, Spain.

As video games, particularly, social games are growing in popularity and number of users, there has been an increasing... more As video games, particularly, social games are growing in popularity and number of users, there has been an increasing interest in its potential as innovative teaching tools. Gamification is a new concept intending to use elements from video games in non-game applications. Education is an area with high potential for application of this concept since it seeks to promote people’s motivation and engagement. The research in progrees will try to find how to apply social gamification in education, testing and validating the results of that application. To fulfill these objectives, this paper presents the guidelines and main features of a social gamification framework to be applied in an existent K-6 social learning environment.

Keywords: game-based learning, gamification, e-learning, social networks, social games.

IgnitePlay: Encouraging and Sustaining Healthy living through Social Games

by T.J. Lavender

Co-authored with Magy Seif El-Nasr, Lisa Andres, Natalie Funk, Nasim Jahangiri, and Mengting Sun

Many successful social and casual games use techniques in their design that help sustain players’ interest over time.... more Many successful social and casual games use techniques in their design that help sustain players’ interest over time. The success of these games amongst players who consider themselves ‘non-gamers’ has resulted in the development of applications that attempt to use these same techniques to encourage behavior change in the real world. Most of these applications gamify their sites by adopting a system of points, badges, and leveling up. In this paper, we take a different approach. In collaboration with Igniteplay – a company created to develop a product to encourage users to adopt a healthy life style through online social media – we investigated the connection between social game and media design mechanics and user motivation. This investigation led to several concrete techniques that we are currently testing and revising in the hope that such techniques will enhance participant retention. In this paper, we discuss these techniques and outline future directions.

KREA-FUN: Systematic Creativity for Enjoyable Software Applications

by Christian Graf

This paper is about how to enhance software applications with engaging interaction. A methodology is presented that... more This paper is about how to enhance software applications with engaging interaction. A methodology is presented that provides a structured way to elicit how to turn boring tasks into enjoyable challenges, giving users the possibility to grow or compete, or empowering users to perform sophisticated tasks and as a consequence gain social appreciation. The paper is addressed to practitioners who want to know more about how to make applications more appealing and to researchers, who want to see theories from emotion, motivation and organizational growths successfully put into interactive applications.

The Kukui Cup: a Dorm Energy Competition Focused on Sustainable Behavior Change and Energy Literacy

by Robert Brewer

Published in Proceedings of the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

The Kukui Cup is an advanced dorm energy competition whose goal is to investigate the relationships among energy... more The Kukui Cup is an advanced dorm energy competition whose goal is to investigate the relationships among energy literacy, sustained energy conservation, and information technology support of behavior change. Two general purpose open source systems have been implemented: WattDepot and Makahiki. WattDepot provides enterprise-level collection, storage, analysis, and visualization of energy data. Makahiki is a web application framework that supports dorm energy competitions of varying degrees of complexity, including a personalized homepage where participants can complete tasks designed to increase energy literacy that can be verified by competition administrators. The technology and approach will be evaluated in a dorm energy competition to take place in the Spring of 2011, with hundreds of University freshmen. The energy use of each pair of dormitory floors will be metered in near-realtime, and the energy literacy of participants will be assessed before and after the competition.

Engaging patterns: Challenges and means shown by an example

by Christian Graf

This paper presents first results of a research project whose goal is to develop a pattern language that enhances... more This paper presents first results of a research project whose goal is to develop a pattern language that enhances business software by motivating and engaging elements. The goal of the pattern language is to turn the soft and vague term of “emotions in user interaction design” into constructive design guidance. The patterns are especially tailored for joy-of-use in bussiness applications. The main contribution of this paper is the description of quality characteristics for this pattern language. They are illustrated by references to existing pattern descriptions and elaborating their deficiencies. This paper
shows how these weaknesses were addressed in the pattern language.

Enhancing business software through fun-of-use: a pattern-based approach

by Christian Graf

Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?

by Joey Lee

Co-authored with Jessica Hammer.

Today's schools face major problems around student motivation and engagement. Gamification, or the incorporation of... more Today's schools face major problems around student motivation and engagement. Gamification, or the incorporation of game elements into non-game settings, provides an opportunity to help schools solve these difficult problems. However, if gamification is to be of use to schools, we must better understand what gamification is, how it functions, and why it might be useful. This article addresses all three questions – what, how, and why bother? – while exploring both the potential benefits and pitfalls of gamification.