Goal models for acceptance requirements analysis and gamification design

The success of software systems highly depends on user engagement. Thus, to deliver engaging systems, software has to be designed carefully taking into account Acceptance Requirements, such as “70% of users will use the system”, and the psychological factors that could influence users to use the system. Analysis can then consider mechanisms that affect these factors, such as Gamification (making a game out of system use), advertising, incentives and more. We propose a Systematic Acceptance Requirements Analysis Framework based on Gamification for supporting the requirements engineer in analyzing and designing engaging software systems. Our framework, named Agon, encompasses both a methodology and a meta-model capturing acceptance and gamification knowledge. In this paper, we describe the Agon Meta-Model and provide examples from the gamification of a decision-making platform in the context of a European Project

Goal models for acceptance requirements analysis and gamification design.

The success of software systems highly depends on user engagement. Thus, to deliver engaging systems, software has to be designed carefully taking into account Acceptance Requirements, such as '70% of users will use the system', and the psychological factors that could influence users to use the system. Analysis can then consider mechanisms that affect these factors, such as Gamification (making a game out of system use), advertising, incentives and more. We propose a Systematic Acceptance Requirements Analysis Framework based on Gamification for supporting the requirements engineer in analyzing and designing engaging software systems. Our framework, named Agon, encompasses both a methodology and a meta-model capturing acceptance and gamification knowledge. In this paper, we describe the Agon Meta-Model and provide examples from the gamification of a decision-making platform in the context of a European Project

Gamification solutions for software acceptance: a comparative study of requirements engineering and organizational behavior techniques.

Gamificationis a powerful paradigm and a set of best practices used to motivate people carrying out a variety of ICT–mediated tasks. Designing gamification solutions and applying them to a given ICT system is a complex and expensive process (in time, competences and money) as software engineers have to cope with heterogeneous stakeholder requirements on one hand, and Acceptance Requirements on the other, that together ensure effective user participation and a high level of system utilization. As such, gamification solutions require significant analysis and design as well as suitable supporting tools and techniques. In this work, we compare concepts, tools and techniques for gamification design drawn from Software Engineering and Human and Organizational Behaviors. We conduct a comparison by applying both techniques to the specific Meeting Scheduling exemplar used extensively in the Requirements Engineering literature

Acceptance requirements and their gamification solutions.

We live in the days of social software where social interactions, from simple notifications to complex business processes, are supported by software platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. But for any social software to be successful, it must be used by a sizeable portion of its intended user community. Usage requirements are usually referred to as Acceptance Requirements and they have been studied in the literature both for general technology as well as software. Operationalization techniques for such requirements often consist of making a game out of software usage where users are rewarded/penalized depending on the degree of their participation. The game may be competitive or non-competitive, depending on the anticipated personality traits of intended users. Making a game out of usage is often referred to as Gamification, and gamification has attracted huge attention in the literature for the past few years because it offers a novel approach to software technology usage. This paper proposes a generic framework for designing gamified solutions for acceptance requirements. The framework consists of a generic acceptance goal model that characterizes the problem space by capturing possible refinements for acceptance requirements, and a generic gamification model that captures possible gamified operationalizations of acceptance requirements. These models have been extracted from the literature and they are highly dependent on context (cognitive and social) elements of the intended user community. The proposed framework is illustrated with the Meeting Scheduler exemplar

Applying acceptance requirements to requirements modeling tools via gamification: a case study on privacy and security.

Requirements elicitation, analysis and modeling are critical activities for software success. However, software systems are increasingly complex, harder to develop due to an ever-growing number of requirements from numerous and heterogeneous stakeholders, concerning dozens of requirements types, from functional to qualitative, including adaptation, security and privacy, ethical, acceptance and more. In such settings, requirements engineers need support concerning such increasingly complex activities, and Requirements Engineering (RE) modeling tools have been developed for this. However, such tools, although effective, are complex, time-consuming and requiring steep learning curves. The consequent lack of acceptance and abandonment in using such tools, by engineers, paves the way to the application of RE techniques in a more error-prone, low-quality way, increasing the possibility to have failures in software systems delivered. In this paper, we identify main areas of lack of acceptance, affecting RE engineers, for such tools, and propose an approach for making modeling tools more effective in engaging the engineer in performing RE in a tool-based way, receiving adequate feedback and staying motivated to use modeling tools. This is accomplished by performing acceptance requirements analysis (through the Agon Framework) and using gamification to increase the engagement of engineers during the usage of RE modeling tools. Towards this end, we performed a case study, within the VisiOn European Project, for enhancing a tool for modeling privacy and security requirements. Our case study provides preliminary evidence that our approach supports in making RE modeling tools more engaging from the engineer perspective

Designing a gamified social platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers

In the current paper, a social gamified platform for people living with dementia and their live-in family caregivers, integrating a broader diagnostic approach and interactive interventions is presented. The CAREGIVERSPRO-MMD (C-MMD) platform constitutes a support tool for the patient and the informal caregiver - also referred to as the dyad - that strengthens self-care, and builds community capacity and engagement at the point of care. The platform is implemented to improve social collaboration, adherence to treatment guidelines through gamification, recognition of progress indicators and measures to guide management of patients with dementia, and strategies and tools to improve treatment interventions and medication adherence. Moreover, particular attention was provided on guidelines, considerations and user requirements for the design of a User-Centered Design (UCD) platform. The design of the platform has been based on a deep understanding of users, tasks and contexts in order to improve platform usability, and provide adaptive and intuitive User Interfaces with high accessibility. In this paper, the architecture and services of the C-MMD platform are presented, and specifically the gamification aspects. © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Design thinking and acceptance requirements for designing gamified software.

Gamification is increasingly applied to engage people in performing tool-supported collaborative tasks. From previous experiences we learned that available gamification guidelines are not sufficient, and more importantly that motivational and acceptance aspects need to be considered when designing gamified software applications. To understand them, stakeholders need to be involved in the design process. This paper aims to (i) identify key requirements for designing gamified solutions, and (ii) understand if existing methods (partially fitting those requirements) can be selected and combined to provide a comprehensive gamification design method. We discuss a set of key requirements for a suitable gamification design method. We illustrate how to select and combine existing methods to define a design approach that fits those requirements using Design Thinking and the Agon framework. Furthermore, we present a first empirical evaluation of the integrated design method, with participants including both requirements analysts and end-users of the gamified software. Our evaluation offers initial ideas towards a more general, systematic approach for gamification design