Gamification, Geolocation and Sensors for Employee Motivation Towards Energy Conservation at the Workplace

In an era of significant technological advancements, as well as dramatic changes in the business environment, the state of the workforce seems to remain problematic, with regards to motivation. Albeit prevailing societal clichés, that often seem to promote the idea that ‘the modern workplace provides for a far better experience than in the past’; the truth remains that modern employees bear a significant resemblance to their ancestors – regarding the emotional burden their jobs instil on them – and remain, in their majority, unmotivated. Gamification, a relatively new instrument in the “orchestra of motivation”, offers a promising alternative to the strict corporate rules and policies that usually dictate the employees’ conduct, by adhering to their intrinsic motivation. Simultaneously, two promising technological giants have risen, to invisibly, as well as ubiquitously accompany us in our every move. On one hand, the advancement of geolocation technologies has led to the introduction of location-based services and custom content delivery. On the other hand, sensors of all types and flavours, installed to measure countless parameters of our surroundings, the workplace included. Through our study, we aim to investigate the effect of the application of these three technologies – Gamification, Geolocation and Sensors – isolated, or in concert, on employee motivation towards a common goal – energy conservation at the workplace

EFFECTING EMPLOYEE ENERGY CONSERVATION BEHAVIOUR AT THE WORKPLACE BY UTILISING GAMIFICATION

Energy consumption is one of the widely recognised important factors that should be addressed, in reducing CO2 emissions towards addressing climate change. However, albeit the documented effect of public buildings, in specific, on energy consumption, only a limited body of research focuses on one of the most important factors that could limit it: employees’ energy consumption behaviour. Aiming to contribute to this path of research, we have identified gamification as an instrument that, when appropriately utilised, could lead to employees’ energy behaviour change. Additionally, we present a behavioural research model for employee energy conservation at work, in alignment with VBN theory of environmentalism, and a questionnaire instrument to validate it combined with practical experimentation. We consider two important categories of parameters that are connected to energy consumption behaviour in the workplace: Employees’ personal profile, which also influences the design and effectiveness of gamified apps, as well as level of environmental awareness. Concurrently, we also present preliminary findings from the analysis of the data collected after deploying the forementioned questionnaire instrument

A better understanding of how gamification can help improve digital lifestyles

There are many people without or have little programming knowledge who have many creative ideas but do not have a platform to share, discuss, co-design and showcase their creative ideas. Therefore, in this capstone project, we aim to create a gamify Website to serve as a platform for different users to interact, engage and showcase their creativity. Significance of the study are first, there have been several studies on gamification in ecommerce and e-learning literature but our study is in the Malaysian context, focused on the effects of gamification to learning Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STEM), through a gamification website. Also, by creating a community of potential designers/creators, to increase interest in the learning of STEM (technology)

Games as (not) culture: a critical policy analysis of the economic agenda of Horizon 2020

This article presents a critical examination of European policy in relation to gamification. We begin by describing how gamification “traveled” as an idea, evolving from controversial yet persuasive buzzword to legitimate policy priority. We then focus on how gamification was represented in Horizon 2020: the flagship European Research & Development program from 2014 to 2020, worth nearly €80 billion of funding. The article argues that the ethically problematic aspects of gamification were removed through a process of policy capture that involved its assimilation in an established European network of research and small and medium enterprise (SME) actors. This process of “ethical neutering” is also observable in the actual funding calls, where the problematic assumptions of gamification around agency and manipulation are made invisible through a superficial commitment to vague and ill-defined criteria of responsible research and innovation

Gamification in education: how to make learning fun

Gamification, a process of applying game-related principles to non-game contexts, is an emerging trend in language education that adds meaning and engagement to a student’s classroom experience. The goal of the paper is to review what makes gamification different from game-based learning, to study game elements as well as effects of exploiting game thinking in educational contexts

The role(s) of gamification in knowledge management

Gamification is a new, but an increasingly popular approach, which proved to be powerful in many areas, such as education and marketing, and has entered the area of internal corporate applications. This exploratory study is focused on a particular part of corporate environment – gamification being a medium of interactions of knowledge workers with each other. By providing a literature review of gamification and combining it with the exploratory case-study of an online retailer, Zappos, we demonstrate the ways in which gamification helps to identify various types of knowledge workers and influence their dynamics, as well as we open a wide range of areas for further research

Designing Leaderboards for Gamification: Perceived Differences Based on User Ranking, Application Domain, and Personality Traits

Leaderboards, a common gamification technique, are used to enhance engagement through social comparisons. Prior research has demonstrated the overall utility of leaderboards but has not examined their effectiveness when individuals are ranked at particular levels or when the technique is applied in different application domains, such as social networking, fitness, or productivity. In this paper, we present a survey study investigating how preferences for leaderboards change based on individual differences (personality traits), ranking, social scoping, and application domains. Our results show that a respondent's position on the leaderboard had important effects on their perception of the leaderboard and the surrounding app, and that participants rated leaderboards most favorably in fitness apps and least favorably in social networking contexts. More extraverted people reported more positive experiences with leaderboards despite their ranking or the application domain. We present design implications for creating leaderboards targeted at different domains and for different audiences

Perception of young generation on the importance and performance of gamification in tourism

Gamification is not a new concept introduced, it has been implemented not only in tourism industry but also in others field including education, business and marketing campaign and health sector. Games and entertainment centres is fun, excitement and experience industry as people are looking to more than just consoles and mobile apps for entertainment. With the fast growing of technology used, gamification seen suddenly boosted and became a trend due to millennial and gen z who seek for adventure and gamified experiences. In fact, the fundamental changes is gaming experiences have been extended into real world, and are potentially available at any place and any time. Thus, with using six principle perspective on motivational mechanisms with gamification, this study aimed to evaluate the perception of young generation on the importance and performance of gamification in tourism. A total of 99 respondents have been selected through purposive sampling technique where most of them are from young generation who born between the early 1980s and 1990s. The findings shows that young generation perceived the perspective of interest traits is the most crucial elements in gamification. This generations highly attracted towards the gamification activities due to indication of clear goals and worth rewards. Therefore, this study contributed knowledge and information to the tourism stakeholders that young generation has high tendency attracted into gamification activities while travelling to a particular destination

PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGY AND GAMIFICATION AT THE WORKPLACE: ENGAGING EMPLOYEES IN EFFECTIVE DOCUMENTATION OF ANALYSIS AND EVALUATIONS

The availability of rich and high-quality data gives organizations the opportunity to make strategic decisions and a competitive edge over their competitors. However, documentation has been known to be a repetitive and tedious task and employees who perform this task may not be inherently motivated and suffer from fatigue, which reflects poorly on the quantity and quality of documentation. This thesis addresses this problem and proposes to use Persuasive Technology and Gamification to engage employees in documentation. Persuasive technology aims to change behaviours and attitudes through the art of persuasion without the use of coercion. Gamification is a type of Persuasive Technology that leverages the persuasive power of games to cause behaviour change in people. A lot of existing research and practice have focused on using Persuasive Technology and Gamification to achieve workplace engagement, motivation and productivity. However, there is little research on the use of Persuasive Technology and Gamification to engage employees in effective documentation of analysis and evaluations. This research aims to fill this gap and explore the feasibility of leveraging Persuasive Technology to encourage employees in documentation of analysis and evaluations. A Requirement-Focused Design Science Research approach was adopted to define requirements for the implementation of a persuasive gamified system to encourage employees in documentation of analysis and evaluations. Two studies were conducted to investigate employee motivation and the susceptibility of employees to various persuasive strategies. The first study was conducted among 20 Applied Behaviour Analysis front-line staff. ABA is data driven, however, front-line staff do not provide sufficiently rich data which is a critical part of the success of ABA. The second study was carried among 55 Graduate Assistants (markers) from the University of Saskatchewan. Providing feedback on assignments is a quintessential part of the learning cycle of students and the availability of feedback that students can understand and execute is required. However, students find feedbacks provided to them often vague, insufficient, or difficult to comprehend. Especially, in the second study, the results depicted a workforce whose engagement in tasks was not self-determined and a description of a perceived low satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs; Competence, Relatedness and Autonomy. This presents a workforce that will engage in the minimum amount of work required of them without an extra effort in performance. The results of our studies showed that both ABA front-line staff and Graduate Assistants are most susceptible to two persuasive strategies - Commitment and Reciprocity, followed by Authority and least susceptible to Consensus and Scarcity among Cialdini’s persuasive principles. Among the social influence persuasive strategies, employees from both studies were most susceptible to Trustworthiness. Whilst there was no statistically significant difference between the other social influence persuasive strategies (Reward, Competition, Social Comparison, Social Learning) among ABA employees, Graduate Assistants were more susceptible to Reward and Competition and least susceptible to Social Comparison and Social Learning. However, gender and continent of origin influenced the susceptibility of Graduate Assistants to Trustworthiness and Social Learning. North American Males are not influenced by Social Learning in contrast to African Males who influenced by it. Although North American females are least susceptible to Social Learning, they are still influenced by it. These results imply the investment in a persuasive gamified system that will facilitate the satisfaction of the Basic Psychological Needs of employees to increase their intrinsic motivation in effective documentation of analysis and evaluations. Persuasive and game elements that support Rewards, Competition, Trustworthiness, Commitment, Reciprocity and Authority could be used to achieve this. To make these results actionable, requirement guidelines have been recommended for both workplaces based on the insights gathered from the user studies. However, these requirements have not been evaluated. Therefore, future work will involve the design, development and evaluation of a persuasive gamified system based on the requirements specifications. Also, to draw definite conclusions on tailoring persuasive strategies to individuals and groups, future research should consider the impact of other workplace diversity factors that may impact susceptibility to these persuasive strategies

Gamification in transport interventions: Another way to improve travel behavioural change

Gamification is dramatically transforming how behaviour change interventions are delivered. The design of gaming products in the field of transport, a field which is perceived as having derived demand, is largely underdeveloped. This paper explores gamification in the context of transport, proposes a conceptual theoretical framework that explains why and how gamification may be designed and evaluated, and synthesises current practice regarding the range of interventions offered thus far. The conclusions identify strategies and implications for the improvement to existing schemes as well as guidance for future research into gamification