See you soon again, chatbot? A design taxonomy to characterize user-chatbot relationships with different time horizons

Users interact with chatbots for various purposes and motivations – and for different periods of time. However, since chatbots are considered social actors and given that time is an essential component of social interactions, the question arises as to how chatbots need to be designed depending on whether they aim to help individuals achieve short-, medium- or long-term goals. Following a taxonomy development approach, we compile 22 empirically and conceptually grounded design dimensions contingent on chatbots’ temporal profiles. Based upon the classification and analysis of 120 chatbots therein, we abstract three time-dependent chatbot design archetypes: Ad-hoc Supporters, Temporary Assistants, and Persistent Companions. While the taxonomy serves as a blueprint for chatbot researchers and designers developing and evaluating chatbots in general, our archetypes also offer practitioners and academics alike a shared understanding and naming convention to study and design chatbots with different temporal profiles

See you soon again, chatbot? A design taxonomy to characterize user-chatbot relationships with different time horizons

Users interact with chatbots for various purposes and motivations – and for different periods of time. However, since chatbots are considered social actors and given that time is an essential component of social interactions, the question arises as to how chatbots need to be designed depending on whether they aim to help individuals achieve short-, medium- or long-term goals. Following a taxonomy development approach, we compile 22 empirically and conceptually grounded design dimensions contingent on chatbots’ temporal profiles. Based upon the classification and analysis of 120 chatbots therein, we abstract three time-dependent chatbot design archetypes: Ad-hoc Supporters, Temporary Assistants, and Persistent Companions. While the taxonomy serves as a blueprint for chatbot researchers and designers developing and evaluating chatbots in general, our archetypes also offer practitioners and academics alike a shared understanding and naming convention to study and design chatbots with different temporal profiles. © 2021 The Author

More than Just a Game: Ethical Issues in Gamification

Gamification is the use of elements and techniques from video game design in non-game contexts. Amid the rapid growth of this practice, normative questions have been under-explored. The primary goal of this article is to develop a normatively sophisticated and descriptively rich account for appropriately addressing major ethical considerations associated with gamification. The framework suggests that practitioners and designers should be precautious about, primarily, but not limited to, whether or not their use of gamification practices: (1) takes unfair advantage of workers (e.g., exploitation); (2) infringes any involved workers’ or customers’ autonomy (e.g., manipulation); (3) intentionally or unintentionally harms workers and other involved parties; or (4) has a negative effect on the moral character of involved parties

Developing and evaluating MindMax: promoting mental wellbeing through an Australian Football League-themed app incorporating applied games (including gamification), psychoeducation, and social connectedness

Gamification is increasingly being used as a behavioural change strategy to increase engagement with apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing. While there is promising evidence supporting the effectiveness of individual gamification elements, there remains little evidence for its overall effectiveness. Furthermore, a lack of consistency in how ‘gamification’ and related terms (such as ‘applied games’, an umbrella term of which gamification is one type) are used has been observed within and across multiple academic fields. This contributes to the difficulty of studying gamification and decreases its accessibility to people unfamiliar with applied games. Finally, gamification has also been critiqued by both game developers and by academics for its reliance on extrinsic motivators and for the messages that gamified systems may unintentionally convey. In this context, the aims of this thesis were fourfold: 1) to iteratively co-design and develop a gamified app for mental health and wellbeing, 2) to evaluate the eventuating app, 3) to consolidate literature on gamification for mental health and wellbeing, and 4) to synthesise findings into practical guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing. Chapter 2 reports the first study which addresses the first aim of this thesis. Six participatory design workshops were conducted to support the development of MindMax, an Australian Football League (AFL)-themed mobile phone app aimed at AFL fans (particularly male ones) that incorporates applied games, psychoeducation, and social connectedness. Findings from these workshops were independently knowledge translated and fed back to the software development team, resulting in a MindMax prototype. This prototype was further tested with 15 one-on-one user experience testing interviews at three separate time points to iteratively refine MindMax’s design and delivery of its content. The findings of this study suggest that broadly, participants endorsed a customisable user experience with activities requiring active user participation. These specifications were reflected in the continual software updates made to MindMax. Chapters 3 and 4 report the second and third studies which address the second aim of this thesis. As regular content, performance, and aesthetic updates were applied to MindMax (following the model of the wider tech industry), a naturalistic longitudinal trial, described in Chapter 3, was deemed to be the most appropriate systematic evaluation method. In this study, participants (n=313) were given access to MindMax and asked to use it at their leisure, and surveys were sent out at multiple time points to assess their wellbeing, resilience, and help-seeking intentions. Increases in flourishing (60-day only), sense of connection to MindMax, and impersonal help-seeking intentions were observed over 30 and 60 days, suggesting that Internet-based interventions like MindMax can contribute to their users’ social connectedness and encourage their help-seeking. The third study, described in Chapter 4, reports a secondary analysis of data collected for Chapter 3, and further explores participants’ help-seeking intentions and their links to wellbeing, resilience, gender, and age. An explanatory factor analysis was conducted on Day 1 General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) data (n=530), with the best fitting solution resulting in three factors: personal sources, health professionals, and distal sources. In addition to providing more evidence that younger people aged 16–35 categorise apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing like MindMax alongside other distal social sources such as phone helplines and work or school, our findings also suggest that the best way to target individuals who are least likely to seek help, particularly men, may be through these distal sources as well. Chapter 5 reports the fourth study, which addresses the third aim. In order to consolidate literature on gamification for mental health and wellbeing, this systematic review identified 70 papers that collectively reported on 50 apps and technologies for improving mental health and wellbeing. These papers were coded for gamification element, mental health and wellbeing domain, and researchers’ justification for applying gamification to improving mental health and wellbeing. This study resulted in two major findings: first, that the current application of gamification for mental health and wellbeing does not resemble the heavily critiqued mainstream application that relies on extrinsic motivators; and second, that many authors of the reviewed papers provided little or no justification for why they applied gamification to their mental health and wellbeing interventions. While the former finding is encouraging, the latter suggests that the gamification of mental health and wellbeing is not theory-driven, and is a cause for concern. Finally, to address the final aim of this thesis, all study learnings were synthesised into practical guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing. First, it is important to assess the suitability of implementing gamification into the intervention. Second, this implementation should ideally be integrated at a deeper, systemic level, with the explicitly qualified intention to support users, evidence-based processes, and user engagement with these processes. Third, it is important to assess the acceptability of this gamified intervention throughout its development, involving all relevant stakeholders (particularly representative end user populations). Fourth, it is important to evaluate the impact of this gamified intervention. Fifth, and finally, comprehensive and detailed documentation of this process should be provided at all stages of this process. This thesis contributes to a growing literature on the increasing importance and relevance of Internet-based resources and apps and technologies for mental health and wellbeing, particularly for young people. Given the dominance of games in society and culture across history, and the increasing contemporary prominence of digital games (also known as video games) in particular, gamification is uniquely positioned to have the potential to make large contributions to mental health and wellbeing research. In this context, this thesis contributes a systematically derived operationalisation of gamification, an evaluation of a gamified app for mental health and wellbeing, and best practice guidelines for implementing gamification for mental health and wellbeing, thereby providing frameworks that future implementations of gamified mental health and wellbeing interventions and initiatives may find useful

Design Principles of Mobile Information Systems in the Digital Transformation of the Workplace - Utilization of Smartwatch-based Information Systems in the Corporate Context

During the last decades, smartwatches emerged as an innovative and promising technology and hit the consumer market due to the accessibility of affordable devices and predominant acceptance caused by the considerable similarity to common wristwatches. With the unique characteristics of permanent availability, unobtrusiveness, and hands-free operation, they can provide additional value in the corporate context. Thus, this thesis analyzes use cases for smartwatches in companies, elaborates on the design of smartwatch-based information systems, and covers the usability of smartwatch applications during the development of smartwatch-based information systems. It is composed of three research complexes. The first research complex focuses on the digital assistance of (mobile) employees who have to execute manual work and have been excluded so far from the benefits of the digitalization since they cannot operate hand-held devices. The objective is to design smartwatch-based information systems to support workflows in the corporate context, facilitate the daily work of numerous employees, and make processes more efficient for companies. During a design science research approach, smartwatch-based software artifacts are designed and evaluated in use cases of production, support, security service, as well as logistics, and a nascent design theory is proposed to complement theory according to mobile information system research. The evaluation shows that, on the one hand, smartwatches have enormous potential to assist employees with a fast and ubiquitous exchange of information, instant notifications, collaboration, and workflow guidance while they can be operated incidentally during manual work. On the other hand, the design of smartwatch-based information systems is a crucial factor for successful long-term deployment in companies, and especially limitations according to the small form-factor, general conditions, acceptance of the employees, and legal regulations have to be addressed appropriately. The second research complex addresses smartwatch-based information systems at the office workplace. This broadens and complements the view on the utilization of smartwatches in the corporate context in addition to the mobile context described in the first research complex. Though smartwatches are devices constructed for mobile use, the utilization in low mobile or stationary scenarios also has benefits due they exhibit the characteristic of a wearable computer and are directly connected to the employee’s body. Various sensors can perceive employee-, environment- and therefore context-related information and demand the employees’ attention with proactive notifications that are accompanied by a vibration. Thus, a smartwatch-based and gamified information system for health promotion at the office workplace is designed and evaluated. Research complex three provides a closer look at the topic of usability concerning applications running on smartwatches since it is a crucial factor during the development cycle. As a supporting element for the studies within the first and second research complex, a framework for the usability analysis of smartwatch applications is developed. For research, this thesis contributes a systemization of the state-of-the-art of smartwatch utilization in the corporate context, enabling and inhibiting influence factors of the smartwatch adoption in companies, and design principles as well as a nascent design theory for smartwatch-based information systems to support mobile employees executing manual work. For practice, this thesis contributes possible use cases for smartwatches in companies, assistance in decision-making for the introduction of smartwatch-based information systems in the corporate context with the Smartwatch Applicability Framework, situated implementations of a smartwatch-based information system for typical use cases, design recommendations for smartwatch-based information systems, an implementation of a smartwatch-based information system for the support of mobile employees executing manual work, and a usability-framework for smartwatches to automatically access usability of existing applications providing suggestions for usability improvement

Gamification and Advanced Technology to Enhance Motivation in Education

This book, entitled “Gamification and Advanced Technology to Enhance Motivation in Education”, contains an editorial and a collection of ten research articles that highlight the use of gamification and other advanced technologies as powerful tools for motivation during learning. Motivation is the driving force behind many human activities, especially learning. Motivated students are ready to make a significant mental effort and use deeper and more effective learning strategies. Numerous studies indicate that playing promotes learning, since when fun pervades the learning process, motivation increases and tension is reduced. Therefore, games can be very powerful tools in the improvement of learning processes from three different and complementary perspectives: as tools for teaching content or skills, as an object of the learning project itself and as a philosophy to be taken into account when designing the training process. Each contributions presented in this book falls into one of these categories; that is to say, they all deal with the use of games or related technologies, and they all study how playing enhances motivation in education

Gamification for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

This book provides a research-based overview of the use of games to facilitate learning in innovation/entrepreneurship and draws on work in several European institutions and well-known companies. Also, it provides a review of experiences in using games, a typology and a model for introducing games into course design. Examples include games specifically designed and developed within the project plus signpost links to an online library of games

Investment Games

Popular zero-commission stock trading apps like Robinhood innovate in user-experience design, featuring “gamification” practices—flashy graphics, leaderboards, and the like—that make it attractive, easy, and fun to trade stocks. Regulators are increasingly scrutinizing gamification and other digital engagement practices, with efforts underway at the SEC to adopt rules in broker-dealer and investment-advisor regulation. This attention reflects considerable skepticism about gamification in securities markets. At best, these practices encourage motivation and engagement, and democratize access to financial markets. But at worst, these practices encourage people to trade habitually and unreflectively, and more than they might want. This can lead to undesirable market-wide effects, like distorting the process by which markets allocate investment capital to firms and projects that will grow the real economy, as well as socially wasteful (and individually harmful) excessive trading. And given that interventions in retail investor choice have significant implications for market quality and wealth inequality, regulatory responses here are a high stakes matter for society broadly. Calls to regulate gamification highlight a tension at the core of securities markets. Securities law has largely ceded the field of market structure to the interests of sophisticated financial intermediaries in producing liquidity and price discovery. By permitting gamification practices that encourage active trading for the primary benefit of financial intermediaries, securities law subordinates its investor protection function to encourage wasteful investment in achieving eversmaller improvements in liquidity and price discovery. Regulatory intervention would be socially desirable, I argue, not just given what we know about retail trader behavior and its effects on personal finance and markets—but because it is an opportunity for securities law to recalibrate away from an all-out arms race in arbitrage. This Article takes up the problem of gamification and related digital engagement practices. It considers how gamification is the nearly inevitable consequence of the rise of retail investors who trade without superior information about a stock’s fundamental value, competition on brokerage commissions, and a fragmented market structure. Yet calls for regulatory interventions often elide important distinctions between how securities law should treat active traders who prefer risk, and those with preferences distorted by gamification. This Article explains how we got here; examines the social-welfare case for regulating gamification and related digital engagement practices; offers a typology of techniques that securities regulators can adopt in response; and assesses these interventions against existing securities law doctrine and policy. This Article also considers how the securities laws’ tenuous relationship with innovative stock-market technology shapes how retail investors engage with financial markets

Gamification for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

This book provides a research-based overview of the use of games to facilitate learning in innovation/entrepreneurship and draws on work in several European institutions and well-known companies. Also, it provides a review of experiences in using games, a typology and a model for introducing games into course design. Examples include games specifically designed and developed within the project plus signpost links to an online library of games