Gamification risks in collaborative information systems: identification and management method.

In recent years, technology has been increasingly harnessed to play a role in encouraging and persuading people towards a better achievement of their individual and collective goals. Gamification solutions are popular approaches in this field. Gamification in business refers to the use of game elements in order to facilitate a change of behaviours, encourage engagement and increase motivation toward executing tasks and attaining goals. Despite the increasing recognition, previous research has revealed risks when applying gamification to teamwork within a business environment, such as negatively affect group coherence and creating adverse work ethics. For example, applying competitive elements such as leaderboards may lead to clustering amongst team members and encourage adverse work ethics such as intimidation and pressure. Although the problem is already recognised in principle, there is still a need to clarify and concretise those risks, their factors and their relation to the gamification dynamics and mechanics. Moreover, developing an integrated method to systematically identify those risks and provide a way to mitigate and prevent them for healthier and successful implementation of the system in teamwork places is needed. To achieve this goal, this thesis conducted a set of empirical studies involving managers, practitioners, psychologists and gamification users. This includes three-stage empirical research in two large-scale businesses using gamification in their workplace, including two months’ observation and interview study. This resulted in identifying a set of risk factors, a taxonomy of risks and set of management strategies. A follow-up focus groups research study also identified the modalities of application of these strategies, including who should be involved and how in their implementations. These studies first resulted in the development of a checklist tool to help identify gamification risks. The findings were finally used to develop a method to systematically identify gamification risks and recommend design practices and strategies to tackle them. By accomplishing that, this thesis recommends that gamification in enterprises shall undertake a risk assessment and management process to cater for its potential side effects on teamwork. A notable recommendation is to use participatory decision style for the method that enables for the analysis of gamification risks and their resolution. Moreover, this thesis recommends studying how to integrate the risk identification processes, which should take an iterative participatory style with the systems’ development life cycle activities

Strategies and Design Principles to Minimize Negative Side-effects of Digital Motivation on Teamwork

Digital Motivation in business refers to the use of technology in order to facilitate a change of attitude, perception and behaviour with regards to adopting policies, achieving goals and executing tasks. It is a broad term to indicate existing and emerging paradigms such as Gamification, Persuasive Technology, Serious Games and Entertainment Computing. Our previous research indicated risks when applying Digital Motivation. One of these main risks is the impact it can have on the interpersonal relationships between colleagues and their individual and collective performance. It may lead to a feeling of unfairness and trigger negative group processes (such as social loafing and unofficial clustering) and adverse wo rk ethics. In this paper, we propose a set of strategies to minimize such risks and then consolidate these strategies through an empirical study involving managers,practitioners and users.The strategies are then analysed for their goal, stage and purpose of use to add further guidance. The strategies and their classification are meant to inform developers and management on how to design,set-up and introduce Digital Motivation to a business environment, maximize its efficiency and minimize its side-effects on teamwork

COPE.er Method: Combating Digital Addiction via Online Peer Support Groups

Digital addiction (hereafter DA) denotes a problematic relationship with technology described by being compulsive, obsessive, impulsive and hasty. New research has identified cases where users’ digital behaviour shows symptoms meeting the clinical criteria of behavioural addiction. The online peer groups approach is one of the strategies to combat addictive behaviours. Unlike other behaviours, intervention and addictive usage can be on the same medium; the online space. This shared medium empowers influence techniques found in peer groups, such as selfmonitoring, social surveillance, and personalised feedback, with a higher degree of interactivity, continuity and real-time communication. Social media platforms in general and online peer groups, in particular, have received little guidance as to how software design should take it into account. Careful theoretical understanding of the unique attributes and dynamics of such platforms and their intersection with gamification and persuasive techniques is needed as the ad-hoc design may cause unexpected harm. In this paper, we investigate how to facilitate the design process to ensure a systematic development of this technology. We conducted several qualitative studies including user studies and observational investigations. The primary contribution of this research is twofold: (i) a reference model for designing interactive online platforms to host peer groups and combat DA, (ii) a process model, COPE.er, inspired by the participatory design approach to building Customisable Online Persuasive Ecology by Engineering Rehabilitation strategies for different groups

Digital Addiction: Negative Life Experiences and Potential for Technology-Assisted Solutions

There is a growing acceptance of the association between obsessive, compulsive and excessive usage of digital media, e.g., games and social networks, and users’ wellbeing, whether personal, economic or social. While specific causal relations between such Digital Addiction (DA) and the negative life experience can be debated, we argue in this paper that, nevertheless, technology can play a role in preventing or raising awareness of its pathological or problematic usage styles, e.g. through monitoring usage and enabling interactive awareness messages. We perform a literature review, with the primary aim of gathering the range negative life experiences associated with DA. We then conduct two focus groups to help gather users’ perception of the key findings from the literature. Finally, we perform a qualitative analysis of experts and practitioners’ interviews and comments from a user survey on DA warning labels. As a result, we develop eight families of the negative life experiences associated with DA, examine the role of software in facilitating the reduction of such negative experiences, and consider the challenges that may be encountered in the process

Overview of all proposed algorithms.

Overview of all proposed algorithms.</p

The estimated running time for each program.

The estimated running time for each program.</p

4-programs and 2-supercomputers example for the design model.

4-programs and 2-supercomputers example for the design model.</p

The <i>Gp</i> values variation when <i>Tp</i> changes for algorithm <i>BPC</i>.

The Gp values variation when Tp changes for algorithm BPC.</p

The <i>Gp</i> values for all algorithms when <i>n</i>_<i>su</i> according to the number of supercomputers.

The Gp values for all algorithms when nsu according to the number of supercomputers.</p

Design of the supercomputers-program model.

Design of the supercomputers-program model.</p