Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI community in the last few years. However, the current debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely raised. This workshop will explore the gamification design space from a critical perspective, by using design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-term consequences of their designs

Cena, Federica

Hamari, Juho

Hopfgartner, Frank

Linehan, Conor

Rapp, Amon

Information Technology and Nanotechnology

English

Institutional Research Information System University of Turin

 Fictional Game Elements: Critical Perspectives on Gamification Design  Abstract Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI community in the last few years. However, the current debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely raised. This workshop will explore the gamification design space from a critical perspective, by using design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-term consequences of their designs. Author Keywords Gamification; Critical Design; Design Fiction.  ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. Introduction In the last few years, we witnessed the spread of a number of non-recreational services and applications that make use of game elements. Gamification, commonly defined as the use of “game design elements in non-game contexts” [6], gained an increasing popularity as a means for enhancing the user engagement, increasing performances and changing behavior in a variety of contexts (e.g. [1, 4, 5]). Despite this growing interest, HCI community Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.  Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). CHI PLAY'16 Extended Abstracts, October 16-19, 2016, Austin, TX, USA ACM 978-1-4503-4458-6/16/10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2968120.2968125  Amon Rapp University of Torino Torino, Italy amon.rapp@gmail.com  Federica Cena University of Torino Torino, Italy cena@di.unito.it  Frank Hopfgartner University of Glasgow  Glasgow, United Kingdom frank.hopfgartner@glasgow.ac.uk Juho Hamari University of Tampere Tampere, Finland juho.hamari@uta.fi  Conor Linehan University College Cork Cork, Ireland conor.linehan@ucc.ie          animatedly debated the role that gamification could play in design. If, on the one side, it has been highlighted that gamification may have positive psychological and behavioral outcomes [7], on the other side, it has been questioned in its capability of providing a truly engaging experience [11], and it has been suggested to explore new ways to design for gamification [12]. However, the current discussion appears to be focused on its short-term effectiveness and usefulness, while other, and perhaps more important, aspects are not receiving a similar attention. Side-effects, long-term and systemic consequences, ethical and societal impacts and concerns are rarely raised in the current gamification rhetoric, and a variety of assumptions related to games, fun, and enjoyment are far from being called into question. In this workshop we want to elicit a critical discourse about gamification design. Primary aim of the workshop is to create a debate that can make researchers and designers reflect on the consequences of their work, by framing gamification in unusual, ambiguous, provocative perspectives, through the design of fictional prototypes in plausible distant futures, as well as in utopian or dystopian societies. Background and Motivation It has been noted that HCI research shares the common assumption that technology and design will make people’s lives “more enjoyable, easier, better informed, healthier and more sustainable” [9]. This premise leads researchers to focus on the singular, short-term consequences of their designs, while it has been largely recognized that technology affects both individual and society, with long-term impacts that are complex, emergent, ambiguous and linked to other changes [10]. Linehan et al. [9] emphasized that HCI researchers do not commonly produce critical evaluations of the potential future consequences of their designs. With some remarkable exceptions (e.g. [13, 14], this attitude can also be encountered in the current gamification debate, where gamification techniques are mostly discussed in terms of their effectiveness, usefulness, and by and large capability of producing positive impacts on experience and behavior. However, this rhetoric appears to be informed by a variety of assumptions that are rarely called into question: for example, that making an experience more enjoyable and engaging is per se a valuable outcome; that increasing the performances by exploiting “fun” elements is always desirable; that changing behavior by leveraging “gameful” reinforces makes the behavioral intervention more acceptable and somehow less questionable; that a game frame is applicable to every domains and that this, if well designed, will turn the experience to the better.  In this workshop, instead, we aim at deconstructing these and similar premises by highlighting the potential future, ambivalent and systemic consequences of gamification designs, in order to produce a critical discourse on gamification. A critical perspective on design, instead of reinforcing needs and values as they are interpreted in the present society, tries to disrupt and transgress such constructions, by embodying cultural critique in designs [2]. We want to engage HCI researchers in asking not only could it be done? but also should it be done? and how would society look like if this will be done?. We want to explore possible answers to questions like: Are there fields in which gamification should not be employed? What are the unexpected impacts/side effects that a pervasive gamification design could produce on the individual and  society (e.g. addiction, isolation, escapism, hedonism)? What if entire aspects of our life will be turned into a game? What if novel, more effective, immersive, and pleasurable game elements will be successfully employed in gamification design? Is gamification implicitly reinforcing some aspects of our society (e.g. consumerism, individualism)? To answer these questions we propose to look at research through design and, in particular, at design fictions. They present “fantasy prototypes” in plausible near futures, on the assumption that designs can be usefully discussed without necessarily making them [3]. These fictional designs create a discursive space where diverse kinds of future may emerge, exploring at the same time the present condition [8]. Although their growing popularity in HCI community, design fictions have not been used to produce critical reflections on specific design domains. In this workshop, we want to apply them to the gamification field, in order to elicit discussions about opportunities and criticalities of the usage of game elements in different aspects of our lives. To summarize we are looking for insights that can question what is currently taken for granted in gamification designs and enrich our imagination when dealing with them, also to envision radically new applications of such techniques. Relevant workshop topics include, but are not limited to: i) Envisioning of future and unexpected uses of gamification techniques; ii) Theoretical reflections about how games and gamification could change our lives in the future; iii) Critical insights on side-effects of gamification design; iv) Ethical issues related to the employment of gamified technologies; v) thought-provoking designs of novel gamified applications; vi) novel game design elements; vii) fictional prototypes, evaluations, scenarios of “critical” gamified systems. Novelty and Expected Impact The Design Futures journal has recently published a special issue on design fiction. CHI ’16 has dedicated an alt.chi session to design fiction. At NordiCHI ’16 is planned a track on “Future Scenarios”. Our workshop is timely and interesting for a large audience of HCI, game and gamification researchers and designers. Until now, no workshop has explored the long-term and systemic consequences of gamification through a critical lens. Our workshop aims to use design fictions to fill this gap helping designers envision the unexpected consequences of their designs. Through group activities we aim at gathering an interdisciplinary forum to create provocative concept designs that embody critical insights and deconstruct the current gamification assumptions. We expect to collect a “portfolio” of fictional prototypes that will be shared on the workshop website, making them accessible to a larger audience of researchers, to generate further discussions. We aim at involving not only those already interested in critical design approaches, but also mainstream HCI, game and gamification researchers in a critical reflection on their work. Pre-Workshop Plans The workshop website will go online before sending the CFP to all the major HCI, Games and Gamification mailing lists. We will accept submissions in two forms. First option is a standard position paper, where authors discuss one of the workshop topics, or describe how their area of expertise may be of interest for the workshop discussion. The second option is a contribution in the form of a “critical” design fiction, in  which authors may explore the future consequences of their work and of gamification design. Both the option should be 2-6 page long in the ACM Extended Abstract Format. Papers will be reviewed based on their relevance, quality and, mainly, potential to trigger insights for the design phase of the workshop.  Workshop Structure The workshop will follow a one-day format. In the first part of the morning participants will have 3 minutes to present their work in a presentation madness session. This session will have the main function of generating insights for the following workshop phases. Then, participants will be divided in groups of 3-4 persons and each group will have to define collaboratively one “design challenge”. A design challenge is formulated as a sentence beginning with “How might we…” and is intended as a question addressed to turn a problem area into an opportunity for design. Then, participants will have to envision new directions for solutions to address the design challenges individuated. They will be asked to push forward their imagination and produce thought provoking and “critical” ideas that could make visible the underlining assumptions of the current gamification designs. Each participant, in each group, will have 5 minutes to sketch 5 design ideas related to the design challenge defined in their group. Then, everyone will have 3 minutes to present their ideas to the rest of the group, while the group will have 2 minutes to constructively criticize the ideas presented. This format is aimed at quickly generating many solutions to a problem through sketching, exposition and critique. Then, the group will have 10 minutes to select the most promising solution that addresses the design challenge. In the afternoon each group will have to produce a fictional prototype enacted in a future narrative scenario (50 years forward in the future) where the imagined technology could become completely effective and pervasive among individuals and society. These scenarios could also take the form of utopias and dystopias to open spaces for reflection about the desired or undesired consequences of design. This activity will be conducted through the outline of narratives (e.g. written stories, storyboards) in which the main character will show, from her point of view, how the use of the proposed solution could impact on her life and on the world she inhabit. The workshop will conclude with the presentation of the scenarios produced. Schedule 09:15 - 09:30 Introduction  09:30 - 10:30 Paper presentations  10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break 11:00 - 12:30 Work group: design challenge definition and idea generation 12:30 - 14:00 Lunch 14:00 - 16:00 Work group: scenarios definition 16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break 16:30 - 17:30 Presentations and discussion 17:30 - 17:45 Closing remarks Post-Workshop Plans After the end of the workshop we plan to: i) produce a report of the workshop to disseminate the insights emerged during the design phase; ii) include all the participants in a mailing list where they could discuss new ideas; iii) submit an article to ACM Interactions reporting the insights emerged during the workshop.  References 1. Gabriel Barata, Sandra Gama, Manuel J. Fonseca, and Daniel Gonçalves. 2013. Improving student creativity with gamification and virtual worlds. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (Gamification '13), 95-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583023 2. Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '12), 288-297. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2317956.2318001 3. Mark Blythe. 2014. Research through design fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), 703-712. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2557098 4. Joseph A. Cafazzo, Mark Casselman, Nathaniel Hamming, Debra K. Katzman, Mark R. Palmert. 2012. Design of an Health app for the self-management of adolescent type1 diabetes: a pilot study. J. Med. Internet Res., 14, 13. 5. Laurentiu Catalin Stanculescu, Alessandro Bozzon, Robert-Jan Sips, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. Work and Play: An Experiment in Enterprise Gamification. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16), 346-358. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820061 6. Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart Nacke. 2011. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (MindTrek '11), 9-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040 7. Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, and Harri Sarsa. 2014. Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '14), 3025-3034. 8. Derek Hales. Design Fictions an Introduction and Partial Taxonomy. Digital Creativity. Vol 24. Issue 1. 2013. Special Issue: Design Fictions 30 Apr 2013 9. Conor Linehan, Ben J. Kirman, Stuart Reeves, Mark A. Blythe, Joshua G. Tanenbaum, Audrey Desjardins, and Ron Wakkary. 2014. Alternate endings: using fiction to explore design futures. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14), 45-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2560472 10. Lisa P. Nathan, Batya Friedman, Predrag Klasnja, Shaun K. Kane, and Jessica K. Miller. 2008. Envisioning systemic effects on persons and society throughout interactive system design. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '08), 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394446  11. Amon Rapp. 2015. A Qualitative Investigation of Gamification: Motivational Factors in Online Gamified Services and Applications. International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 11(1), 67-82. Doi: 10.4018/ijthi.2015010105 12. Amon Rapp. 2015. Designing interactive systems through a game lens: An ethnographic approach. Computers in human behavior, Doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.048 13. Jesse Schell. 2010. Visions of the Gamepocalypse. Presentation, Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, CA, July 27, 2010. 14. Evan Selinger, Jathan Sadowski, Thomas P. Seager. Gamification and Morality. In The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, 577–618. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Fictional game elements: Critical perspectives on gamification design

Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI community in the last few years. However, the current debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely raised. This workshop explores the gamification design space from a critical perspective, by using design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-term consequences of their designs

Irish Universities

Fictional game elements 2016

Cork Open Research Archive

Title Fictional game elements 2016Author(s) Rapp, Amon; Cena, Federica; Hopfgartner, Frank; Hamari, Juho;Linehan, ConorPublication date 2016-10Original citation Rapp, A., Cena, F., Hopfgartner, F., Hamari, J. and Linehan, C. (2016)‘Fictional game elements 2016’, Proceedings of the Workshop onFictional Game Elements 2016 co-located with The ACM SIGCHIAnnual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHIPLAY 2016), Austin, Texas, US, 16-19 October.Type of publication Conference itemLink to publisher'sversionhttp://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1715/Access to the full text of the published version may require asubscription.Rights © 2016, the Authors.Item downloadedfromhttp://hdl.handle.net/10468/3517Downloaded on 2017-02-12T06:36:46Z Fictional Game Elements 2016    Abstract Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI community in the last few years. However, the current debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely raised. This workshop explores the gamification design space from a critical perspective, by using design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-term consequences of their designs. Author Keywords Gamification; Critical Design; Design Fiction.  ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. Introduction In the last years, we seen the spread of different non-ludic applications and services leveraging game elements in their designs. Gamification is defined as the use of “game design elements in non-game contexts” [6], and has gained popularity as a design technique capable of increasing the user engagement, as well as pushing performances and modifying behavior (e.g. [1, 4, 5]). However, HCI community is discussing its current role gamification in design. Gamification does   Amon Rapp University of Torino Torino, Italy amon.rapp@gmail.com  Federica Cena University of Torino Torino, Italy cena@di.unito.it  Frank Hopfgartner University of Glasgow  Glasgow, United Kingdom frank.hopfgartner@glasgow.ac.uk Juho Hamari University of Tampere Tampere, Finland juho.hamari@uta.fi  Conor Linehan University College Cork Cork, Ireland conor.linehan@ucc.ie          have positive impacts in terms of effectiveness on certain target behaviors [7], but its ability of immersing the user in a pleasurable experience has been put into question [11], and it has been suggested to investigate new paths for designing for gamification [12].  It clearly appears that a discussion on the long-term and social impacts of gamification is in need, as it has the power to turn “normal” experiences in enjoyable ones, which could entail different and somehow unexpected side-effects or systemic consequences. Such consequences are rarely taken into account in the current gamification debate, which gives for granted a number of assumptions related to games, enjoyment, and behavior change, that actually should be discussed in deep. It is possible, in fact, that turning a serious experience in a “fun” one could not always represent the optimal choice for users, who could also be pushed to pursue goals that they did not freely choose, or to accept of being involved in dynamics of which they are not fully aware. Design fictions, then, seem a technique that can address the exploration of such implications of gamification design. Design fictions HCI research seems to assume that technology makes users’ lives “more enjoyable, easier, better informed, healthier and more sustainable” [9]. This premise leads researchers to focus on specific, short-term impacts of their prototypes. However, technology has consequences on both individuals and society, and long-term effects are often ambivalent, difficult to predict, and systemic [10]. Linehan et al. [9] stress that HCI researchers are not usually engaged in critical evaluations of the future consequences of their work. Although some exceptions exist [13, 14], this attitude is also present in the gamification rhetoric, where gamification techniques are discussed with reference to their effectiveness and usefulness, but rarely in terms of their capability of systematically impacting on people’s life and producing long-term side-effects. To explore these aspects, it is necessary to adopt a critical perspective on design, instead of reinforcing its embedded values [2].  Design fictions present “fantasy prototypes” in plausible near futures [3] and support the creation of a discursive space where technology assumptions may be put into questions, exploring different alternative futures [8]. In this volume we explore how design fictions can be used to make us reflect on the unexpected outcomes of gamification.  Jonah Warren in “The Behavior Pioneers Application: An Intentional Community Prototype” describes a fictional questionnaire that has to be completed by applicants to an intentional community devoted to gamifying all aspects of its members’ lives. Assia Alexandrova, Lucia Rapanotti, and Ivan Horrocks in “RE-PROVO: An Evaluation of Gamification in a Law Enforcement Organization” outline a prototype of an online discussion game designed to support the analysis and critique of functional requirements for legacy system replacement and promote creativity. While Bernd Hollerit, Kenji Tanaka, and Helmut Prendinger in  “Contribution of affordances to  gamification” propose theoretical reflections about the effects of affordances in gamification Gustavo Tondello and Lennart Nacke in “Gamification Research: a 50-years Retrospective from PBLs Towards Conscious Evolution” present a critical design fiction in which they describe how gamification research could evolve in the new years Lal Bozgeyikli, Andrew Raij, Srinivas Katkoori, and Redwan Alqasemi, instead, in “Effects of Environmental Clutter and Motion on User Performance in Virtual Reality Games” explore the effects of environmental clutter and motion on game design for virtual reality Alessia Calafiore and Amon Rapp in “Gamifying the city pervasive game elements in the urban environment References” envision how a pervasive gamified app may change the relationship between citizens and the urban environments in which they live. Finally, Seamus Forde in “Including Non-Users and Public Perception in Future Gamification Research” highlights the importance of considering the differences between users and non-users when designing for gamification. References 1. Gabriel Barata, Sandra Gama, Manuel J. Fonseca, and Daniel Gonçalves. 2013. Improving student creativity with gamification and virtual worlds. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (Gamification '13), 95-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583023 2. Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '12), 288-297. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2317956.2318001 3. Mark Blythe. 2014. Research through design fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), 703-712. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2557098 4. Joseph A. Cafazzo, Mark Casselman, Nathaniel Hamming, Debra K. Katzman, Mark R. Palmert. 2012. Design of an Health app for the self-management of adolescent type1 diabetes: a pilot study. J. Med. Internet Res., 14, 13. 5. Laurentiu Catalin Stanculescu, Alessandro Bozzon, Robert-Jan Sips, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. Work and Play: An Experiment in Enterprise Gamification. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16), 346-358. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820061 6. Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart Nacke. 2011. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (MindTrek '11), 9-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040 7. Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, and Harri Sarsa. 2014. Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '14), 3025-3034. 8. Derek Hales. Design Fictions an Introduction and Partial Taxonomy. Digital Creativity. Vol 24. Issue 1. 2013. Special Issue: Design Fictions 30 Apr 2013 9. Conor Linehan, Ben J. Kirman, Stuart Reeves, Mark A. Blythe, Joshua G. Tanenbaum, Audrey  Desjardins, and Ron Wakkary. 2014. Alternate endings: using fiction to explore design futures. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14), 45-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2560472 10. Lisa P. Nathan, Batya Friedman, Predrag Klasnja, Shaun K. Kane, and Jessica K. Miller. 2008. Envisioning systemic effects on persons and society throughout interactive system design. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '08), 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394446  11. Amon Rapp. 2015. A Qualitative Investigation of Gamification: Motivational Factors in Online Gamified Services and Applications. International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 11(1), 67-82. Doi: 10.4018/ijthi.2015010105 12. Amon Rapp. 2015. Designing interactive systems through a game lens: An ethnographic approach. Computers in human behavior, Doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.048 13. Jesse Schell. 2010. Visions of the Gamepocalypse. Presentation, Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, CA, July 27, 2010. 14. Evan Selinger, Jathan Sadowski, Thomas P. Seager. Gamification and Morality. In The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, 577–618. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Enlighten

      Rapp, A., Cena, F., Hopfgartner, F., Hamari, J., and Linehan, C. (2016) Fictional Game Elements: Critical Perspectives on Gamification Design. In: Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts, Austin, TX, USA, 16-19 Oct 2016, pp. 373-377. ISBN 9781450344586.     There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.     http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/131312/            Deposited on: 17 November 2016                       Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk  Fictional Game Elements: Critical Perspectives on Gamification Design  Abstract Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI community in the last few years. However, the current debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely raised. This workshop will explore the gamification design space from a critical perspective, by using design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-term consequences of their designs. Author Keywords Gamification; Critical Design; Design Fiction.  ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. Introduction In the last few years, we witnessed the spread of a number of non-recreational services and applications that make use of game elements. Gamification, commonly defined as the use of “game design elements in non-game contexts” [6], gained an increasing popularity as a means for enhancing the user engagement, increasing performances and changing behavior in a variety of contexts (e.g. [1, 4, 5]). Despite this growing interest, HCI community Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.  Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). CHI PLAY'16 Extended Abstracts, October 16-19, 2016, Austin, TX, USA ACM 978-1-4503-4458-6/16/10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2968120.2968125  Amon Rapp University of Torino Torino, Italy amon.rapp@gmail.com  Federica Cena University of Torino Torino, Italy cena@di.unito.it  Frank Hopfgartner University of Glasgow  Glasgow, United Kingdom frank.hopfgartner@glasgow.ac.uk Juho Hamari University of Tampere Tampere, Finland juho.hamari@uta.fi  Conor Linehan University College Cork Cork, Ireland conor.linehan@ucc.ie          animatedly debated the role that gamification could play in design. If, on the one side, it has been highlighted that gamification may have positive psychological and behavioral outcomes [7], on the other side, it has been questioned in its capability of providing a truly engaging experience [11], and it has been suggested to explore new ways to design for gamification [12]. However, the current discussion appears to be focused on its short-term effectiveness and usefulness, while other, and perhaps more important, aspects are not receiving a similar attention. Side-effects, long-term and systemic consequences, ethical and societal impacts and concerns are rarely raised in the current gamification rhetoric, and a variety of assumptions related to games, fun, and enjoyment are far from being called into question. In this workshop we want to elicit a critical discourse about gamification design. Primary aim of the workshop is to create a debate that can make researchers and designers reflect on the consequences of their work, by framing gamification in unusual, ambiguous, provocative perspectives, through the design of fictional prototypes in plausible distant futures, as well as in utopian or dystopian societies. Background and Motivation It has been noted that HCI research shares the common assumption that technology and design will make people’s lives “more enjoyable, easier, better informed, healthier and more sustainable” [9]. This premise leads researchers to focus on the singular, short-term consequences of their designs, while it has been largely recognized that technology affects both individual and society, with long-term impacts that are complex, emergent, ambiguous and linked to other changes [10]. Linehan et al. [9] emphasized that HCI researchers do not commonly produce critical evaluations of the potential future consequences of their designs. With some remarkable exceptions (e.g. [13, 14], this attitude can also be encountered in the current gamification debate, where gamification techniques are mostly discussed in terms of their effectiveness, usefulness, and by and large capability of producing positive impacts on experience and behavior. However, this rhetoric appears to be informed by a variety of assumptions that are rarely called into question: for example, that making an experience more enjoyable and engaging is per se a valuable outcome; that increasing the performances by exploiting “fun” elements is always desirable; that changing behavior by leveraging “gameful” reinforces makes the behavioral intervention more acceptable and somehow less questionable; that a game frame is applicable to every domains and that this, if well designed, will turn the experience to the better.  In this workshop, instead, we aim at deconstructing these and similar premises by highlighting the potential future, ambivalent and systemic consequences of gamification designs, in order to produce a critical discourse on gamification. A critical perspective on design, instead of reinforcing needs and values as they are interpreted in the present society, tries to disrupt and transgress such constructions, by embodying cultural critique in designs [2]. We want to engage HCI researchers in asking not only could it be done? but also should it be done? and how would society look like if this will be done?. We want to explore possible answers to questions like: Are there fields in which gamification should not be employed? What are the unexpected impacts/side effects that a pervasive gamification design could produce on the individual and  society (e.g. addiction, isolation, escapism, hedonism)? What if entire aspects of our life will be turned into a game? What if novel, more effective, immersive, and pleasurable game elements will be successfully employed in gamification design? Is gamification implicitly reinforcing some aspects of our society (e.g. consumerism, individualism)? To answer these questions we propose to look at research through design and, in particular, at design fictions. They present “fantasy prototypes” in plausible near futures, on the assumption that designs can be usefully discussed without necessarily making them [3]. These fictional designs create a discursive space where diverse kinds of future may emerge, exploring at the same time the present condition [8]. Although their growing popularity in HCI community, design fictions have not been used to produce critical reflections on specific design domains. In this workshop, we want to apply them to the gamification field, in order to elicit discussions about opportunities and criticalities of the usage of game elements in different aspects of our lives. To summarize we are looking for insights that can question what is currently taken for granted in gamification designs and enrich our imagination when dealing with them, also to envision radically new applications of such techniques. Relevant workshop topics include, but are not limited to: i) Envisioning of future and unexpected uses of gamification techniques; ii) Theoretical reflections about how games and gamification could change our lives in the future; iii) Critical insights on side-effects of gamification design; iv) Ethical issues related to the employment of gamified technologies; v) thought-provoking designs of novel gamified applications; vi) novel game design elements; vii) fictional prototypes, evaluations, scenarios of “critical” gamified systems. Novelty and Expected Impact The Design Futures journal has recently published a special issue on design fiction. CHI ’16 has dedicated an alt.chi session to design fiction. At NordiCHI ’16 is planned a track on “Future Scenarios”. Our workshop is timely and interesting for a large audience of HCI, game and gamification researchers and designers. Until now, no workshop has explored the long-term and systemic consequences of gamification through a critical lens. Our workshop aims to use design fictions to fill this gap helping designers envision the unexpected consequences of their designs. Through group activities we aim at gathering an interdisciplinary forum to create provocative concept designs that embody critical insights and deconstruct the current gamification assumptions. We expect to collect a “portfolio” of fictional prototypes that will be shared on the workshop website, making them accessible to a larger audience of researchers, to generate further discussions. We aim at involving not only those already interested in critical design approaches, but also mainstream HCI, game and gamification researchers in a critical reflection on their work. Pre-Workshop Plans The workshop website will go online before sending the CFP to all the major HCI, Games and Gamification mailing lists. We will accept submissions in two forms. First option is a standard position paper, where authors discuss one of the workshop topics, or describe how their area of expertise may be of interest for the workshop discussion. The second option is a contribution in the form of a “critical” design fiction, in  which authors may explore the future consequences of their work and of gamification design. Both the option should be 2-6 page long in the ACM Extended Abstract Format. Papers will be reviewed based on their relevance, quality and, mainly, potential to trigger insights for the design phase of the workshop.  Workshop Structure The workshop will follow a one-day format. In the first part of the morning participants will have 3 minutes to present their work in a presentation madness session. This session will have the main function of generating insights for the following workshop phases. Then, participants will be divided in groups of 3-4 persons and each group will have to define collaboratively one “design challenge”. A design challenge is formulated as a sentence beginning with “How might we…” and is intended as a question addressed to turn a problem area into an opportunity for design. Then, participants will have to envision new directions for solutions to address the design challenges individuated. They will be asked to push forward their imagination and produce thought provoking and “critical” ideas that could make visible the underlining assumptions of the current gamification designs. Each participant, in each group, will have 5 minutes to sketch 5 design ideas related to the design challenge defined in their group. Then, everyone will have 3 minutes to present their ideas to the rest of the group, while the group will have 2 minutes to constructively criticize the ideas presented. This format is aimed at quickly generating many solutions to a problem through sketching, exposition and critique. Then, the group will have 10 minutes to select the most promising solution that addresses the design challenge. In the afternoon each group will have to produce a fictional prototype enacted in a future narrative scenario (50 years forward in the future) where the imagined technology could become completely effective and pervasive among individuals and society. These scenarios could also take the form of utopias and dystopias to open spaces for reflection about the desired or undesired consequences of design. This activity will be conducted through the outline of narratives (e.g. written stories, storyboards) in which the main character will show, from her point of view, how the use of the proposed solution could impact on her life and on the world she inhabit. The workshop will conclude with the presentation of the scenarios produced. Schedule 09:15 - 09:30 Introduction  09:30 - 10:30 Paper presentations  10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break 11:00 - 12:30 Work group: design challenge definition and idea generation 12:30 - 14:00 Lunch 14:00 - 16:00 Work group: scenarios definition 16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break 16:30 - 17:30 Presentations and discussion 17:30 - 17:45 Closing remarks Post-Workshop Plans After the end of the workshop we plan to: i) produce a report of the workshop to disseminate the insights emerged during the design phase; ii) include all the participants in a mailing list where they could discuss new ideas; iii) submit an article to ACM Interactions reporting the insights emerged during the workshop.  References 1. Gabriel Barata, Sandra Gama, Manuel J. Fonseca, and Daniel Gonçalves. 2013. Improving student creativity with gamification and virtual worlds. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (Gamification '13), 95-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583023 2. Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '12), 288-297. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2317956.2318001 3. Mark Blythe. 2014. Research through design fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), 703-712. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2557098 4. Joseph A. Cafazzo, Mark Casselman, Nathaniel Hamming, Debra K. Katzman, Mark R. Palmert. 2012. Design of an Health app for the self-management of adolescent type1 diabetes: a pilot study. J. Med. Internet Res., 14, 13. 5. Laurentiu Catalin Stanculescu, Alessandro Bozzon, Robert-Jan Sips, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. Work and Play: An Experiment in Enterprise Gamification. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16), 346-358. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820061 6. Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart Nacke. 2011. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (MindTrek '11), 9-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040 7. Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, and Harri Sarsa. 2014. Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '14), 3025-3034. 8. Derek Hales. Design Fictions an Introduction and Partial Taxonomy. Digital Creativity. Vol 24. Issue 1. 2013. Special Issue: Design Fictions 30 Apr 2013 9. Conor Linehan, Ben J. Kirman, Stuart Reeves, Mark A. Blythe, Joshua G. Tanenbaum, Audrey Desjardins, and Ron Wakkary. 2014. Alternate endings: using fiction to explore design futures. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '14), 45-48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2560472 10. Lisa P. Nathan, Batya Friedman, Predrag Klasnja, Shaun K. Kane, and Jessica K. Miller. 2008. Envisioning systemic effects on persons and society throughout interactive system design. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '08), 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394446  11. Amon Rapp. 2015. A Qualitative Investigation of Gamification: Motivational Factors in Online Gamified Services and Applications. International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 11(1), 67-82. Doi: 10.4018/ijthi.2015010105 12. Amon Rapp. 2015. Designing interactive systems through a game lens: An ethnographic approach. Computers in human behavior, Doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.048 13. Jesse Schell. 2010. Visions of the Gamepocalypse. Presentation, Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, CA, July 27, 2010. 14. Evan Selinger, Jathan Sadowski, Thomas P. Seager. Gamification and Morality. In The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, 577–618. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Fictional Game Elements: Critical Perspectives on Gamification Design

Amon Rapp

Federica Cena

Frank Hopfgartner

Juho Hamari

Conor Linehan

Crossref

Fictional Game Elements

Enlighten: Publications

  
 
 
 
 
Rapp, A., Cena, F., Hopfgartner, F., Hamari, J., and Linehan, C. (2016) Fictional 
Game Elements: Critical Perspectives on Gamification Design. In: Proceedings of 
the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion 
Extended Abstracts, Austin, TX, USA, 16-19 Oct 2016, pp. 373-377. ISBN 
9781450344586. 
 
   
There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are 
advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it. 
 
 
 
 
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/131312/ 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
Deposited on: 17 November 2016 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow 
http://eprints.gla.ac.uk 
 Fictional Game Elements: Critical 
Perspectives on Gamification Design
 
 
Abstract 
Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI 
community in the last few years. However, the current 
debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such 
as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, 
long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely 
raised. This workshop will explore the gamification 
design space from a critical perspective, by using 
design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-
term consequences of their designs. 
Author Keywords 
Gamification; Critical Design; Design Fiction.  
ACM Classification Keywords 
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., 
HCI): Miscellaneous. 
Introduction 
In the last few years, we witnessed the spread of a 
number of non-recreational services and applications 
that make use of game elements. Gamification, 
commonly defined as the use of “game design elements 
in non-game contexts” [6], gained an increasing 
popularity as a means for enhancing the user 
engagement, increasing performances and changing 
behavior in a variety of contexts (e.g. [1, 4, 5]). 
Despite this growing interest, HCI community 
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for 
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are 
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that 
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights 
for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other 
uses, contact the Owner/Author.  
Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). 
CHI PLAY'16 Extended Abstracts, October 16-19, 2016, Austin, TX, USA 
ACM 978-1-4503-4458-6/16/10. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2968120.2968125 
 
Amon Rapp 
University of Torino 
Torino, Italy 
amon.rapp@gmail.com 
 
Federica Cena 
University of Torino 
Torino, Italy 
cena@di.unito.it 
 
Frank Hopfgartner 
University of Glasgow  
Glasgow, United Kingdom 
frank.hopfgartner@glasgow.ac.uk 
Juho Hamari 
University of Tampere 
Tampere, Finland 
juho.hamari@uta.fi 
 
Conor Linehan 
University College Cork 
Cork, Ireland 
conor.linehan@ucc.ie 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 animatedly debated the role that gamification could 
play in design. If, on the one side, it has been 
highlighted that gamification may have positive 
psychological and behavioral outcomes [7], on the 
other side, it has been questioned in its capability of 
providing a truly engaging experience [11], and it has 
been suggested to explore new ways to design for 
gamification [12]. However, the current discussion 
appears to be focused on its short-term effectiveness 
and usefulness, while other, and perhaps more 
important, aspects are not receiving a similar attention. 
Side-effects, long-term and systemic consequences, 
ethical and societal impacts and concerns are rarely 
raised in the current gamification rhetoric, and a variety 
of assumptions related to games, fun, and enjoyment 
are far from being called into question. In this 
workshop we want to elicit a critical discourse about 
gamification design. Primary aim of the workshop is to 
create a debate that can make researchers and 
designers reflect on the consequences of their work, by 
framing gamification in unusual, ambiguous, 
provocative perspectives, through the design of fictional 
prototypes in plausible distant futures, as well as in 
utopian or dystopian societies. 
Background and Motivation 
It has been noted that HCI research shares the 
common assumption that technology and design will 
make people’s lives “more enjoyable, easier, better 
informed, healthier and more sustainable” [9]. This 
premise leads researchers to focus on the singular, 
short-term consequences of their designs, while it has 
been largely recognized that technology affects both 
individual and society, with long-term impacts that are 
complex, emergent, ambiguous and linked to other 
changes [10]. Linehan et al. [9] emphasized that HCI 
researchers do not commonly produce critical 
evaluations of the potential future consequences of 
their designs. With some remarkable exceptions (e.g. 
[13, 14], this attitude can also be encountered in the 
current gamification debate, where gamification 
techniques are mostly discussed in terms of their 
effectiveness, usefulness, and by and large capability of 
producing positive impacts on experience and behavior. 
However, this rhetoric appears to be informed by a 
variety of assumptions that are rarely called into 
question: for example, that making an experience more 
enjoyable and engaging is per se a valuable outcome; 
that increasing the performances by exploiting “fun” 
elements is always desirable; that changing behavior 
by leveraging “gameful” reinforces makes the 
behavioral intervention more acceptable and somehow 
less questionable; that a game frame is applicable to 
every domains and that this, if well designed, will turn 
the experience to the better.  
In this workshop, instead, we aim at deconstructing 
these and similar premises by highlighting the potential 
future, ambivalent and systemic consequences of 
gamification designs, in order to produce a critical 
discourse on gamification. A critical perspective on 
design, instead of reinforcing needs and values as they 
are interpreted in the present society, tries to disrupt 
and transgress such constructions, by embodying 
cultural critique in designs [2]. We want to engage HCI 
researchers in asking not only could it be done? but 
also should it be done? and how would society look like 
if this will be done?. We want to explore possible 
answers to questions like: Are there fields in which 
gamification should not be employed? What are the 
unexpected impacts/side effects that a pervasive 
gamification design could produce on the individual and 
 society (e.g. addiction, isolation, escapism, hedonism)? 
What if entire aspects of our life will be turned into a 
game? What if novel, more effective, immersive, and 
pleasurable game elements will be successfully 
employed in gamification design? Is gamification 
implicitly reinforcing some aspects of our society (e.g. 
consumerism, individualism)? To answer these 
questions we propose to look at research through 
design and, in particular, at design fictions. They 
present “fantasy prototypes” in plausible near futures, 
on the assumption that designs can be usefully 
discussed without necessarily making them [3]. These 
fictional designs create a discursive space where 
diverse kinds of future may emerge, exploring at the 
same time the present condition [8]. Although their 
growing popularity in HCI community, design fictions 
have not been used to produce critical reflections on 
specific design domains. In this workshop, we want to 
apply them to the gamification field, in order to elicit 
discussions about opportunities and criticalities of the 
usage of game elements in different aspects of our 
lives. 
To summarize we are looking for insights that can 
question what is currently taken for granted in 
gamification designs and enrich our imagination when 
dealing with them, also to envision radically new 
applications of such techniques. Relevant workshop 
topics include, but are not limited to: i) Envisioning of 
future and unexpected uses of gamification techniques; 
ii) Theoretical reflections about how games and 
gamification could change our lives in the future; iii) 
Critical insights on side-effects of gamification design; 
iv) Ethical issues related to the employment of gamified 
technologies; v) thought-provoking designs of novel 
gamified applications; vi) novel game design elements; 
vii) fictional prototypes, evaluations, scenarios of 
“critical” gamified systems. 
Novelty and Expected Impact 
The Design Futures journal has recently published a 
special issue on design fiction. CHI ’16 has dedicated an 
alt.chi session to design fiction. At NordiCHI ’16 is 
planned a track on “Future Scenarios”. Our workshop is 
timely and interesting for a large audience of HCI, 
game and gamification researchers and designers. Until 
now, no workshop has explored the long-term and 
systemic consequences of gamification through a 
critical lens. Our workshop aims to use design fictions 
to fill this gap helping designers envision the 
unexpected consequences of their designs. Through 
group activities we aim at gathering an interdisciplinary 
forum to create provocative concept designs that 
embody critical insights and deconstruct the current 
gamification assumptions. We expect to collect a 
“portfolio” of fictional prototypes that will be shared on 
the workshop website, making them accessible to a 
larger audience of researchers, to generate further 
discussions. We aim at involving not only those already 
interested in critical design approaches, but also 
mainstream HCI, game and gamification researchers in 
a critical reflection on their work. 
Pre-Workshop Plans 
The workshop website will go online before sending the 
CFP to all the major HCI, Games and Gamification 
mailing lists. We will accept submissions in two forms. 
First option is a standard position paper, where authors 
discuss one of the workshop topics, or describe how 
their area of expertise may be of interest for the 
workshop discussion. The second option is a 
contribution in the form of a “critical” design fiction, in 
 which authors may explore the future consequences of 
their work and of gamification design. Both the option 
should be 2-6 page long in the ACM Extended Abstract 
Format. Papers will be reviewed based on their 
relevance, quality and, mainly, potential to trigger 
insights for the design phase of the workshop.  
Workshop Structure 
The workshop will follow a one-day format. In the first 
part of the morning participants will have 3 minutes to 
present their work in a presentation madness session. 
This session will have the main function of generating 
insights for the following workshop phases. Then, 
participants will be divided in groups of 3-4 persons 
and each group will have to define collaboratively one 
“design challenge”. A design challenge is formulated as 
a sentence beginning with “How might we…” and is 
intended as a question addressed to turn a problem 
area into an opportunity for design. Then, participants 
will have to envision new directions for solutions to 
address the design challenges individuated. They will 
be asked to push forward their imagination and 
produce thought provoking and “critical” ideas that 
could make visible the underlining assumptions of the 
current gamification designs. Each participant, in each 
group, will have 5 minutes to sketch 5 design ideas 
related to the design challenge defined in their group. 
Then, everyone will have 3 minutes to present their 
ideas to the rest of the group, while the group will have 
2 minutes to constructively criticize the ideas 
presented. This format is aimed at quickly generating 
many solutions to a problem through sketching, 
exposition and critique. Then, the group will have 10 
minutes to select the most promising solution that 
addresses the design challenge. In the afternoon each 
group will have to produce a fictional prototype enacted 
in a future narrative scenario (50 years forward in the 
future) where the imagined technology could become 
completely effective and pervasive among individuals 
and society. These scenarios could also take the form 
of utopias and dystopias to open spaces for reflection 
about the desired or undesired consequences of design. 
This activity will be conducted through the outline of 
narratives (e.g. written stories, storyboards) in which 
the main character will show, from her point of view, 
how the use of the proposed solution could impact on 
her life and on the world she inhabit. The workshop will 
conclude with the presentation of the scenarios 
produced. 
Schedule 
09:15 - 09:30 Introduction  
09:30 - 10:30 Paper presentations  
10:30 - 11:00 Coffee Break 
11:00 - 12:30 Work group: design challenge definition 
and idea generation 
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch 
14:00 - 16:00 Work group: scenarios definition 
16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break 
16:30 - 17:30 Presentations and discussion 
17:30 - 17:45 Closing remarks 
Post-Workshop Plans 
After the end of the workshop we plan to: i) produce a 
report of the workshop to disseminate the insights 
emerged during the design phase; ii) include all the 
participants in a mailing list where they could discuss 
new ideas; iii) submit an article to ACM Interactions 
reporting the insights emerged during the workshop. 
 References 
1. Gabriel Barata, Sandra Gama, Manuel J. Fonseca, 
and Daniel Gonçalves. 2013. Improving student 
creativity with gamification and virtual worlds. In 
Proceedings of the First International Conference 
on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications 
(Gamification '13), 95-98. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583023 
2. Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, 
John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. 
Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of 
designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the 
Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 
'12), 288-297. 
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2317956.2318001 
3. Mark Blythe. 2014. Research through design 
fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts. In 
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human 
Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), 703-712. 
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2557098 
4. Joseph A. Cafazzo, Mark Casselman, Nathaniel 
Hamming, Debra K. Katzman, Mark R. Palmert. 
2012. Design of an Health app for the self-
management of adolescent type1 diabetes: a pilot 
study. J. Med. Internet Res., 14, 13. 
5. Laurentiu Catalin Stanculescu, Alessandro Bozzon, 
Robert-Jan Sips, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. 
Work and Play: An Experiment in Enterprise 
Gamification. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM 
Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative 
Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16), 346-358. 
DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820061 
6. Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and 
Lennart Nacke. 2011. From game design elements 
to gamefulness: defining "gamification". In 
Proceedings of the 15th International Academic 
MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media 
Environments (MindTrek '11), 9-15. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040 
7. Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, and Harri Sarsa. 
2014. Does Gamification Work? – A Literature 
Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In 
Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference 
on System Sciences (HICSS '14), 3025-3034. 
8. Derek Hales. Design Fictions an Introduction and 
Partial Taxonomy. Digital Creativity. Vol 24. Issue 
1. 2013. Special Issue: Design Fictions 30 Apr 2013 
9. Conor Linehan, Ben J. Kirman, Stuart Reeves, Mark 
A. Blythe, Joshua G. Tanenbaum, Audrey 
Desjardins, and Ron Wakkary. 2014. Alternate 
endings: using fiction to explore design futures. In 
CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in 
Computing Systems (CHI EA '14), 45-48. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2559206.2560472 
10. Lisa P. Nathan, Batya Friedman, Predrag Klasnja, 
Shaun K. Kane, and Jessica K. Miller. 2008. 
Envisioning systemic effects on persons and society 
throughout interactive system design. In 
Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on 
Designing interactive systems (DIS '08), 1-10. 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394446  
11. Amon Rapp. 2015. A Qualitative Investigation of 
Gamification: Motivational Factors in Online 
Gamified Services and Applications. International 
Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 
11(1), 67-82. Doi: 10.4018/ijthi.2015010105 
12. Amon Rapp. 2015. Designing interactive systems 
through a game lens: An ethnographic approach. 
Computers in human behavior, Doi: 
10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.048 
13. Jesse Schell. 2010. Visions of the Gamepocalypse. 
Presentation, Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, 
CA, July 27, 2010. 
14. Evan Selinger, Jathan Sadowski, Thomas P. 
Seager. Gamification and Morality. In The Gameful 
World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, 577–618. 
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 


 Fictional Game Elements 2016    Abstract Gamification has been widely accepted in the HCI community in the last few years. However, the current debate is focused on its short-term consequences, such as effectiveness and usefulness, while its side-effects, long-term criticalities and systemic impacts are rarely raised. This workshop explores the gamification design space from a critical perspective, by using design fictions to help researchers reflect on the long-term consequences of their designs. Author Keywords Gamification; Critical Design; Design Fiction.  ACM Classification Keywords H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous. Introduction In the last years, we seen the spread of different non-ludic applications and services leveraging game elements in their designs. Gamification is defined as the use of “game design elements in non-game contexts” [6], and has gained popularity as a design technique capable of increasing the user engagement, as well as pushing performances and modifying behavior (e.g. [1, 4, 5]). However, HCI community is discussing its current role gamification in design. Gamification does   Amon Rapp University of Torino Torino, Italy amon.rapp@gmail.com  Federica Cena University of Torino Torino, Italy cena@di.unito.it  Frank Hopfgartner University of Glasgow  Glasgow, United Kingdom frank.hopfgartner@glasgow.ac.uk Juho Hamari University of Tampere Tampere, Finland juho.hamari@uta.fi  Conor Linehan University College Cork Cork, Ireland conor.linehan@ucc.ie          have positive impacts in terms of effectiveness on certain target behaviors [7], but its ability of immersing the user in a pleasurable experience has been put into question [11], and it has been suggested to investigate new paths for designing for gamification [12].  It clearly appears that a discussion on the long-term and social impacts of gamification is in need, as it has the power to turn “normal” experiences in enjoyable ones, which could entail different and somehow unexpected side-effects or systemic consequences. Such consequences are rarely taken into account in the current gamification debate, which gives for granted a number of assumptions related to games, enjoyment, and behavior change, that actually should be discussed in deep. It is possible, in fact, that turning a serious experience in a “fun” one could not always represent the optimal choice for users, who could also be pushed to pursue goals that they did not freely choose, or to accept of being involved in dynamics of which they are not fully aware. Design fictions, then, seem a technique that can address the exploration of such implications of gamification design. Design fictions HCI research seems to assume that technology makes users’ lives “more enjoyable, easier, better informed, healthier and more sustainable” [9]. This premise leads researchers to focus on specific, short-term impacts of their prototypes. However, technology has consequences on both individuals and society, and long-term effects are often ambivalent, difficult to predict, and systemic [10]. Linehan et al. [9] stress that HCI researchers are not usually engaged in critical evaluations of the future consequences of their work. Although some exceptions exist [13, 14], this attitude is also present in the gamification rhetoric, where gamification techniques are discussed with reference to their effectiveness and usefulness, but rarely in terms of their capability of systematically impacting on people’s life and producing long-term side-effects. To explore these aspects, it is necessary to adopt a critical perspective on design, instead of reinforcing its embedded values [2].  Design fictions present “fantasy prototypes” in plausible near futures [3] and support the creation of a discursive space where technology assumptions may be put into questions, exploring different alternative futures [8]. In this volume we explore how design fictions can be used to make us reflect on the unexpected outcomes of gamification.  Jonah Warren in “The Behavior Pioneers Application: An Intentional Community Prototype” describes a fictional questionnaire that has to be completed by applicants to an intentional community devoted to gamifying all aspects of its members’ lives. Assia Alexandrova, Lucia Rapanotti, and Ivan Horrocks in “RE-PROVO: An Evaluation of Gamification in a Law Enforcement Organization” outline a prototype of an online discussion game designed to support the analysis and critique of functional requirements for legacy system replacement and promote creativity. While Bernd Hollerit, Kenji Tanaka, and Helmut Prendinger in  “Contribution of affordances to  gamification” propose theoretical reflections about the effects of affordances in gamification Gustavo Tondello and Lennart Nacke in “Gamification Research: a 50-years Retrospective from PBLs Towards Conscious Evolution” present a critical design fiction in which they describe how gamification research could evolve in the new years Lal Bozgeyikli, Andrew Raij, Srinivas Katkoori, and Redwan Alqasemi, instead, in “Effects of Environmental Clutter and Motion on User Performance in Virtual Reality Games” explore the effects of environmental clutter and motion on game design for virtual reality Alessia Calafiore and Amon Rapp in “Gamifying the city pervasive game elements in the urban environment References” envision how a pervasive gamified app may change the relationship between citizens and the urban environments in which they live. Finally, Seamus Forde in “Including Non-Users and Public Perception in Future Gamification Research” highlights the importance of considering the differences between users and non-users when designing for gamification. References 1. Gabriel Barata, Sandra Gama, Manuel J. Fonseca, and Daniel Gonçalves. 2013. Improving student creativity with gamification and virtual worlds. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (Gamification '13), 95-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2583008.2583023 2. Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '12), 288-297. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2317956.2318001 3. Mark Blythe. 2014. Research through design fiction: narrative in real and imaginary abstracts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14), 703-712. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2557098 4. Joseph A. Cafazzo, Mark Casselman, Nathaniel Hamming, Debra K. Katzman, Mark R. Palmert. 2012. Design of an Health app for the self-management of adolescent type1 diabetes: a pilot study. J. Med. Internet Res., 14, 13. 5. Laurentiu Catalin Stanculescu, Alessandro Bozzon, Robert-Jan Sips, and Geert-Jan Houben. 2016. Work and Play: An Experiment in Enterprise Gamification. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '16), 346-358. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2820061 6. Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart Nacke. 2011. From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification". 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Fictional Game Elements: Critical Perspectives on Gamification Design

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