Exploring Gamification In The Public Sector Through The Octalysis Conceptual Model V. Yfantis1, D. Tseles2 1
Dpt. of Computing, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden Tel: + 46 920491169, Fax: + 46 920491399, E-mail:
[email protected] 2
Dpt. of Automation Engineering, Piraeus University of Applied Sciences, Aigaleo, Greece Tel: +30 2105381200, Fax: +30 2105451123, E-mail:
[email protected]
The current study explores the use of the gamification in the public sector. The Octalysis framework is used as a tool to detect the game elements in the public platform and evaluates their performance in terms of implementation. 1. Introduction to Gamification Gamification is a term which refers to the inclusion of game elements in non gaming framework (Huotari & Hamari, 2012).The application of gamification includes the adoption of gaming elements such as achievement symbols, status points, levels, progress bars and other elements. The outcome of the gamification’s implementation depends on the context of its use. Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa published a paper where they review the empirical studies of gamification in several contexts (Hamari, Koivisto, & Sarsa, 2014). According to their research, gamification is applied in 9 different contexts: Commerce (Hamari J. , Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens: A Field Experiment on Gamification in a Utilitarian Peer-To-Peer trading service, 2013), Education (Cheong, Cheong, & Filippou, 2013), Health (Hamari & Koivisto, 2013), Intra-organizational systems (Farzan & Brusilovsky, 2011), Sharing (Montola, Nummenmaa, Lucero, Boberg, & Korhonen, 2009), Sustainable consumption (Gustafsson & Bång, 2008), Work (Flatla, Gutwin, Nacke, Bateman, & Mandryk, 2011), Innovation (Jung, Schneider, & Valacich, 2010), Data gathering (Downes-Le Guin, Baker, Mechling, & Ruylea, 2012). The scholars mention that in general, gamification has successfully affected the 9 sectors, except education where the adoption of gamification causes issues such as increased competition and task evaluation. According to Yongwen Xu, gamification consists of four components (Yongwen, 2011): 1. Game 2. Element 3. Non Game context 4. Design. These four components were explored further by other scholars who tried to define them (Sailer, Hense, Mandl, & Klevers, 2013) (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011):
Game: Refers to the act of playing towards achieving goals and limited by rules. Element: The component of games that could be used in gamification. Non Game context: The area of application of gamification. Design: The structure of the gamification
Gamification is a concept that mainly aims at fostering motivation (McGonigal, 2011) (Kapp, 2012) which is categorized into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Intrinsic motivation is a concept that refers to the intention of implementation of an action because the person feels that it is enjoyable. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is a pursuit of an action due to an external factor such as money or deadlines (Mekler, 2015). Gamification embeds these two types of motivation (Richter, Raban, & Rafaeli, 2015) with elements such as badges, points and the feeling of achievement, sense of belonging (Muntean, 2011). Although gamification is widely used, there are sectors where gamification is not mainly used, such the area of the public sector. 2. Gamification in the government It is common truth that the public sector is slow in adopting the methods/concepts of the private sector due to the bureaucracy and the political cost which characterizes each public decision. Consequently, gamification as a concept has not fully applied in the public sector (Tolmie, Chamberlain, & Benford, 2014). There are several case studies from countries that have applied gamification in the public sector; however the numbers are still small. In Sweden, the government voted a law and placed cameras that recorded the speed limit at the roads. These cameras recorded the persons who violated the speed limit and made them pay a fine which afterwards was distributed at the persons that obeyed the speed limit (Wood, 2013). In UK, the Work and Pensions Department government initialized a project which was called Idea Street. This was a type of marketplace where the employees were suggesting measures in the work and others could trade stock of the ideas that they liked (Wood, 2013) (Dargan & Evequoz, 2015). The Pierce County Public Library in the United States, created the game for adults which was called Scout (Kim, 2015). The library invited the members to visit the institution and share their experiences, Scout awarded them with badges and other prizes. An example of a Scout badge after reading books for 10 hours is shown in Fig. 1.
Figure 1: This is a 10 hours reading badge.
The Purdue University in the United States formed a digital budget program which was called Passport (Kim, 2015). Passport is a platform that encourages / helps the teaching staff to design digital badges and offer them to the students. Each student that passed an online course of nanotechnology, was given a badge instead of a grade. Afterwards, the students were encouraged to share the badges on the social media. The web interface of the Passport platform is shown in Fig. 2.
Figure 2: This is the Passport platform.
Although, several governments are trying to engage the citizens in the public platforms, these platforms cannot survive without the contribution of the citizens (Escobar & Urriago, 2014). The problem from the platform’s side is that its tools for the citizens are impersonal and minimize the human interaction (Lobna, 2017). Moreover, citizens that participate once in the public web platforms, usually do not visit the platform again to interact with it (Jin, Zhou, Lee, & Cheung, 2013). Several scholars have explored the subject and found that engagement games generate trust in the government (Lobna, 2017) and engagement in political processes (Lobna, 2017) (Kahne, Middaugh, & Evans, 2009). By taking into account these scholars, I conclude that a gamification framework is required to attract citizens to engage with the public platforms. Since gamification is a broad term which could be examined from each perspective of the four components (Yongwen, 2011), this study will focus on the element side of the gamification. 3. Using the Octalysis gamification framework The need of detecting a gamification framework for transforming the public platforms into platforms with game elements led me to the conceptual model of Octalysis (Chou, 2017). Octalysis is a gamification model that has been used by Chou to test the gamification elements of several important social networks and games. However, several scholars decided to use this model for their scientific research on platform evaluation (Economou, Doumanis, Pedersen, Kathrani, Mentzelopoulos, & Bouki, 2015), health apps classification (Ewais & Alluhaidan, 2015), quality management systems (Gordon, Palacios, & Herranz, 2016) and other researches. According to Chou, Octalysis is a gamification framework designed as an octagon with 8 core drives on each side. Each core drive represents a gamification element that it is being interpreted by Chou. The 8 cores drives are: 1. Epic Meaning & Calling: The user believes that he was “chosen” to do something 2. Development & Accomplishment: The drive of making progress and developing skills. 3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: The drive where users are doing something creative and they have to combine different skills. 4. Ownership & Possession: The drive where the users feel that they own something. 5. Social Influence & Relatedness: The social elements that drive people such as acceptance and companionship.
6. Scarcity & Impatience: The drive of wanting something because you don’t have it. 7. Unpredictability & Curiosity: The drive of wanting to find out what will happen next. 8. Loss & Avoidance: The drive of avoiding any negative happening.
Figure 3: This is the Octalysis gamification framework.
As we look at the octagon, the core drives on the right side are baptized Right Brain drives by the researcher and the left side drives, Left Brain drives. There is no scientific argument behind these terms, however it is a way to categorize the cores drives. The Left Brain drives are more relevant to the extrinsic motivation because these are external factors (awards, goals), etc.) that affect the intention to do something. The Right Brain drives are mainly intrinsic orientated motivations because creativity and social elements are internal human factors that are not triggered from external sources. Another categorization, which the author uses, is the White Hat and the Black Hat core drives. The top drives of the octagon are considered White Hats because they are based on creativity and the bottom drives, Black Hats, since they are based on avoidance and uncertainty. Fig 4 shows the complete Octalysis framework, including Right/Left Brain drives and Black/White drives.
Figure 4: This is the complete Octalysis gamification framework
Chou supports the argument that in order to apply this framework to an actual system, you have to evaluate the system how good is in each drive and assign a number between 0 and 10. There is an easy online tool for this process at the address: http://www.yukaichou.com/octalysis-tool/. Of course, a system does not have to include high scores in all the core drives, but only in those that its stakeholders want to focus on. In order to apply the Octalysis to an actual civic participation platform, I chose a website that belongs to the public administration of the United States. The reasoning behind my decision is the familiarity of the US population with the games according to the statistics of the Entertainment Software Association in 2017 (Association, 2017). The report mentions that “65% of American households are home to someone who plays video games regularly” and the 67% of the households own a device which is used to play video games. I chose the civic platform of Challenge.gov where the citizens participate in crowdsourcing projects of the US public administration. According to my experience as a user of this site since March 2017, I created the following Octalysis diagram in Fig 5.
Figure 5: This is the Octalysis gamification framework applied on Challenge.gov
Based on my objective scoring, the Octalysis score of Challenge.gov is 215. My scoring is heavily focused on White Hat Core Drives, which means that users of this platform feel empowered. The drawback is that users of the platform do not have a sense of obligation to use the platform’s facilities. Maybe it would be wise to include several Black Hat elements to make the users visit the site more often. Moreover, Left Brain and Right Brain drives have a balance which means that the platform includes both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. 4. Conclusion The current study explores the use of gamifification in the public sector and specifically the adoption of the game elements for further use in existing public
platforms. Octalysis is a conceptual tool that was used for the evaluation of the game elements by detecting each element’s performance in the existing form of the governmental website. The value of this study lies in the fact that public sector is an underrated research area for the implementation of gamification, so hopefully this work will trigger the research interest in the communities of public policy makers and information technology scientists. A suggestion for further research in this area would be the improvement of the Octalysis framework so as to meet the needs of the different contexts of use. For instance, a public platform that its function is mainly based on intrinsic motivation mechanisms, requires a version of the Octalysis framework with a broader quantity of Right Brain core drives. Therefore, it would be interesting to create a gamification technology acceptance model where the users detect their intention to use specific gaming technologies such as augmented reality, internet of things, etc. As long as the gamification concept remains a successful one, the public sector should revise its bureaucracy processes and adopt this useful tool to foster the civic engagement and online participation.
References Cheong, C., Cheong, F., & Filippou, J. (2013). Quick Quiz: A Gamified Approach for Enhancing Learning. Proceedings of Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (p. 206). Jeju Island: Aisel. Chou, Y. (2017, October 17). Octalysis – complete Gamification framework. Retrieved October 17, 2017, from Gamification & Behavioral Design: http://yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/octalysiscomplete-gamification-framework/#more-2275 Dargan, T., & Evequoz, F. (2015). Designing Engaging e-Government Services by Combining UserCentered Design and Gamification: A Use-Case. Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on eGovernment 2015: ECEG 2015 (pp. 70-78). Portsmouth: Academic Conferences Limited. Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification". MindTrek '11 Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (pp. 9-15). Tampere: ACM. Downes-Le Guin, T., Baker, R., Mechling, J., & Ruylea, E. (2012). Myths and realities of respondent engagement in online surveys. International Journal of Market Research , 1-21. Economou, D., Doumanis, I., Pedersen, F., Kathrani, P., Mentzelopoulos, M., & Bouki, V. (2015). Evaluation of a dynamic role-playing platform for simulations based on Octalysis gamification framework. 1st Immersive Learning Research Network Conference (pp. 388-395). Prague: IOS Press. Escobar, J., & Urriago, A. (2014). Gamification: an effective mechanism to promote civic engagement and generate trust? ICEGOV '14 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (pp. 514-515). Guimaraes: acm. Ewais, S., & Alluhaidan, A. (2015). Classification of Stress Management Apps using Octalysis Framework. Twenty-first Americas Conference on Information Systems (pp. 1-8). Puerto Rico: AIS. Farzan, R., & Brusilovsky, P. (2011). Encouraging user participation in a course recommender system: An impact on user behavior. Computers in Human Behavior , 276-284. Flatla, D. R., Gutwin, C., Nacke, L. E., Bateman, S., & Mandryk, R. L. (2011). Calibration games: making calibration tasks enjoyable by adding motivating game elements. Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on Use rinterface software and technology (pp. 403-412). Santa Barbara: ACM. Gordon, M., Palacios, R., & Herranz, E. (2016). Gamification and Human Factors in Quality Management Systems: Mapping from Octalysis Framework to ISO 10018. European Conference on Software Process Improvement (pp. 234-241). Graz: Springer. Gustafsson, A., & Bång, M. (2008). Evaluation of a pervasive game for domestic energy engagement among teenagers. Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (pp. 232-239). Yokohama: ACM.
Hamari, J. (2013). Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens: A Field Experiment on Gamification in a Utilitarian Peer-To-. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications , 236-245. Hamari, J., & Koivisto, J. (2013). Social motivations to use gamification: an empirical study of gamifying exercise. Proceedings of the European Conference on Information (p. 105). Utrecht: Aisel. Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? - A Literature Review Of Empirical Studies on Gamification. 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Science (pp. 30253034). Hawaii: IEEE. Huotari, K., & Hamari, J. (2012). Defining Gamification – A Service Marketing Perspective. Proceedings of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference (pp. 17-22). Tampere: ACM. Jin, L., Zhou, Z., Lee, M., & Cheung, C. (2013). Why users keep answering questions in online question answering communities: A theoretical and empirical investigation. . International Journal of Information Management , 93-104. Jung, J. H., Schneider, C., & Valacich, J. (2010). Enhancing the motivational affordance of information systems: The effects of real-time performance feedback and goal setting in group collaboration environment. Management Science , 724-742. Kahne, J., Middaugh, E., & Evans, C. (2009). The civic potential of video games. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kapp, K. M. (2012). The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. Kim, B. (2015). Gamification in Education and Libraries. Library Technology Reports , 20-28. Lobna, H. (2017). Governments Should Play Games: Towards a Framework for the Gamification of Civic Engagement Platforms. Simulation and Gaming , 249-267. McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World. New York: Penguin Books. Mekler, E. (2015). The Motivational Potential of Digital Games and Gamification - the Relation Between Game Elements, Experience and Behavior Change. Basel: University of Basel. Montola, M., Nummenmaa, T., Lucero, A., Boberg, M., & Korhonen, H. (2009). Applying game achievement to enhance user experience in a photo sharing service. Proceedings of the 13th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era (pp. 94-97). Tampere: ACM. Muntean, C. (2011). Raising engagement in e-learning through gamification. Proceeding 6th nternational Conference on Virtual Learning ICVL (pp. 323-329). Cluj-Napoca: University of Cluj-Napoca. Richter, G., Raban, D., & Rafaeli, S. (2015). Studying Gamification: The Effect of Rewards and Incentives on Motivation. In T. Reiners, & L. Wood, Gamification in Education and Business (pp. 21-46). New York: Springer. Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology , 54–67. Sailer, M., Hense, J., Mandl, H., & Klevers, M. (2013). Psychological Perspectives on Motivation through Gamification. Interaction Design and Architecture(s) , 28-37. Tolmie, P., Chamberlain, A., & Benford, S. (2014). Designing for reportability: Sustainable gamification, public engagement, and promoting environmental debate. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing , 1763-1774. Wood, C. (2013, August 28). Gamification: Governments Use Gaming Principles to Get Citizens Involved. Retrieved October 17, 2017, from Government Technology: http://www.govtech.com/local/Gamification-Governments-Use-Gaming-Principles-to-Get-CitizensInvolved.html Yongwen, X. (2011). Collaborative Software Development Lab. Honolulu: University of Hawaii.
