Insights into presented research

During recent years, information systems have been increasingly enriched with design features originating in the field of computer games. This rising phenomenon is typically called gamification and has raised significant interest in industry academia. For instance, business analysts have estimated that over 50% of organizations managing innovation processes will gamify their business by 2015 (Gartner 2011). Reviews of scientific gamification studies have shown that gamification is applied in various contexts, specifically including computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) systems, such as crowdsourcing approaches, online communities and intranets. Typically, gamification is used with the intention to positively influence human motivation and behavior. Numerous empirical studies provide indicators for the effectiveness of different gamification implementations, however the understanding of the phenomenon is still in its infancy. Most of the research that has been conducted on gamification has focused on studying approaches that motivate users by social comparison and competition or by setting personal goals. Gamification approaches that engage individuals to cooperate and, therefore, to strive toward a shared goal or purpose have been of minor focus in gamification and game-design research thus far.

In the presented paper, we draw on the social interdependence theory and propose a novel classification approach for gamification features. We define cooperative gamification features and provide insights about the design of cooperative gamification. Further, we present a prototype of a cooperative gamification approach, which has been developed as plugin for an innovation community of a large German engineering company and results from a first experimental evaluation. The findings indicate that the developed gamification approach has positive effects on perceived enjoyment and the intention towards knowledge sharing in the considered innovation community. Besides our conceptual contribution, our findings suggest that cooperative gamification may be beneficial for cooperative working environments and represents a promising field for future research.

Please see the paper for full details.