Speaker
Description
The rapid urbanization of cities brings struggling conditions for both people living in cities and the governments responsible for managing the complex issues of urban areas. Although the adoption of smart infrastructure in cities provides important opportunities for the management of particular systems, collaboration with citizens through these systems is not sufficiently supported. Citizens’ concerns and expectations regarding urban issues are not fully understood and their potential contribution is often neglected. Considering the effectiveness of digital participatory tools and environments, it is debatable to what extent the technologies offered contribute to people’s motivation to get involved. Since the technology alone cannot ensure participation in the designed interaction, it is assumed that people need to be self-motivated or externally incentivized to interact with such systems. This study aims to understand citizens’ perspectives on interactive participatory processes, and to evaluate the gamified qualities that either harm or empower the established interaction. Addressing these arguments, five case studies incorporating gamified mechanisms have been examined through their motivational affordances in fostering public engagement. The selection of these case studies has been made according to the forms of the game concepts adopted by the projects. As a full-fledged serious game, “B3-Design your marketplace” (Poplin, 2012) -which is also a web-based collaborative design platform, was chosen; an interactive public engagement project “SMSlingshot” (Fischer et al., 2013) was included due to its playful qualities; an urban mobility application “Viaggia Rovereto” (Kazhamiakin et al., 2015) and two different mobile participation applications “Täsä” (Thiel, Ertio and Baldauf, 2017) and “Game.UP” (Muehlhaus et al., 2022) were added as gamified alternatives. The studies were evaluated based on the intrinsic and extrinsic motivational determinants defined by Nicholson (2015) within the framework of meaningful gamification. Through the case studies, it has been observed that reward-based extrinsic motivational elements compared with intrinsic motivational elements like fun are less effective than expected, especially in the long term. Major conclusions of this research focus on the analysis of the motivational determinants of gamified participation and the experiential qualities of designed interactive processes. By understanding what motivates people to participate, this study can make a significant contribution to promoting collaborative efforts necessary for addressing the complex and multi-layered challenges faced by cities.
References
Fischer, P.T. et al. (2013) ‘Beyond information and utility: Transforming public spaces with media facades’, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 33(2), pp. 38–46. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2012.126.
Kazhamiakin, R. et al. (2015) ‘Using gamification to incentivize sustainable urban mobility’, in 2015 IEEE First International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2). 2015 IEEE First International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), pp. 1–6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISC2.2015.7366196.
Muehlhaus, S.L. et al. (2022) ‘Game.UP: Gamified Urban Planning Participation Enhancing Exploration, Motivation, and Interactions’, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, Vol.39(No.2), pp. 331–347. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2021.2012379.
Nicholson, S. (2015) ‘A RECIPE for Meaningful Gamification’, in T. Reiners and L.C. Wood (eds) Gamification in Education and Business. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 1–20. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10208-5_1.
Poplin, A. (2012) ‘Playful public participation in urban planning: A case study for online serious games’, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 36(3), pp. 195–206. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2011.10.003.
Thiel, S.-K., Ertio, T.P. and Baldauf, M. (2017) ‘Why so serious? The Role of Gamification on Motivation and Engagement in e-Participation’, Interaction Design and Architecture(s), (35), pp. 158–181. Available at: https://doi.org/10.55612/s-5002-035-008.
| Keywords | urban planning, gamified participation, motivational affordances |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
