A Matrix for Gamifying Development Workshops

Abstract

The interest in potentials of gamification for innovating businesses through collaboration and innovative development in businesses has been an ongoing topic in gamification research for the last decade. This based on the theoretical notion of gamification's potential to facilitate "third space communication" and games capability to improve user engagement in non-game settings by transforming this space into a "magic circle" of gameplay for innovative thinking. In this paper an initial matrix is presented for discussing the parameters of gamifying development sessions or workshops conducted throughout innovation and development processes. The purpose of the matrix is to visualize the parameters involved in deciding the level of gamification for a workshop setting. Thus, a tool for identifying a balance in implementing game mechanics, one that can serve to support and facilitate innovative processes rather than purely creating and playing a game for its own sake. Therefore, through this paper the parameters of the matrix and gamifying facilitation of innovative development processes through gameplay, is discussed and presented. This is followed by the exemplification of use and application of the gamification matrix through four gamified workshops.

Resilient Business Design: Training a reflective business design mindset through design games

“…The purpose of presenting the concept of the magic circle is to start exploring the potentials of games and gamification as the facilitator of training a designerly mindset from the experiential learning perspective. This is based on the argument that a setting including gamification of tools, methods, and techniques can support stakeholders in developing a common interdisciplinary language (Gudiksen & Inlove, 2018;Madsen & Rasmussen, 2021) and heighten the innovation potential. Thus, the magic circle of games creates the training ground for experiential learning through generating experience with design methods by the experiences and reflection facilitated in a business design-orientated design game, that leads the way to abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation in practice, which is visualised in figure 1 with the green and yellow dotted line.…”

“…Cards for IoT (Madsen & Rasmussen, 2021) is a game designed for exploring and ideating innovative ways to combine business model (BM) configurations with IoT (internet of things) technologies. The game is intended as an ideation game introducing players to IoT and BM terminology and possibilities through the gameplay, which requires players to combine different BM configurations (Taran et al, 2016) with IoT technology.…”