Tailoring Gamification to Requirements Elicitation: A Stakeholder-Centric Motivation Concept

Abstract

Involving stakeholders in requirements elicitation is a cornerstone of successful requirements engineering (RE). With the recent technological advances, the number of stakeholders of a system has significantly increased. Major stakeholders, end-users in particular, are increasingly difficult to reach, because they may be globally distributed and outside organizational reach, i.e., they are no members of the organizations that are involved in the development of a system. Online elicitation platforms allow to elicit requirements collaboratively from a large number of distributed stakeholders. However, such platforms are not sufficient for motivating stakeholders outside organizational reach to contribute voluntarily. Gamification is a potential means for creating and sustaining such motivation. However, there is little research on stakeholder engagement with gamification so far. Current approaches particularly do not consider that stakeholders learn during elicitation and that their motivational factors also change. In this paper, we address this gap with a motivation concept that is inspired by the theories of experiential learning and need satisfaction. Our contribution is threefold. First, we suggest how to characterize these stakeholders despite not knowing who they are. Second, we show the role of experiential learning and need satisfaction with respect to gamification in the context of requirements elicitation. Third, we present a three-dimensional concept of how to motivate these stakeholders towards requirements elicitation over the whole period of requirements elicitation.

Behind Points and Levels — The Influence of Gamification Algorithms on Requirements Prioritization

“…Garuso (Game-based Requirements Elicitation) is a research project that investigates stakeholder engagement with respect to the collaborative elicitation and prioritization of requirements. The conceptual basis of Garuso is a threedimensional motivation concept [27] that we created based on theories of experiential learning and motivational psychology.…”

GARUSO: a gamification approach for involving stakeholders outside organizational reach in requirements engineering

“…In this article, we present the GARUSO approach, expanding our previous research on stakeholders outside organizational reach regarding the design of an effecive motivation concept [26] and corresponding gamification algorithms [25]. Our evaluation shows that the GARUSO approach actually works.…”

“…In our previous research, we have contributed a stakeholder motivation concept with focus on stakeholders outside organizational reach [26] and investigated the influence of gamification algorithms on the collaborative prioritization of requirements [25].…”

“…It uses gamification to motivate the stakeholders to participate voluntarily in these activities. As stakeholder outside organizational reach form a heterogeneous crowd, the GARUSO platform uses a diversified motivation concept which considers different personality aspects and their change over time [26]. In this section, we describe the architecture and the user interface of the GARUSO platform.…”

“…Reward system and motivation concept: The reward system is based on the motivation concept which considers the high heterogeneity of stakeholders outside organizational reach and the change of motivational factors over time. It is built upon the stakeholder-centric motivation concept that we created in our previous research [26]. Its design is mainly inspired by the experiential learning theory of Kolb [32], a holistic learning theory that reflects the relationship between a person and the environment with the dual meaning of experience (p. 35): ( 1) environmental ("20 years of experience in the job"), and (2) personal ("experiencing joy and happiness").…”