Tesi Finale

Nowadays gamification is frequently employed in many different group activities to keep contribution high. Also in the software development context (e.g., in requirements engineering tasks) gamification is becoming a popular approach for team activities that are supported by software tools.

Despite some practical guidelines are available and several recent research studies investigate how to design gamified software applications, a clear method is still missing. Applying available gamification guidelines directly to a software is not enough to create engaging software and the result often depends on the context being gamified and the qualities of the users. For this reason, suitable methods should be used to ensure that the gamified software meet the expectations. Such methods should also guide requirements analysts in the exploration of a design space of alternatives.

The work here described focuses on requirements engineering methods, which rest on participatory approaches, and taking into account gamification-design practices, defines a method for eliciting and analysing user requirements in gamified tool-supported collaborative processes.

A set of general requirements for an effective method to support gamfication designers has been derived from the analysis of requirements engineering literature on gamification and the different lessons learned from the DMGame case, a gamified collaborative requirements prioritization tool. More hints on the problem have been collected through a first experiment with a group of students. Then, the analysis of existing methods demonstrated the opportunity to integrate the Agon framework and Design Thinking to define a concrete method, fitting those requirements.

The method, named DTA, has been tested in a new experiment focused on improving the current version of the DMGame. Finally, the resulting designed solutions have been evaluated through an additional study. The first evaluation indicates DTA as a promising method for supporting analysts in designing engaging software through gamification.