A poster describing my PhD research to date, presented at the Doctoral Consortium at CHI Play 2018 in Melbourne, Australia.

1. The design of meaningful workplace
environments through gamification
Phase 1
•Test reliability and repeatability of methods
•Evaluate effectiveness of gamification in different
settings
•Develop framework
Org 1
Org 2
Org 3
CHAT-basedGamificationFramework
Expert Interviews
Design Workshop
Framework2.0
Phase 2
•Stress test and validate
framework
•Reduce bias
•Validate and iterate
method, measures and
framework
You are here
Employee engagement is the principal asset and
ultimate competitive advantage in today’s fast-
paced, knowledge-based global economy
Kerstin Oberprieler | PhD candidate University of Canberra
Can gamification provide
meaningful engagement
in the workplace when it
is tailored to the
organisation context?
How can CHAT be used to
identify and map the effects
of gamification on the
activity system?
How can CHAT provide a
basis for data collection and
analysis that can inform
meaningful workplace
gamification design?
1 2 3
Today’s workplaces are experiencing a critical gap in employee
engagement and given the importance of engagement for employee
satisfaction and organisational performance for competitive advantage,
a different approach to addressing engagement in workplaces is
required. The approach of ‘gamification’ - the use of game mechanics in
non-game contexts – is a an increasingly popular approach to increase
engagement and holds promise to address current engagement gaps in
the workplaces. Applying gamification to the complexities and
idiosyncrasies of the workplace presents challenges for researchers and
designers, particularly in understanding and dealing with the complex,
social and changing nature of workplaces.
Gamification in the workplace has the potential to close
the engagement gap, but it requires better models to
deal with complex contexts.
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is a commonly used theory and
research methodology in educational settings, and this dissertation seeks
to apply CHAT to the gamification of workplace activity. Coupled with a
design-based research approach to data collection and analysis, this study
investigates the implementation and effectiveness of gamification in three
organisations.
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Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Design-Based Research
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) provides a theoretical
framework and practical methodology with which to understand and
visualize such an ecosystem. While chiefly being applied to educational
contexts, CHAT is beginning to be applied to workplace contexts as well,
because it provides a holistic theoretical lens with which to understand
the complexity of workplace environments. Using the CHAT model
throughout the gamification design process allows designers to map the
workplace experience and interactions; initially to understand the
uniqueness of the context, then to design the gamified system to target
the interactions, and finally, to measure the changes in workplace
behaviours and outcomes through changes in the interactions.
Design-based research allows researchers to cope with the qualitative
and complex nature of contextual data and provide the researchers with
a theoretical basis with which to do so. In addition, given the immersive
approach of gamification design, the methodology also provides the
ability to generate practical and actionable research insights.
researchquestions
Want to know more? Want to be part of Phase 2? Get in touch! Kerstin@pentaquest.io
Figure 1: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory model,
showing the various components and interactions of
the ecosystem
Figure 2: Systemic gamification as understood
through Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, with the
orange lines showing the overlay of the gamification
experience over the real-world interactions
Research overview
The study is conducted in two phases, with Phase being completed
currently. The first phase of this study was conducted in three workplace
contexts to reduce bias and allow comparison across different activity
systems. The organisations being studied deliberately diverse in order to
test CHAT’s capability to map the ecosystem and provide actionable
insights for use in gamification design. The gamification design was
implemented for 3 months in each context and included a physical or
digital platform that tracked individual and team progress towards
workplace goals. The changes in employee engagement, experiences
and behaviour are being analysed currently.
The second phase will be to develop a gamification framework and
validate it with experts and practitioners through one-on-one interviews.
This allows for the validation and refinement of the framework, as well
as the reduction of bias. The participants of Phase 2 will provide their
perspectives and expertise from a range of fields to ensure the
framework is useful and repeatable for others seeking to use it to
enhance workplaces through gamification.
References can be
found by scanning
QR code