Tired of Reminding Your Coworkers? : An Experimental Study on the Effects of Gamification on Task Performance

Abstract

Gamification is a rising trend in academia and an exciting concept for practitioners across different industries. There are many promising effects related to gamification, but all are related to increased engagement. One specific domain that is intriguing is in project management, as there are many routines and processes related to projects that might be considered tedious. Regardless, task performance has to be high in order to reach goals on time. This thesis has examined if gamification could boost engagement and subsequently task performance. With the help from a case company in the construction industry, gamification behaviours were explored through a between-group experiment in a natural setting. Intentional data was gathered and analyzed as well, in order to test both the actual and perceived effects of gamification. In parallel, an experiment in a more controlled setting was also conducted in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, where a group of participants were recruited to do tasks related to official guidelines and advice on hygienic and personal well-being in state of emergency.

This study aims to examine the grand promise of gamification; increased engagement. Being able to examine from two vastly different settings gave unique insight of what engagement can be inflicted by gamification, and how to design good gamified systems. A technical checklist process application was developed with the ability to switch on and off gamification elements to collect data. Despite a small dataset, the findings showed a tendency that there are indeed more engaged users in gamification in contrast to users not not being exposed to gamification. Therefore, applying gamification to combat tedious aspects of work life is proven to be a promising future avenue.