A process for designing algorithm-based personalized gamification

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications Vol. 78; no. 10; pp. 13593 - 13612
• Main Authors: Knutas, Antti, van Roy, Rob, Hynninen, Timo, Granato, Marco, Kasurinen, Jussi, Ikonen, Jouni
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.05.2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Ambient intelligence; CAI; Collaboration; Computer assisted instruction; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Customization; Data Structures and Information Theory; Design; Gamification; Machine learning; Multimedia Information Systems; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Design process; Adaptive systems; Personalization; Gamification; Machine learning
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-018-6913-5

Personalization is an upcoming trend in gamification research, with several researchers proposing that gamified systems should take personal characteristics into account. However, creating good gamified designs is effort intensive as it is and tailoring system interactions to each user will only add to this workload. We propose machine learning algorithm -based personalized content selection to address a part of this problem and present a process for creating personalized designs that allows automating a part of the implementation. The process is based on Deterding’s 2015 framework for gameful design, the lens of intrinsic skill atoms, with additional steps for selecting a personalization strategy and algorithm creation. We then demonstrate the process by implementing personalized gamification for a computer-supported collaborative learning environment. For this demonstration, we use the gamification user type hexad for personalization and the heuristics for effective design of gamification for overall design. The result of the applied design process is a context-aware, personalized gamification ruleset for collaborative environments. Lastly, we present a method for translating gamification rulesets to machine-readable classifier algorithm using the CN2 rule inducer.