Engineering Software-based Motivation: a Persona-based Approach Alimohammad Shahri1, Mahmood Hosseini1, Malik Almaliki2,

Keith Phalp1, Jacqui Taylor1, Raian Ali1

1. Bournemouth University

2. Taibah University

What is Motivation?

• Motivation is the “psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of behaviour”

• People need motives to have motivation

• A motive is the substance that can increase the will of a person to perform a particular behaviour

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What is Software-based Motivation

• The use of software in order to increase motivation and engagement in the users by mainly giving virtual goods

• Examples are: • Persuasive Technology

• Serious Games

• Gamification

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Software-based Motivation in Action

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• ILO report “We found out that 47.7 per cent of Filipino BPO workers surveyed are suffering from insomnia while 54 per cent are suffering from fatigue”

• Carlos Dominguez, senior vice president at Cisco Systems:

• Call centres are very stressing... Angry and demanding customers

• We reward by measuring the anger at the beginning and the end

• The bigger the delta, the more points the agents gets

• Agents will be wishing for angry customers

• We can also reward them it by letting the agents know how they are doing against their peers

A call centre personnel presses her hand to her forehead at an online brokerage company in Tokyo October 23, 2008. CREDIT: REUTERS/YURIKO NAKAO HTTP://WWW.REUTERS.COM/ARTICLE/2009/04/27/US-STRESS-DEPRESSION-IDUSTRE53Q5IA20090427 HTTP://WWW.INTERAKSYON.COM/INFOTECH/IN-STRESS-FILLED-BPO-WORLD-GAMIFICATION-COULD-OFFER-RELIEF

Software-based Motivation VS. Classical Motivation Methods

• SbM uses mostly the same elements as classical motivational methods

• But, the use of software can: • Increase the accuracy and granularity of the

captured data

• Increase the frequency of capturing data higher

• Increate the the frequency of using captured data

• Etc…

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Problems of Software-based Motivation • There are several successful instances of SbM in

the literature • It can help businesses to increase engagement

and productivity • It can make employees crave for more tasks to

earn more points • However,

• An ad-hoc design of SbM may fail to achieve these • It can also have adverse side effects • It can create tension amongst employees • It can put social pressure on employees • Employees may feel that they are being watched all

the time • It may force people to compete with each other • It can create clusters of people

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Users and Software-based Motivation

• Motivation and in particular, SbM rely on the perception of the users

• If it is aligned with what they like, it can be successful

• If it is against what users prefer, it may fail to achieve business goals

• Or put their social and mental wellbeing in danger

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Solution?

• We propose the use of personas in order to align the design of SbM to its users

• Personas are fictional characters that can describe different types of users and their requirements

• Personas shift the focus of design towards the end-users of the software system and their requirements

• Personas model users of the system and point out their important characteristics, goals, and requirements

• Personas are normally assigned names, age, gender, photos, and jobs to give them life.

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http://www.mathiaskaestel.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Opalwave_personas.jpg

A sample persona of a commuter in Sydney

Study Design

• We have used empirical studies

• Expert study • Interviews with 6 experts

• Questionnaire with 40 experts

• User study • Interviews with 12 managers and employees

• Interviews with 10 employees

• Survey involving 10 psychologists

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Study Design

Exploration in the field

• 6 interviews with experts in the field

• Almost 4 hours of semi-structured interviews

• Content analysis

Confirmation and

Enhancement

• 40 experts in the field participated in an open ended survey with 77 questions

• Content analysis on the comments provided by the experts

• Descriptive statistics

Clarification

• 12 semi-structured interviews with 7 employees and 5 managers from various disciplines

• Almost 5 hours of interviews

• Content analysis

Elicitation of users

preferences

• 10 semi-structured interviews with employees from various disciplines

• More than 6 hours of interviews

• Segmentation and creating personas

Confirmation

• Survey with 10 psychologists asking about their opinion on the created personas

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Characteristics of the Participants in Survey

Years of Experience Level of Practical Experience

Min 1 Expert 7 18%

Max 10 High 18 45%

Mean 3.12 Medium 14 35%

Median 3 Low 1 3%

Mode 3 None 0 0%

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Country and Field of Study for the Participants in Survey

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Participants per Country Participants per Area of Expertise UK 11 Switzerland 2 Education 11 Exertion Interfaces 1

USA 6 China 1 Psychology 7 General 1

Netherlands 6 Italy 1 Enterprise 4 HCI 1

France 3 Japan 1 Tourism 4 Marketing 1

Germany 3 Taiwan 1 Linguistics 3 Modelling and Theory 1

Portugal 2 Norway 1 Game Design 2 Sociology 1

Spain 2 Software

Ergonomics

2 Software Engineering 1

Result

• The result of our study shows that five aspects of software-based motivation can influence how users perceive it • Collaboration Nature of the Users

• Incentives

• Privacy

• Performance and Feedback

• Goal Setting

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Result-Persona Constituents

Persona Constituents

Collaboration Nature of Users

Collaborative

Competitive

Goal Setting

Control Over Settings

Opt-out Possibility

Privacy

Self Only

Same Department

Managers

Everyone

Performance and Feedback

Frequency

Generation Type

Incentives

Quality Based

Availability

Value

Chance of Winning

Conditioning

Tailoring and Suggestion

Surveillance and Monitoring

Tunnelling and Reduction

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Result - Collaboration Nature of the Users • Each individual can have a different preference

• Users can be: • Competition seekers

• Collaboration seekers

• Inner-group competition seekers

• …

• If a strategy against ones preferences is forced upon them, the use of software-based motivation: • May not be effective

• May demotivate

• May Put pressure and create tension 15

Result-Incentives

• Incentives can be tangible (more holiday) and intangible (Virtual Badges)

• There are several aspects that concern users: • Relativity of the value of the incentive with the effort

needed

• The possibility of winning

• Relativity of the reward with the quality of their work

• Availability of the reward – some preferred to have the element of surprise while some others wanted to know exactly what the rewards are and how they can be achieved

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Result-Privacy

• One main concern of the users is about their privacy at work

• Software-based motivation can act as a very detailed monitoring mechanism

• Users showed concerns regarding who can access their information depending on the context: • Self-only • Managers • Peers in the same department • Everyone

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Result-Performance and Feedback

• Software-based motivation is based on the data it collects and the report it provides

• Regarding the performance and feedback provided by the use of software-based motivation, users had two concerns: • Frequency of update

• For the performance

• And the report

• Generation type of • Data

• And the report

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Result-Goal Setting • One main use of software-based

motivation is goal setting

• It is the breaking down of bigger tasks

• Smaller tasks can benefit in two ways: • Provide path for completion of big tasks

• Provide tracking and monitoring information about the progress of the task

• Users seemed to care about: • Control over the settings of sub-tasks • Opting-out possibility

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Developed Personas

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Developed Personas

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Developed Personas

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Software-based Motivation for Mary

Mary

Progress bar

Privacy Relevant peers

Control over steps No

Opt-out possibility No

Frequency Real-time

RewardChance of Winning High

Value Lower

Points

Frequency Real-time

Quality basedNo (Pre-determined points)

Privacy Managers

Leader-boardFrequencyReal-time

AvailabilityRelevant peers/Self-only

Badges

AvailabilityFull (No hidden badges)

PrivacyRelevant peers

FrequencyReal-time

FeedbackFrequencyDaily or Weekly

Generation TypeHuman Generated

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Challenges

• Selecting a representative sample

• Eliciting preferences

• Developing personas

• Variations in personas’ preferences

• Evolution

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Conclusion

• We proposed a set of persona constituents that can shape the preferences and and attitudes of possible users of software-based motivation in a business environment.

• Software designers can use these constituents to develop personas to meet the requirements, needs, and preferences of the actual users with regards to software-based motivation to a large extent.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by an FP7 Marie Curie CIG grant (The SOCIAD project)

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