Engineering digital motivation in businesses: a modelling and analysis framework

Abstract

Digital motivation refers to the use of software-based solutions to change, enhance, or maintain people’s attitude and behaviour towards specific tasks, policies, and regulations. Gamification, persuasive technology, and entertainment computing are example strands of such a paradigm. Digital motivation has unique properties which necessitate careful consideration of its analysis design methods. This stems from the strong human factor involvement, and if it is not implemented effectively, it can result in digital motivation being perceived negatively or leading to reduced motivation. The emerging literature on the topic includes approaches for creating digital motivation solutions. However, their primary focus is on specifying its operation, for example, the design of feedback, rewards and levels. In this paper, we propose a novel modelling language which enables capturing digital motivation as an integral part of the organisational and social structure of a business, captured via goal models. We also demonstrate how modelling of motivational techniques at this level, the goal level, enables a more powerful analysis that informs the introduction, design and management of digital motivation. Finally, we evaluate the language and its analysis using different perspectives and quality measures and report the results.