Gamifying online knowledge sharing environment: A motivating user interface design

Abstract

The way knowledge is shared online is now constantly transforming with the advancement of technology. It is becoming more difficult now to sustain student’s attention in online knowledge sharing environment. Students tend to lose their attention quickly and no motivation to participate in the discussion activities posted by the lecturers. The current interface design is lacking of motivation factor to sustain students’ participation in online knowledge sharing activities. This paper describes design criteria that apply self-determination theory to self-motivate students in online knowledge sharing activities. The design criteria comprises game and social design elements. There are some typical game design elements used in user interface design are such as the points, badges, leaderboard, level, challenge, reward, progression and etc. These game design elements are now widely used in gamification applications. It was found that those design elements can motivate the students in their online knowledge sharing participation. The aim this paper is to provide the design criteria for a motivating user interface design that can promote students’ motivation to share their knowledge online. Previous study had identified a set design criteria based on content validity analysis for designing a motivating user interface. These set of design criteria were designed in a prototype interface called i-Discuss. Our finding reveal that motivation can be designed in user interface for online knowledge sharing activities. Future study will be conducted to evaluate the designed prototype.