Designing interactive systems through a game lens: An ethnographic approach

Abstract

This research has the aim to find new meaningful elements, in the video game world, that could inspire the design of novel gamified systems. Starting from the players’ point of view, I looked at the field of the Massively Multi Player Online Role-Playing Games as a source of inspiration, conducting an ethnographic study in World of Warcraft. Thus, drawing on the findings gathered in my empirical work, I identified 9 recommendations to suggest new directions for the gamification design of interactive systems. Some of these recommendations are devised to suit the applications that pivot on user social participation. Others are aimed at imagining new forms of online communities. Others address those interactive systems that aim at changing user behaviors. These recommendations, by suggesting to support the development of intrinsic motivations, proposing new and diversified game elements and recommending to look at systemic design strategies, aim at addressing the limits of the current gamification techniques. At the high grade of abstraction they are left, they are meant to be applied to different fields.