Discovering Relation Population: The Gamification Design for Digital Placemaking in the Neighbourhood

Abstract

This paper proposed the gamification design regarding the local characteristics of Snail Alley in Tainan, Taiwan, so that users could understand local features and take part in community affairs. Snail Oasis embraced the idea of the relation population (i.e., people who are not residents but have relations with a specific place) for inviting non-residents to contribute to the place. The research conducted semi-structured interviews to get feedback from Snail Oasis. The results showed that Snail Oasis has the potential to motivate users’ extrinsic motivation in terms of raising their interests in Snail Alley and suggested a way to utilise people’s intrinsic motivation when they have chances to contribute to the place. The research concluded that the integration of digital gamification helped attract visitors and highlighted the importance of cooperating with localities to come up with creative community activities and keep the communication channels with potential relation populations.