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© Copyright by Mizuki Sakamoto 2015
All rights reserved
Acknowledgement
I would like to show my deep appreciation to the following persons and organizations:
Prof. Tatsuo Nakajima:
I am a big fan of video games. Prof. Nakajima changed me from only a game fan to a game
researcher who is a game fan by expanding my interest. He supported me through continuous
feedback to my research and proposed me a lot of opportunities to improve my skills. I would
like to express my gratitude for his help.
Prof. Todorka Alexandorva:
I would like to show my appreciation to her willingness to help my research. She provides
new views during our discussions. I enjoyed the discussions with her.
Prof. Shigeki Goto and Prof. Yoshiaki Fukazawa:
I would like to thank them for undertaking the referee of my doctoral dissertation. Advices
and suggestions given by them were very useful. Besides, comments from them encouraged
me to have confidence with my research.
Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta:
He provided me a first chance to become interested in cross-sectional research areas
between computer science and economic factors. His advices and comments from a
professional viewpoint of virtual economy were interesting.
Waseda University:
I have challenged and achieved a lot of things at Waseda University. It provided me various
opportunities to grow up as a human being.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science:
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 267106.
My parents:
Thank you for their love and warm encouragement throughout my life.
In addition, I would like to thank all video games that I have played and I am playing, and all
games’ characters that I have met. My favorite games and games’ characters contribute to
navigate me toward human well-being. Especially, I would like to offer my special thanks to
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. The existing of these two companies makes my life
meaningful and valuable. Without these two companies, my research would have never existed.
Regarding games’ characters, Pichu and Pikachu give me magnificent values. My age when
writing this dissertation is “25” and final page number of this dissertation is “172”. These two
numbers are very special to me because “25” is the Pikachu’s number of Pokédex and “172” is the
Pichu’s number. Aiming at these numbers could provide me strong motivation. I am really happy
to be able to meet Pichu and Pikachu!
Abstract
Advanced information technologies have dramatically changed our daily life. Specifically,
ubiquitous computing technologies and social media offer a variety of new opportunities to
improve our lifestyles. Although there are a lot of information services to support our daily
activities, it is difficult to improve our daily life by considering only functional aspects. When we
apply information technologies to support our daily activities, we have to consider maintaining
human well-being, which includes five factors needed for humans to flourish: positive emotion,
engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement.
The objective of our research is to navigate people towards human well-being by enhancing the
meaning of the real world with information technologies. Especially, we use digital games’
power to make the navigation process meaningful and valuable because digital games have the
power to provide all of the factors to realize human well-being. For future computer science area,
we need new methodology for creating meaningful and valuable information services with
maintaining human well-being.
In this dissertation, we define gameful digital rhetoric as a design abstraction, which considers
games’ power in terms of both rhetorical and emotional aspects. Gameful digital rhetoric
persuades and inspires human behavior and influences human emotion through digitally
mediated virtual objects incorporated into the real world using information technologies.
Gameful digital rhetoric contributes to complements the existing game-related researches to
navigate people towards human well-being by enhancing the meaning of the real world.
This dissertation proposes frameworks for designing gameful digital rhetoric easily to apply
into the real world. Through the overall dissertation, we justify the usefulness of gameful digital
rhetoric through multidisciplinary literature surveys, our experiences in designing and
developing information services, and their experiments and analyses dealing with gameful
digital rhetoric. As a whole, our research provides useful guidelines to incorporate games’ full
power into the real world with information technologies as a form of gameful digital rhetoric.
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction ..........................................................................................................1
1.1.
Background.................................................................................................................1
1.2.
Navigating and Gamifying Human Behavior .............................................................2
1.2.1.
Research Objective ............................................................................................3
1.2.2.
Digital Games and Human Well-being ..............................................................3
1.2.3.
Behavior Navigation with Games ......................................................................4
1.2.4.
Rhetorical Aspects of Games .............................................................................5
1.2.5.
Emotional Aspects of Games .............................................................................6
1.2.6.
Gameful Digital Rhetoric: Games’ Full Power ..................................................6
1.2.7.
Navigating and Gamifying Collective Human Behavior ...................................9
1.2.8.
Summary ............................................................................................................9
1.3.
Related Work ............................................................................................................10
1.3.1.
Computing in a Daily Life ...............................................................................10
1.3.2.
Scientific Approaches for Navigating Human Behavior..................................12
1.3.3.
Designing User Experience from Semiotic Perspective...................................14
1.4.
Contribution ..............................................................................................................16
1.5.
Dissertation Overview ..............................................................................................18
Chapter 2
Gameful Digital Rhetoric...................................................................................21
2.1.
Introduction...............................................................................................................21
2.2.
Frameworks for Analyzing Games’ Power ...............................................................21
2.2.1.
GamiRhetoric Model........................................................................................21
2.2.2.
GamiValue Model ............................................................................................22
2.3.
Analyzing Rhetorical Aspects of the Existing Game................................................23
2.3.1.
Rhetoric in Pokémon Game .............................................................................24
2.3.2.
Values in Pokémon Game ................................................................................25
2.3.3.
Enhancing Rhetoric and Value through Other Media ......................................25
2.4.
Incorporating Gameful Digital Rhetoric into the Real World...................................26
2.4.1.
Analysis of Storytelling for Encouraging Collective Action............................27
2.4.2.
Analysis of Gift Economy................................................................................28
2.4.3.
Analysis of Feedback .......................................................................................29
2.4.4.
Summary and Discussion .................................................................................30
2.5.
Conclusion ................................................................................................................31
Chapter 3
Case Study I: Micro-Crowdfunding .................................................................33
3.1.
Introduction...............................................................................................................33
3.2.
Background...............................................................................................................33
3.2.1.
The Necessity of Collective Action..................................................................33
3.2.2.
Digital Currency...............................................................................................34
3.3.
Micro-Crowdfunding ................................................................................................35
3.3.1.
Basic Concept ..................................................................................................35
3.3.2.
Economic Incentives and Social Incentives .....................................................38
3.3.3.
Scenario-based Design .....................................................................................39
3.3.4.
3.4.
Implementation ................................................................................................42
Analysis of Economic and Social Incentives............................................................44
3.4.1.
Virtual Currency Concept ................................................................................44
3.4.2.
Economic Incentives and Human Motivation ..................................................45
3.4.3.
Social Incentives and Human Motivation ........................................................46
3.5.
Analysis of Social Influence .....................................................................................47
3.5.1.
The Influence of Reciprocity ...........................................................................48
3.5.2.
The Influence of Commitment and Consistency..............................................50
3.5.3.
The Influence of Social Proof ..........................................................................51
3.5.4.
Discussion ........................................................................................................52
3.6.
Analysis of Virtual Expressions................................................................................53
3.6.1.
Reflecting Human Behavior in Virtual Expressions ........................................53
3.6.2.
The Influence of Persuasive Ambient Mirrors .................................................54
3.7.
Some Issues in Designing Micro-Crowdfunding......................................................55
3.8.
Conclusion and Future Directions ............................................................................56
Chapter 4
Case Study II: Augmented TCG .......................................................................59
4.1.
Introduction...............................................................................................................59
4.2.
Background...............................................................................................................59
4.2.1.
Virtuality and Tangibility with Ubiquitous Computing Technologies .............59
4.2.2.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game and Remote Play ...........................................61
4.3.
Augmented Trading Card Game ...............................................................................63
4.4.
Analysis of Behavioral and Emotional Influence .....................................................65
4.4.1.
Playing against a Virtual Character from TCG Animation ..............................65
4.4.2.
Playing against a Virtual Character from an Another Game ............................66
4.4.3.
Playing against a Human Player ......................................................................66
4.4.4.
Cheering a Player by a Virtual Character.........................................................67
4.4.5.
Showing an Opponent Player’s Cards on a Small Display ..............................69
4.4.6.
The Effects of Using a Virtual Character from a Popular Animation Story.....70
4.5.
Introducing Virtuality into Transmedia Storytelling .................................................71
4.6.
Some Issues in Designing Augmented TCG.............................................................72
4.7.
Conclusion and Future Directions ............................................................................73
Chapter 5
Rhetoric-based Design Framework ..................................................................75
5.1.
Introduction...............................................................................................................75
5.2.
Crowdsourcing and Collective Human Behavior .....................................................75
5.3.
Case Studies of Community-based Mobile Crowdsourcing Services ......................76
5.3.1.
Using Crowds for Sensing Context Information: MoboQ ...............................76
5.3.2.
Crime Mapping via Social Media: BianYi.......................................................79
5.4.
Seven Sociocultural and Psychological Insights.......................................................82
5.4.1.
Insight on Curious Stimulative Effects ............................................................82
5.4.2.
Insight on Social Effects ..................................................................................83
5.4.3.
Insight on Economic Effects ............................................................................84
5.4.4.
Insight on Ideological Aspects .........................................................................85
5.4.5.
Insight on Goal-Setting and Challenges...........................................................86
5.4.6.
Insight on Collectivity......................................................................................86
5.4.7.
Insight on Agency and Immersion ...................................................................87
5.5.
Gamifying Collective Human Behavior ...................................................................88
5.5.1.
Incorporating Fictionality into Gameful Digital Rhetoric................................88
5.5.2.
Rhetoric-based Design Framework for Influencing Human Behavior ............89
5.5.3.
5.6.
Designing Crowdsourcing for Collective Action .............................................91
Collectivist Crowdsourcing: Scenarios and Analysis ...............................................92
5.6.1.
Issues in Scenario-based Design for Collectivist Crowdsourcing....................92
5.6.2.
Collectivist Crowdsourcing based on Market Economy..................................93
5.6.3.
Collectivist Crowdsourcing based on Gift Economy .......................................98
5.7.
Some Challenges in Designing Gameful Digital Rhetoric .....................................102
5.7.1.
Cultural and Personal Diversity .....................................................................102
5.7.2.
Incorporating Fictional Rhetoric into the Real World....................................102
5.7.3.
Narratology versus Ludology.........................................................................103
5.7.4.
Practical Issues ...............................................................................................104
5.7.5.
Ethical Issues..................................................................................................105
5.8.
Conclusion and Future Directions ..........................................................................105
Chapter 6
Value-based Design Framework......................................................................107
6.1.
Introduction.............................................................................................................107
6.2.
Digital-Physical Hybrid Gameful Artifacts ............................................................107
6.3.
Case Studies of DPHG Artifacts Incorporating Virtual Forms ...............................109
6.3.1.
Playful Augmented Training System: Augmented Go ...................................109
6.3.2.
Persuasive Ambient Mirror: Virtual Aquarium ..............................................111
6.4.
Value-based Design Framework for Analyzing DPHG Artifacts............................113
6.4.1.
Semiotics of Virtual Forms ............................................................................113
6.4.2.
Six Values Extracted from Three Case Studies ..............................................114
6.4.3.
Value-based Design Framework for Increasing Human Motivation..............120
6.4.4.
Diverse Values and Participatory Design .......................................................121
6.5.
Improving Augmented TCG with Value-based Design Framework .......................121
6.6.
Incorporating Fictionality through Transmedia Storytelling ..................................125
6.6.1.
Fictional Stories and Ideological Value..........................................................126
6.6.2.
Incorporating Fictional Stories through Transmedia Storytelling..................126
6.6.3.
Achieving Reality when Incorporating Fictional Stories ...............................127
6.7.
Conclusion and Future Directions ..........................................................................128
Chapter 7
Design Patterns of Reality................................................................................131
7.1.
Introduction.............................................................................................................131
7.2.
Background.............................................................................................................131
7.3.
Extracting Design Patterns......................................................................................135
7.3.1.
Design Patterns to Exploit Visual Reality ......................................................135
7.3.2.
Design Patterns to Exploit Ideological Messages in Fictional Stories ...........139
7.3.3.
Design Patterns to Compose Multiple Fictional Stories ................................142
7.4.
Gamifying Haiku Contest with Proposed Design Patterns .....................................144
7.5.
Conclusion and Future Directions ..........................................................................146
Chapter 8
8.1.
Conclusion and Future Directions ..................................................................149
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................149
8.1.1.
Dissertation Summary....................................................................................149
8.1.2.
Combining Rhetoric and Value to Navigate Human Behavior ......................150
8.2.
Future Directions ....................................................................................................152
8.2.1.
“From Rhetoric to Value” or “from Value to Rhetoric” .................................152
8.2.2.
Infrastructures for Harmonizing Real World and Virtual World ....................152
8.3.
Gamified Real: Enhance World with Gameful Digital Rhetoric.............................152
Reference.................................................................................................................................155
Publication List.......................................................................................................................167
Journal Papers .....................................................................................................................167
International Conferences (Peer Reviewed)........................................................................167
Full Paper ........................................................................................................................167
Short Paper......................................................................................................................169
Poster Paper ....................................................................................................................169
Domestic Conferences (Peer Reviewed).............................................................................170
Awards.................................................................................................................................170
Others ..................................................................................................................................171
Commentary....................................................................................................................171
Lecture ............................................................................................................................171
Research Grant................................................................................................................171
List of Figures
|1
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1. Background
Advanced information technologies have dramatically changed our daily life. Recently, the
physical artifacts that surround us are continuously becoming more intelligent (Hazenberg &
Huisman, 2011) (Fujinami & Nakajima, 2005) (Kawsar, et al., 2005) (Marzano & Aarts, 2003)
(Sakamoto, et al., 2012) due to the ubiquitous computing technologies and to the embedding of
computers and sensors into these artifacts. These artifacts use a variety of contextual information
from our surroundings, and integrating additional actuators to the artifacts creates advanced
functionality.
Integrating virtuality into the physical artifacts offers new opportunities for enhancing
functionality. Our definition of virtuality is something that does not really exist, but that affects
our daily life as if it exists. Baudrillard explains our consumption behavior as consuming symbols
associated with things rather than the things themselves (Baudrillard, 1994). Due to the fact that
the symbolisation of things will accelerate as we further embed computers in our life, our virtual
consumption will progress rapidly. The embedding of computers in the real world allows physical
artifacts to be easily enhanced using virtual objects.
Specifically, pervasive and ubiquitous computing technologies offer a variety of new
opportunities to improve our lifestyles. For example, mobile phones and ubiquitous public
displays enable us to receive more timely information, while ubiquitous sensing technologies
allow us to develop a variety of new services that change their meanings and functions according
to the current situation. Moreover, social media such as Facebook1 and Twitter2 make it possible
to create a new social culture among people. For example, crowdsourcing may change our work
style significantly, and crowdfunding may expand our business opportunities. Crowdsourcing is a
promising approach to exploit our social power and to enhance our human abilities and
1
https://www.facebook.com/
2
https://twitter.com/
2|
possibilities (Howe, 2008). The roles of crowdsourcing have recently expanded in a variety of
new areas, such as citizen science, civic engagement, and political campaigns, and will become
increasingly important in a modern society (Oxford Internet Institute, 2014). Crowdfunding is a
new and emerging way of funding new ideas or projects by borrowing funding from the crowd
(Gerber, et al., 2012). In the crowdfunding approach, a person proposes a new project, explains
its importance, provides the target amount of funds, and shows what people who fund the project
will receive when the project is completed successfully. When the total amount of funds from
people who would like to contribute to the project exceeds the target amount, the project can be
started. After the success of the project, each contributor receives some benefits according to his
/her funding.
Although there are a lot of information services to support our daily activities, it is difficult to
improve our daily life solely through only technology because the quality of our life heavily
depends on our behavior. Various social media or smart city technologies make our life more
efficient and convenient; however, to realize a flourished society in our cities, we must still alter
our behavior.
Persuasive technology (Fogg, 2002) uses information technologies to move people. These
technologies are based on several psychology models, and several case studies have been
developed. Associated user studies show that persuasive technology is effective in altering a
user’s attitude and behavior. Persuasive technology emphasizes the strengths of computers, such
as toughness, processing capacity, extensibility and ubiquity. It focuses on changing attitude,
behavior and thinking as a result of interaction with computers. Although persuasive technology
works for temporary behavior change, many people have difficulty changing their current
behavior to more desirable behavior and keeping it. Behavioral economics asserts that people
have a status quo bias, defined as a strong tendency to remain at the status quo (Samuelson &
Zeckhauser, 1988) (Kahneman, et al., 1991) and it also explains that status quo bias occurs
because people think the disadvantages of altering the status quo are usually more than the
advantages (Kahneman, et al., 1991). People usually will not change their behavior if the
personal benefit of the behavior change exceeds the cost to change the current behavior.
1.2. Navigating and Gamifying Human Behavior
We believe that navigating human behavior succeeds if people can achieve human well-being as a
result of their behavior change. Seligman defines the well-being theory (Seligman, 2011) as a
theme of positive psychology. He defines five factors needed for humans to flourish: positive
emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. Achieving the factors of human
well-being results in maintaining people’s desirable behavior. For example, positive emotions
reduce the risk of catching a cold or an infectious disease. Additionally, a husband and wife who
have positive images of each other can create a fruitful married life. Seligman notes that people
without positivity tend to think there is no way to improve their life by themselves, while people
with high positivity can act to have productive life (Seligman, 2011). Therefore, it is important to
focus on achieving human well-being in order to navigate human behavior.
|3
1.2.1. Research Objective
Recently, Calvo and Peters introduce positive computing, where technologies are used to
flourish us (Calvo & Peters, 2014); this compliments persuasive technology to enhance human
well-being because only persuasive technology does not take into account whether the navigated
human behavior is virtuous or not. On the other hand, positive computing aims to lead human
towards well-being.
In order to realize human well-being with information technologies, it is not sufficient to consider
only functional aspects such as efficiency, security and usability. We argue that information
services should be meaningful and valuable for realizing their users’ human well-being. Positive
computing considers realizing human well-being, however, its design is based on highly
abstracted concepts; thus, it is not easy to use these in practice. For future computer science area,
we need new methodology for creating meaningful and valuable information services with
maintaining human well-being.
The objective of our research is to navigate people towards human well-being by enhancing the
meaning of the real world with information technologies. Especially, we use games’ power to
make the navigation process meaningful and valuable. There are various kinds of “games”: for
example, sports games such as baseball or soccer, money game with speculative strategies and
board games such as chess or reversi. In this dissertation, we especially focus on “digital games”
such as Super Mario Bros.3, The Legend of Zelda4 and Pokémon5 published by Nintendo6 or
The Pokémon Company7. These digital games include not only basic game elements like battle
and collection but also aesthetic factors such as fantastic story and magnificent scene. We argue
that these aesthetic factors including virtuality and fictionality are authentic games’ power. The
splendid overall game world with virtuality and fictionality, which is produced by the assembly
of information technologies, attracts a lot of people.
1.2.2. Digital Games and Human Well-being
A digital game has the power to provide all of the above five factors to realize human well-being:
positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. Castronova identified
positive emotions as the single most important motivation for game playing (Castronova, 2008).
McGonigal also states that positive emotions are the ultimate reward for participation
(McGonigal, 2008). Seligman argues that engagement is a concept related to flow
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity,
and complete involvement with life. Csikszentmihalyi notes that there are building blocks of the
3
http://mario.nintendo.com/
4
http://zelda.com/
5
http://www.pokemon.com/us/
6
http://www.nintendo.com/
7
http://www.pokemon.co.jp/corporate/en/
4|
flow experience, such as clear goals at each step of the way, immediate feedback on one's actions,
and balance between challenges and skills (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). Almost all digital games
include immediate feedback under players’ control, and well-designed digital games provide clear
goals and appropriate challenges based on each player’s skill. Additionally, games create positive
relationships. Digital games explicitly provide meaningful and valuable benefits for taking part in
collective action. In fictional game worlds, players frequently tend to collaborate to achieve a
common goal because they gain individual benefits by achieving the goal. In Massively
Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) such as EverQuest8, World of Warcraft9, or
Ultima Online10, multiple players must cooperate to perform a complex mission. McGonigal
argues that gamers form bonds with other gamers quickly. She represents the relationship created
through collective action in games by using the concept named social fabric (McGonigal, 2011).
Regarding meaning, games have various rhetorical aspects, and many people discuss their
rhetoric; currently, the rhetorical power is being reinvestigated to understand the powerful effects
of games (Bogost, 2007) (Treanor, et al., 2011). Achievement is often used in games, and it is a
useful incentive to motivate people (Jull, 2005). Games clarify the process of achievement by
using points, badges, leaderboards and other similar features.
1.2.3. Behavior Navigation with Games
Recently, digital designers have begun to adopt ideas from game design to incentivize desirable
human behavior. The idea of taking entertaining and engaging elements from digital games and
using them to incentivize participation in other contexts has been studied in a variety of fields. In
education, this approach is known as serious games (Abt, 1987), and in human computing, it is
sometimes referred to as games with a purpose (Von Ahn & Dabbish, 2008). Serious games are
games used effectively to increase specific domain knowledge and skills (Ritterfeld, et al., 2009).
For example, defense, medicine, scientific exploration, and emergency management are typical
domains that widely adopt serious games. The effect of a serious game is to increase players’
motivation and self-efficacy by increasing their knowledge and skills. Additionally, games for
change11 and persuasive games (Bogost, 2007) are intended to change people’s attitude and
behavior.
Gamification recently became a popular concept for encouraging people’s daily and business
activities. Deterding et al. propose a definition of gamification as “the use of game design
elements in non-game contexts (Deterding, et al., 2011).” The concept is used in various social
media services and other information services. Most of the current gamification-based services
are based on adopting virtual rewards for some activities such as points for being a loyal customer,
leaderboards to encourage participants’ competition, badges for visiting certain types of locations
8
https://www.everquest.com/
9
http://www.warcraft.com/
10
http://www.uo.com/
11
http://www.gamesforchange.org/
|5
and achievements for reaching final goals. Foursquare12 is a typical pervasive service that uses a
gamification approach (Olson, 1965).
The meaning of virtual rewards is essential whether players enjoy the rewards or not because only
game mechanics, such as points, leaderboards and badges, are not sufficient to encourage people
to increase their target activities. For example, when people shown on a leaderboard do not offer a
sense of reality and may be considered artificial, people may lose their motivation to participate in
the activities. However, most current studies on gamification did not take into account the
meaning of virtual rewards and concluded that the effect to introduce gamification is not
significant (Zuckerman & Gal-Oz, 2014). On the other hand, there are researchers who claim
the importance of the meaning of gamification. Nicholson proposes six psychological
mechanisms: play, exposition, choice, information, engagement and reflection, to design one’s
intrinsic motivation to make gamification more meaningful (Nicholson, 2012). As described by
Denny, goal setting is essential to make gamification meaningful (Denny, 2013). Asif also asserts
that goal setting increases human intrinsic motivation (Asif, 2011). Consequently, collecting
batches in gamification should have the consistent purpose of achieving the goal of incorporating
gamification. Besides, Huotari and Hamari focus on user’s values in more semiotic aspect
(Huotari & Hamari, 2012).
1.2.4. Rhetorical Aspects of Games
Rhetoric has long been discussed to persuade people on a collective basis. A narrative offers a
powerful effect on collective human behavior (Mayer, 2014). The narrative teaches us a norm and
an ideology that we should follow and an attitude for achieving a sustainable society. Games are
relatively newer media than traditional media in which many people discuss their rhetoric.
Recently, rhetorical power has been reinvestigated to identify the powerful effect of a game. In
games, a variety of virtual objects are embedded in the game worlds to influence players’ behavior.
Typical virtual objects are virtual currency, virtual human beings, virtual goods and virtual clothes.
Bogost argues that the unique meaning-making strategy of games is procedural rhetoric. A game
designer typically wishes to express his/her ideas and feelings about conceptual visual elements in
games without relying on stories, imagination, sound, etc. Instead, he/she wishes to convey
meaning only through the game’s processes (Bogost, 2007). Procedural rhetoric offers a strong
persuasive effect because rhetoric is bidirectional, although other rhetorical media are
unidirectional. Additionally, in (Treanor, et al., 2011), procedural rhetoric can be used as a tool to
analyse the meaning of games, but as shown in (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014), rhetoric that is
exclusively procedural does not provide enough meaning. In (Treanor, et al., 2011), Treanor et al.
also show that if a visual attached to procedural rhetoric is replaced, the total meaning of a video
game is also changed. This means that game-specific mechanics represented as procedural
rhetoric are insufficient to discuss how to design a game’s meaning.
12
https://foursquare.com/
6|
Newsgames (Treanor & Mateas, 2009) contain ideological messages represented through the
interactive form, which makes people deeply consider essential, serious issues in our society
(Bogost, et al., 2010). Frasca states that two properties: agency and immersion are essential for
developing more persuasive expressions (Frasca, 2001). The agency property relates to whether
participants can control the effects in their activities, and the immersion property relates to
whether the effects reflect the players’ real activities without violating reality. One advantage of
the game is to make players feel agency and immersion through the interaction with the game,
thus increasing the sense of the game’s reality (Jull, 2005), and an ideological message can be
represented through dynamically changed elements according to a player’s interaction (Treanor
& Mateas, 2009). This means that digital games can be used to effectively convey the ideological
meanings incorporated in the game.
1.2.5. Emotional Aspects of Games
Serious games focus on the aspects of games as simulation, and newsgames use games’ power to
make arguments. Regarding gamification, it uses games’ power to motivate people with extrinsic
rewards. We can use games’ power to achieve clear purposes, such as improving education,
inspiring people, and increasing business engagement; however, a mere entertainment game is
itself valuable for many game fans. The value provided by playing games has great power to
influence people’s emotions.
In the research related to games, there are some investigations focusing on emotional factors by
playing games. For example, Lazzaro classifies emotional factors about why people play games
(Lazzaro, 2004). She proposes hard fun, easy fun, serious fun and people fun, and concludes that
the combination of these four fun produce immersive player experiences13. Hunicke et al.
present MDA framework (MDA standing for Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics) to analyze
digital games (Hunicke, et al., 2004). They state aesthetics is the key source of fun by playing
digital games and classifies the aesthetics of games into eight categories: sensation, fantasy,
narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression and submission.
PLEX Cards (Arrasvuori, et al., 2011) is a collection of 22 cards, plus two related idea generation
techniques: PLEX Brainstorming and PLEX Scenario. The cards provide 22 categories of the
playful experiences (PLEX) framework to designers, researchers and other stakeholders who wish
to design for playful experiences. Lucero et al. apply the PLEX framework in the evaluation of
some game prototypes (Lucero, et al., 2013). They state the framework categories can be used
as a checklist to assess different attributes of playfulness of a product or service.
1.2.6. Gameful Digital Rhetoric: Games’ Full Power
The game-related concepts in the area of behavior science such as gamification can provide
engagement and achievement in well-being theory. For example, introducing points, levels and
badges visualize the process of achievement and social interactions in gamification services
13
The basic concept of 4 keys to provide “fun” is explained in (Lazzaro, 2004), and Lazzaro have re-named the
concept in the following web site: http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/the4-keys-to-fun/.
|7
support creating the positive relationships between users. The game mechanics used in
gamification-related researches can extract a part of games’ full power, however, only the game
mechanics are insufficient to realize human well-being.
Game researches focusing on semiotic aspects in the area of cultural studies have possibility to
complement the weak point of gamification, because semiotic aspects can consider other factors
of human well-being, positive emotion, relationships, and meaning. However, its theory or
categorization is based on highly abstracted concepts; thus, it is not easy to use the concepts in
practice.
Our research complements the existing game-related research to navigate people towards human
well-being by enhancing the meaning of the real world. In addition to incorporating game
mechanics for generating engagement and achievement into the real world, combining the
rhetorical and emotional aspects by playing digital games and incorporating these games’ power
into the real world is useful to enhance our world. In this dissertation, we define “gameful digital
rhetoric” as a design abstraction, which considers games’ power in terms of both the rhetorical
and emotional aspects. Gameful digital rhetoric includes two design abstractions, “rhetoric” and
“value” which informs, persuades and inspires human behavior and influences human emotion
through digitally mediated virtual objects incorporated into the real world using information
technologies. A digital game abstracts the real world with various virtual objects and their
interaction. Our rhetoric extracts the abstraction of digital games, arranges it in terms of the
rhetorical aspect and enhances it to be applied to the real world with information technologies.
Playing a digital game influences people’s feelings, especially, its power is leading games’
players to have positive emotions such as fun and pleasure. We call these emotional effects
provided by playing digital games as the value. The rhetoric is useful for general navigation
because it can tell people the meaning of the targeted behavior; however, “understanding the
meaning” is not always equal to “valuable”. In order to realize human well-being with
information technologies, it is important that information services should be meaningful and
valuable for users. The value contributes to point the navigation towards human well-being in
terms of emotional effects. Therefore, by considering both the rhetoric and the value with the
existing navigation based on games’ power, as a whole, we can enhance the meaning of the real
world with achieving the meaningful and valuable navigation towards human well-being.
Our design abstraction, gameful digital rhetoric including both the rhetoric and the value can be
easily incorporated into the real world. In this dissertation, we show the usefulness of gameful
digital rhetoric through some case studies including scenario-based analysis, systems
development and some experiments using gameful digital rhetoric. As a whole, our research
provides useful knowledge on incorporating the semiotic factors with information technologies
as a form of gameful digital rhetoric. Figure 1.1 shows the relationship between our research
and the existing game-related research.
8|
Figure 11.1
Researrch Goal
The cconcept of diividing the design abstracction into thee rhetorical and
a emotionaal aspects is useful
to deesign and anaalyze digital games or ggamified serv
vices. Howev
ver, the rhetooric and the value
someetimes overlaap in a digitall game. Somee digital gam
mes or gamifieed services foocus mainly on the
rhetorical intent, such
s
as educcating or insppiring users, while otherss focus on thee emotional value,
such as providing
g fun or pleassure. We can apply our deesign abstracction includinng the rhetorric and
the vaalue to desig
gn both gamees with rhetoorical intent and
a games fo
or providing emotional values.
v
Regaarding the forrmer, it is app
propriate to ffocus on considering which rhetoric ssuits best the intent
of a ggame or a gaamified service. With the latter, it is useful
u
to add a variety of values. Figu
ure 1.2
preseents an overv
view of the rh
hetoric-focussed and the value-focused
v
d designs.
Fig
gure 1.2 Rhetoric-focu
R
used Design and Value-ffocused Dessign
|9
1.2.7. Navigating and Gamifying Collective Human Behavior
In order to realize human well-being, navigating collective human behavior is important. The
problem of collective human behavior is a central problem in our social life. In innumerable
circumstances - in business, in families, in sports and in politics - indeed, in virtually every aspect
of life, coordinated collective human behavior can lead to better outcome compared to
uncoordinated individual action. A problem of cooperation arises in the presence of public goods.
Since each person prefers to maximise his/her individual benefit, people tend to free ride on
others’ efforts. The situation has been classically modelled in game theory (Miller, 2003). Most
solutions to this problem involve designing new strategies, mechanisms and rules for
coordinating people (Dolan, 2010) (Wolfe, et al., 2014). In (Mayer, 2014), a narrative can be used
to force collective people to take action to maximize their collective benefits because the narrative
educates people to make them understand that their coordination determines their end benefits.
This means that we need a good framework to navigate human behavior whenever people aim to
achieve different individual benefits.
Digital games explicitly provide meaningful and valuable benefits for taking part in collective
action. In fictional game worlds, players frequently tend to cooperate their powers to achieve their
common goal because they reap their own individual benefits by achieving the common goal. In
MMORPG, multiple players need to cooperate to achieve a complex mission. However, in the
real world, people usually feel difficulties to understand the necessity to achieve their common
goal and their individual benefits by achieving the goal. Incorporating gameful digital rhetoric
into the real world has a possibility to clarify the benefits and encourage collective human
behavior.
1.2.8. Summary
A digital game offers a virtual world that contains various virtual objects and events to influence
players’ behavior in the fictional world. Well-designed digital games offer players many attractive
imaginary and artificial benefits through meaningful and valuable experiences. In games, various
virtual objects are embedded in the game worlds to influence players’ behavior. When designing
an attractive digital game, a game developer defines its meaning through how a player perceives
virtual objects and events in the virtual world. If the player feels that the world is meaningful and
valuable, he/she will enjoy the game. We believe that the same applies in our real world. If we
perceive that objects and events in our real life are meaningful and valuable, we can enjoy our real
life.
Gameful digital rhetoric in digital games often plays a role of indicating a player’s actions to
advance the game. It also becomes a sign that encourages a particular type of human behavior
when it is embedded in the real world through ubiquitous computing technologies. Incorporating
gameful digital rhetoric into the real world contributes to enhance the meaning of the real world if
the gameful digital rhetoric is meaningful and valuable to people. Thus, virtual objects can be
useful tools to influence human behavior, thinking, and feeling in the real world. The enhanced
meaning through gameful digital rhetoric makes explicit the desirable goal achieved through
activities and encourages people by offering many attractive imaginary and artificial benefits.
10 |
1.3. Relaated Work
k
The oobjective of our research
h is to navigaate people towards human well-beingg by enhancing the
meanning of the real
r world with
w informattion technolo
ogies; thereffore, our ressearch focusees not
only on computeer science but
b also on the area of
o behavior science andd cultural sttudies.
Persuuasive techno
ology and gaamification aare placed in interdiscipliinary area off computer sccience
and bbehavior science. Thesee researchess aim at naavigating hu
uman behaviior by increeasing
extrinnsic motivatiion. Howeveer, these reseearch areas do
d not take in
nto account w
whether navigated
humaan behavior is virtuous or
o not. Our rresearch com
mbines thesee research arreas with con
ncepts
from the area of cultural
c
studiies and aims to define thee meaning off navigation ((Figure 1.3)..
Figure 11.3
Research Focus
In thiis section, w
we introduce the
t related w
work classifieed into three categories; computer sccience,
behavvior sciencee and cultural studies. W
We first inttroduce persuasive technnology and some
exam
mples using the techno
ology. Addiitionally, we
w explain the inform
mation techn
nology
infrasstructures fo
or coordinatiing human behavior su
uch as crowd
dsourcing annd crowdfun
nding.
Regaarding behaviioral sciencee, we consideer psycholog
gical conceptts related to human need
ds and
behavvior, behavio
oral economiics and gamee theory, beccause these researches
r
coonsider emottional,
econoomic and so
ocial incentiv
ves, which innfluence hum
man behavio
or. We also ffocus on sem
miotic
aspecct, especially
y semiotic deesign propossing values for
f people. These
T
researc
rches are useeful to
consiider the attacched meaning
g of productss or services..
1.3.1.
1
Com
mputing in a Daily Lifee
Persuuasive techno
ology uses information
i
technologiess in order to
o change huuman attitud
de and
behavvior (Fogg, 2002).
2
Associated user stuudies show th
hat persuasiv
ve technologgies are effecttive in
| 11
altering a user’s attitude and behavior. For example, UbiFit Garden is a mobile application that
changes a user’s physical activity by using positive feedback if the user’s behavior is desirable
(Consolvo, et al., 2006). Nakajima and Lehdonvirta reported four case studies that adopt both
positive and negative incentives to control a user’s behavior (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013).
Appropriate feedback is chosen according to a user’s current situation, which is acquired by
sensors attached to physical artifacts. However, several problems with current persuasive
technologies were recently presented (Hekler, et al., 2013).
EcoIsland (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013) illuminates its motivational factors, such as social
and economic incentives. The system was developed as a desktop application or a mobile phone
application that expresses a representation of a family on a virtual island. The users set a target
CO2 emission level; they manually report their consumption levels using the desktop or the
mobile application. If they fail to stay below the consumption limit, the level of water around the
island rises. This consequence makes the avatars living on the island feel threatened. To reduce
the level of water, several tasks are proposed. These actions can include energy reduction in the
house, such as unplugging some devices, or outside the house, such as using public transportation
instead of a car. They also earn virtual money, which they can exchange online with other families
who did not reach the target level of emissions, or they can buy items to decorate their island.
Mona Lisa Bookshelf tries to navigate its users to keep a bookshelf organized (Nakajima &
Lehdonvirta, 2013). Each book in the bookshelf is connected with a piece of a digital image of the
Mona Lisa and a display placed near the bookshelf shows the image to the users. As in a picture
puzzle, the image changes according to how the books are positioned in the bookshelf. Mona Lisa
Bookshelf controls the user’s sustainable behavior through feedback control, with positive and
negative feedback.
Crowdsourcing is a promising approach to exploit our social power and to enhance our human
ability and possibilities (Howe, 2008). For example, Amazon Mechanical Turk14 is currently the
best known crowdsourcing system (Kittur, et al., 2008). Amazon Mechanical Turk uses monetary
rewards to encourage people to perform micro-tasks. Accordingly, the system only considers
monetary benefits. However, as shown in (Antikainen & Väätäjä, 2010), monetary rewards are
not always the best strategy to motivate people to perform tasks. Moreover, if money is involved,
quality control becomes a major issue because of the anonymous and distributed nature of crowd
workers (Harper, et al., 2009). Although the quantity of work performed by participants can be
increased, the quality cannot, and crowd workers may tend to cheat the system to increase their
overall rate of pay if only monetary rewards are adopted. Instead, contributors appreciate many
intangible factors, such as community cooperation, learning new ideas and entertainment. The
results of research investigating human motivation in crowdsourcing show that not only monetary
rewards but also intrinsic motivation such as hedonic pleasure, autonomy, and a variety of skills
required to complete tasks are important for continuing to engage in tasks (Kaufmann & Schulze,
2011) (Sun, et al., 2011).
14
https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
12 |
Non-monetary motivations have been successfully represented in examples such as
Yahoo!Answers 15 and Answers.com 16 . UbiAsk (Liu, et al., 2012) is a mobile crowdsourcing
platform built upon an existing social networking infrastructure. It is designed to assist foreign
visitors by enlisting the local population to answer their image-based questions in a timely fashion.
Existing social media platforms are used to rapidly allocate micro-tasks to a wide network of local
residents. This approach allows us to enhance existing social media by leveraging end-users.
Participants are critical to the evolution of social media.
Crowdfunding is a new and emerging way of funding new ideas or projects by borrowing funding
from the crowd (Gerber, et al., 2012). This approach is different from a donation because
contributors will expect some benefit when the supported project succeeds, whereas a donation
does not include any return considerations. If the benefit has a high scarcity value, it provides a
great incentive for the contributors. However, existing crowdfunding platforms, such as
Kickstarter17, Indiegogo18, RocketHub19, Fundable20, and Crowdfunder21 require participants to
fund with real money; thus, only people who have extra money can join in. Additionally, it
requires much more effort to execute a project because the scale of a project tends to be large.
Although several research works have already investigated existing crowdfunding infrastructures
(Gerber, et al., 2012) (Greenberg, et al., 2013) (Hui, et al., 2013), little research has been devoted
toward the design and experience of building new crowdfunding infrastructures. In spite of this
dearth of research, (Muller, et al., 2013) has provided a useful example involving an experiment
in enterprise crowdfunding. Employees allocated money for employee-initiated proposals on an
enterprise Intranet site, including a medium-scaled trial of the system in a large multinational
company. The results showed that communities in a large company propose ideas, participate and
collaborate and that their activities can be encouraged through crowdfunding. The approach
details a new collaboration opportunity and shows that crowdfunding is a promising method for
increasing activity within communities.
1.3.2. Scientific Approaches for Navigating Human Behavior
Behavioral economics explore why people sometimes make irrational decisions and why and how
their behavior does not follow the predictions of economic models (Kahneman, 2011). In
particular, our thinking easily tends to be biased (Kahneman, 2011) and to be unconsciously
socially influenced (Cialdini, 1987). Behavioral economics explains people’s biased thinking
such as status quo bias, heuristics, and framing effect. A status quo bias is defined as a strong
15
https://answers.yahoo.com/
16
http://www.answers.com/
17
http://www.kickstarter.com/
18
http://www.indiegogo.com/
19
http://www.rockethub.com/
20
http://www.fundable.com/
21
http://www.crowdfunder.com/
| 13
tendency to remain at the status quo (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988) (Kahneman, et al., 1991)
and it also explains that status quo bias occurs because people think the disadvantages of altering
the status quo are usually more than the advantages (Kahneman, et al., 1991). In some cases,
heuristics are dangerous and lead to mistakes in decision-making. Regarding framing effect,
people construct a set of mental filters through biological, emotional, economic and
cultural influences. The choices they make are influenced by their creation of a frame. Framing
can affect the outcome of a choice problem. The framing effect, a cognitive bias, implies that
presenting the same option in different formats can alter a person’s decision (Kahneman, 2011).
Psychological concepts can be applied to the economic decision-making processes of individuals
and institutions (Dolan, 2010) (Wolfe, et al., 2014). People are more sensitive to the decrease in
the value of money than to its increase, a fact that is adopted to evolve future micro-payment
strategies (Yamabe, et al., 2009). As described in (Sakamoto, et al., 2013), a person’s unique
personality determines the importance that he/she places on different values. The results of
behavioral economics also show that each person assigns different importance to the same value
according to his/her current environmental or emotional situation.
Maslow et al. claims that human motivation is based on a hierarchy of needs (Maslow, et al.,
1970). In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, basic needs are physiological needs such as for food.
Other needs are safety needs, social needs, esteem needs. At the highest level, when all the other
needs are satisfied, we can start to satisfy self-actualization needs. Because a user feels that a
product has value when it satisfies his/her needs, satisfying needs is closely related to defining
values. Regarding human needs, self-determination theory was proposed by Ryan and Deci
(Ryan & Deci, 2000). In the theory, Ryan and Deci defined three innate psychological needs:
competence, autonomy and relatedness as important factors to generate human motivation. For
each individual, one of the needs is typically stronger than the others, which influences each
person’s personality. Ryan and Deci claim that the process to cause people to have a conscious
purpose to achieve their goals is essential to develop human motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Game theory explains people’s decision making in a social community. Miller claims that if each
person considers only his/her individual benefit, shared goods cannot be well-maintained (Miller,
2003). Because each person prefers to maximize his/her individual benefit, people tend to free
ride on others’ efforts. Most solutions to this problem involve designing new strategies,
mechanisms and rules for coordinating people (Dolan, 2010) (Wolfe, et al., 2014). Sen and
Körner propose a set of rules to make a decision that is desirable for all people based on social
justice (Sen & Körner, 1974). Besides, design activism (Fuad-Luke, 2013) proposes several
methodologies for changing the behavior of groups. However, there is no discussion about how to
encourage people to make a decision based on social justice. In (De Mesquita, 2010), De
Mesquita shows that game theory is useful to predict the future, but human navigation to make a
correct decision is important to choose one of possible better futures.
In the real world, each person may not be able to make a decision based on the best strategy, and
this is a reason why collective human behavior is a difficult issue. For example, rational thinking
makes it possible for us to maximize our benefits (Miller, 2003), but there are several pitfalls in
designing collective human behavior based exclusively on rational thinking. For example,
14 |
people’s daily decision making may be biased (Kaufmann & Schulze, 2011), information that can
be used for people’s decision making is asymmetric or ambiguous (Akerlof, 1970) (Weber, 1987),
and because of their laziness, people usually do not take desirable actions (McGonigal, 2013).
Each person is affected by various surrounding situations to prevent him/her from choosing the
best strategies.
Economic incentives are powerful for motivating people to change their attitude and behavior. An
economic incentive is a tangible reward that users consider valuable, but it is not necessarily
actual money or goods. Today, the virtual economy is rapidly growing, and the effectiveness of
virtual goods has already been proven (Lehdonvirta & Castronova, 2014). In most previous
studies, monetary rewards have been discussed as an economic incentive but for people, rare
objects can be considered the same as a monetary reward. In online games, millions of players
work hard to obtain rare and valuable virtual goods and even trade those goods for real money at
a rate of three billion dollars per year (Lehdonvirta & Ernkvist, 2011). Virtual goods can be
exchanged in virtual economy as valuable goods similarly to real goods. For example, beautiful
clothes or strong weapons are a typical good in the virtual economy because a player can buy it
using his/her money in popular online games.
Lehdonvirta proposes three attributes that make virtual items valuable in a game (Lehdonvirta,
2009). The first attribute is a functional attribute consisting of two categories: performance and
functionality. Performance is the skill to play a game well, and functionality of the equipment
increases the possibility of winning the game. The second attribute is the hedonic attribute. This
attribute consists of six categories: visual appearance and sounds, background fiction, provenance,
customizability, cultural references, and branding. The hedonic attribute offers value to satisfy a
user’s emotional desire. The third attribute is the social attribute. This attribute consists of one
category: rarity. This value is strongly associated with the ability to distinguish a group of owners
from non-owners. These attributes are effective to make virtual goods more meaningful.
1.3.3. Designing User Experience from Semiotic Perspective
The result of semiosis allows us to deal with non-existing objects. In our mind, we can create
various non-existing objects as semiotic objects. The semiotic object is as follows.
[…] every device by which an expression conveys a set of properties as its content […] all
expressions which convey as their proper content whatever we are used to call the
meaning of the signified of the expression: the idea of an animal, of a place, of a thing, of
a feeling, of an action, of a natural law like universal gravitation, of a mathematical entity,
et cetera.
(Presented by Eco, U., “On the Ontology of Fictional Characters: A Semiotic Approach,”
pp. 88-89, 2009)
Symbols are used to represent non-existing objects, to express fictional objects, abstract objects,
or objects in alternate histories. Since these symbols are used to represent a variety of things,
creatures, and worlds to express non-existing objects, the semiotic approach is suitable as the
basis of the analysis of the reality on fictional stories.
| 15
Some researches consider values from a semiotic point of view (Krippendorff, 2005).
Value-sensitive design (VSD) integrates ethics and design (Friedman, et al., 2006). The design
methodology emphasizes the values of direct and indirect stakeholders and accounts for human
values throughout the design process; it is influenced by a participatory design experience.
Worth-centered design (WCD) (Cockton, 2006) claims that human computer interaction should
incorporate the concept of values as a design goal. A priori usability evaluation and context fit
cannot distinguish between tolerable design problems and problems that have a major impact.
WCD moves the focus from context of use to the context of impact, meaning that understanding
outcomes is more important than how to achieve the outcomes. Boztepe also proposes four values
for designing products that are more attractive: utility value, social significance value, emotional
value and spiritual value (Boztepe, 2007).
Jordan proposes four pleasures: physio-pleasure, psycho-pleasure, socio-pleasure and
ideo-pleasure (Jordan, 2002). Besides, Nakajima and Lehdonvirta propose five incentives:
physical, psychological, social, economic and ideological incentives (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta,
2013). Because these proposals offer classifications of human desires, they are useful in directly
affecting human behavior. In (Gilmore & Pine, 1999), Gilmore and Pine claim that what people
actually desire is not products but the experience that products provide. Experience emerges from
the product and the user’s interaction. A user’s activity involving a product engages the user’s
experience with the product. Designing user experience links the viewpoint of usability with the
notion of a user’s emotional and contextual needs (Hassenzahl & Tractinsky, 2006) (Wright &
McCarthy, 2010). Traditionally, designing computer systems considers only quantitative metrics
to improve the utility of products and services, but these studies in user experience show that
capturing user experience offers more value in terms of products and services.
There are several approaches to developing tools to capture user experience. IDEO Method Cards
(IDEO, 2003) is a collection of 51 cards expressing various ways that design teams can
understand the people who use products and services designed by them. They are used to generate
a number of different methods accessible to members of a design team. They explain how and
when the methods are best used and demonstrate how they have been applied to actual design
projects. PLEX Cards (Arrasvuori, et al., 2011) is a collection of 22 cards, plus two related idea
generation techniques: PLEX Brainstorming and PLEX Scenario. The cards provide 22
categories of the playful experiences (PLEX) framework to designers, researchers and other
stakeholders who wish to design for playful experiences. Each stakeholder interprets values from
different points of view. The design with intent toolkit (Lockton, et al., 2010) helps a designer
with designs intended to influence or result in specific user behavior. The toolkit contains 101
cards classified into eight categories: architecture, error proofing, interaction, ludic, perceptual,
cognitive, Machiavellian and security. Each category offers a useful design pattern to lead a
designer to a better design. Because these tools offer additional visual and verbal information in
each classified category, they are helpful for analyzing products by broadening horizons of
participants who participate in the analysis.
Regarding collective human emotion, participatory design (Schuler & Namioka, 1993) is an
approach originating in the Scandinavian design community (Ehn, 1992). This design approach
attempts to actively involve all stakeholders in the design process to ensure that the product
16 |
design meets their needs. Identifying stakeholders’ values is essential in participatory design.
Besides, a frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation, which is a collection of
anecdotes and stereotypes (Goffman, 1974). Each person whose personality and culture are
different from other persons may have different values. Participatory design and frame analysis
are appropriate foundations for analyzing values for a variety of people.
1.4. Contribution
The contribution of this dissertation is as follows:
Navigate human behavior towards human well-being
In order to solve various problems in society, it is needed to change human behavior. Changing
the behavior of individuals and overall community contributes to the realization of sustainable
society. However, only considering behavior change is not sufficient to realize flourished society.
Navigating only human behavior is not equal to navigating human behavior with maintaining
human well-being. Gamification improves the navigation process by using games’ power;
however, gamification focusing on only game mechanics tends to encourage only human
behavior. An original “game” can encourage human behavior with maintaining human well-being.
Our research reconsiders the games’ full power to realize human well-being and contributes to
use it as a form of gameful digital rhetoric.
Provide design abstractions as a form of gameful digital rhetoric
Even if we discuss the semiotic aspects of navigation in terms of cultural studies, it would not
be useful if we cannot apply the concepts to the real world. Our design abstraction, gameful
digital rhetoric including both the rhetoric and the value can be easily incorporated into the real
world. Through the overall dissertation, we justify the usefulness of gameful digital rhetoric
through multidisciplinary literature surveys, our experiences in designing and developing
information services, and their experiments and analyses dealing with gameful digital rhetoric.
As a whole, our research provides useful guidelines to incorporate the semiotic factors with
information technologies as a form of gameful digital rhetoric.
Incorporate virtuality and fictionality into the real world through information
technologies
We focus on game’s aesthetic aspects including virtuality and fictionality as an authentic games’
power. Adding gameful digital rhetoric enhances the meaning of the existing objects in the real
world in order to influence human behavior, and increases human motivation through virtuality
and fictionality. In this dissertation, we show various examples adding virtuality and fictionality
to objects in the real world through information technologies such as crowdsourcing and
ubiquitous computing technologies.
Figure 1.4 shows an overview of the above three contributions.
| 17
Figure 1.4
An Oveerview of Reesearch Contribution
C
Complemen
nt the existin
ng game-relaated researcches
As w
we mentioned
d in Section 1.2, there ar
are a lot of game-related
g
research terrms: gamificcation,
seriouus games, games
g
with a purpose, nnewsgames and
a so on. Our
O researchh complemen
nts the
existiing game-rellated research
hes to navigaate people to
owards humaan well-beingg by enhancing the
meanning of the real world, as shown in the Figu
ure 1.1 in Section
S
1.2.66. In additiion to
incorrporating gam
me mechaniccs, combiningg the rhetoriccal and emotiional aspectss by playing digital
d
gamees and incorp
porating the power into the real wo
orld are usefu
ul to enhancee our world.. As a
resultt, we can usee games’ full power and aapply it to th
he real world..
N
Navigate co
ollective hum
man behavioor by using crowdsourccing and divverse elements of
ggameful digiital rhetoric
As ddescribed in Section 1.2.7, coordinaating collectiive action iss important to realize human
h
well-being. We in
nvestigate ho
ow to design collective hu
uman behaviior in crowdssourcing by using
gamef
eful digital rhetoric
r
and show the ppossibility to
o navigate co
ollective hum
man behavio
or. We
18 |
define various kinds of the rhetoric and the value as a form of the Rhetoric-based Design
Framework and the Value-based Design Framework, which we introduce in Chapter 5 and
Chapter 6. Besides, we show the efficacy of them based on both the existing theory and our
experiences from some case studies. The variety of gameful digital rhetoric contributes to
influence diverse people in the society, which is useful to navigate collective human behavior.
1.5. Dissertation Overview
This dissertation is structured as follows.
Chapter 1 presents an introduction of the research and dissertation’s overview.
Chapter 2 proposes two models, GamiRhetoric Model and GamiValue Model. The GamiRhetoric
Model defines six frames of rhetoric to examine how to enhance meaning of virtual objects and
the GamiValue Model defines eight frames to attach values to virtual objects. Through analysis of
an existing digital game by using the GamiRhetoric/GamiValue Model and some experiments,
we provide design guideline to incorporate gameful digital rhetoric into the real world.
Chapter 3 explains a case study about a community-based mobile crowdsourcing system named
Micro-Crowdfunding as a platform system for encouraging collective action.
Micro-Crowdfunding is a crowdsourcing architecture that is based on the crowdfunding concept
for encouraging people to increase their awareness of how important it is to sustain small,
common resources. It aims at motivating people to participate in achieving a sustainable society.
In this chapter, we explain the basic design and implementation of Micro-Crowdfunding and
provide experimental results which show how economic and social factors are effective in
facilitating Micro-Crowdfunding.
Chapter 4 proposes Augmented Trading Card Game (Augmented TCG) system as a case study of
incorporating virtual objects into the real world. Augmented TCG enhances remote trading card
game play with virtual characters used in the fictional stories of popular animations and games.
In this chapter, we introduce the basic design and implementation of Augmented TCG and show
some experiments about enhancing physical artifacts with virtuality and fictionality. We also
discuss how our approach can be extended to design a new type of transmedia storytelling by
considering Augmented TCG as one form of transmedia storytelling.
Chapter 5 investigates how to design collective human behavior in crowdsourcing by using
gameful digital rhetoric. The first topic of this chapter is to extract seven insights from our
experiences in building and operating three community-based mobile crowdsourcing services:
Micro-Crowdfunding, MoboQ, and BianYi and justify these insights through multidisciplinary
literature surveys. The second topic is to present the Rhetoric-based Design Framework which
enhance the GamiRhetoric Model in Chapter 2 to match with the real world by using the above
seven insights for designing gameful digital rhetoric. We present Collectivist Crowdsourcing,
which is a concrete example using the Rhetoric-based Design Framework and show two
scenarios to enhance the basic strategy. Finally, we discuss several challenges of the current
approach.
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Chapter 6 focuses on the intelligent artifacts enhanced by virtuality and fictionality to influence
human behavior. The first topic is to present the Value-based Design Framework which
enhances the GamiValue Model in Chapter 2 to navigate human behavior in the real world. We
show the validity of this framework based on multidisciplinary literature surveys and three case
studies: Augmented TCG, Augmented Go, and Virtual Aquarium. The second topic is how to
apply the Value-based Design Framework to analyze the values of digital-physical hybrid
artifacts. In addition, we show present design implications to apply the Value-based Design
Framework to analyze and enhance intelligent artifact.
Chapter 7 presents some design patterns to keep reality when we incorporate gameful digital
rhetoric including fictionality into the real world. The proposed design patterns cover three
aspects. The first aspect is to exploit visual reality. The second aspect is to exploit ideological
messages in fictional stories. The third aspect is to compose multiple fictional stories. This
chapter also shows a case study to motivate and gamify to join the Haiku contest by increasing
the awareness of the importance of the contest. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the
proposed design patterns.
Chapter 8 provides a summary of this dissertation and concludes our research.
20 |
| 21
Chapter 2 Gameful Digital Rhetoric
2.1. Introduction
In this chapter, we propose two models based on the concepts typically used in digital games to
assist in the design and analysis of gameful digital rhetoric. The first model is the GamiRhetoric
Model, which defines six frames to examine how to enhance the meaning of virtual object. The
second model is the GamiValue Model, which defines eight frames to attach value to virtual
objects. Gameful digital rhetoric includes two design abstractions, “rhetoric” and “value” which
informs, persuades and inspires human behavior and influences emotion as we mentioned in
Chapter 1. The GamiRhetoric Model contains the rhetoric, which extracts the abstraction of
digital games, arranges it in terms of the rhetorical aspect, and the GamiValue Model is
constructed of the value which is related to the emotional aspect when playing digital games.
Each item of the rhetoric or the value does not always exist independently. A digital game
contains various types of the rhetoric and the value. In this chapter, we analyze an existing
digital game and show how the models are used in the game. Additionally, we discuss ways to
enhance the meaning in both the game world and the real world through multiple media channels.
We also conduct experiments about how the rhetoric in the GamiRhetoric Model influences
human behavior in the real world. This analysis becomes a first step to incorporate gameful
digital rhetoric into the real world with a natural form.
2.2. Frameworks for Analyzing Games’ Power
2.2.1. GamiRhetoric Model
The GamiRhetoric Model shown in Figure 2.1 is a semiotic model for designing gameful digital
rhetoric to make the digital world meaningful that consists of six types of rhetoric: curious
rhetoric, narrative rhetoric, collective rhetoric, procedural rhetoric, social rhetoric and economic
rhetoric. The model is influenced by the MDA framework, which is a popular model to analyze
digital games.
22 |
Figure 2.1
GamiRhetoric Modell
The ccurious rheto
oric influencees people thrrough our five senses, such as visual annd auditory, which
offer us emotionaal engagemen
nt, such as int
nterest, happiness or comffort, and incrrease our curriosity,
motivvating our acctivities. The narrative rhhetoric contaains an argum
ment specifieed into a narrrative.
A typpical narrative teaches peo
ople what theey should do in their ideall daily life annd has two ty
ypes of
aspeccts. The first aspect is desscribing ideollogical messages in the narrative,
n
andd the second aspect
a
conceerns goal setting in the narrative. T
The collectivve rhetoric presents
p
peopple’s accumu
ulated
effortts, and is one of essentiaal motivationns for peoplee to continuee their effortss. The proceedural
rhetooric was pressented by Bo
ogost, who sstated that itt involves th
he practice oof using proccesses
persuuasively (Bog
gost, 2008). This
T type of rhetoric is peculiar to dig
gital games, w
which work based
on intteractions beetween the game
g
world aand a game player. Finallly, the sociaal rhetoric an
nd the
econoomic rhetoriic offer norm
ms, rules andd mechanism
ms for interaactions amonng people th
hat are
typicaally used to coordinate collective
c
acttion in the real world. These
T
rhetoricc includes various
sociaal mechanism
ms, such ass market ecconomy, giftt economy, altruistic soociety, battle and
role-pplaying mech
hanisms, wh
hich are also typical undeerlying mech
hanisms usedd in popular digital
d
gamees.
As foor using the frame
f
of the GamiRhetorric Model, en
nhancing the meaningfulnness added to
o each
framee is importan
nt. The agen
ncy and imm
mersion properties are useful conceptts that are used in
videoo games to make
m
objectss more meanningful (Frassca, 2001). The
T agency pproperty relaates to
whethher participaants can con
ntrol the effeects in their activities, an
nd the immeersion propeerty to
whethher the effects reflect thee players’ reaal activities without
w
violatting reality.
2.2.2.
2
Gam
miValue Moodel
Theree are some reesearches thaat focus on thhe concept off value to design attractivve products. Using
valuees has recenttly been reco
ognized as aan importantt design approach to devveloping dessirable
inform
mation serviices (Boztepe, 2007) (Frriedman, et al., 2006) (Cockton,
(
20006). In anallyzing
digitaal games, it is useful to summarize ssystematically what valu
ues players ffeel toward digital
d
gamees.
The G
GamiValue Model
M
is sho
own in Figuure 2.2. The values in th
he model aree extracted from
f
a
semiootic point off view (Kripp
pendorff, 20005), and thee model defines eight fraames to attacch the
follow
wing valuess to virtual objects: em
mpathetic va
alue, informative value,, aesthetic value,
stimuulative valuee, serene vallue, commonn value, raree value and ideological
i
vvalue. We fix
f the
GamiiValue Modeel through thee delphi cardd sorting metthod (Paul, 2008).
2
| 23
Figure 2.22
GamiVa
alue Model
The eempathetic value
v
is effecctiveness in evoking peo
ople’s emotio
ons. Empathy
hy engages people,
makinng them feell close to the empatheticc form, regarrdless of wh
hether it is a living being
g. The
inform
mative valuee is the utility
y of the infoormation in helping
h
peop
ple make bettter decisionss. The
aesthhetic value is an importan
nt concept in making artiffacts more attractive. Aessthetics is a branch
b
of phhilosophy add
dressing the nature of artt, beauty, and
d taste and th
he creation an
and appreciattion of
beautty. The stim
mulative valu
ue arouses ppeople’s senses through feelings succh as exciteement,
surprrise, thrill, an
nd enthusiasm
m. The serenee value is alsso related to players’ feelilings; however, the
valuee is serene, co
ontaining callmness, warm
mth, comfortt and relaxation. The com
mmon value an
nd the
rare vvalue are gen
nerated in so
ocial commuunity. Objectss with comm
mon value aree considered
d to be
valuaable by many
y people. Forr example, oobjects with popularity,
p
su
uch as fashioonable and faamous
brandds, have the common
c
valu
ue. In contrasst, objects wiith the rare value are uniqque and difficcult to
obtainn. Some objects with hig
gh rarity enaable their ow
wners to feell self-esteem
m by showing
g their
statuss. What is here referred to
o as the ideollogical valuee is the notion
n of influenciing users’ thiinking
and bbehavior thro
ough influenccing their attiitudes and vaalues—in oth
her words, edducating userrs on a
deepeer level.
2.3. Anaalyzing Rh
hetorical Aspects oof the Existing Gam
me
In thhis section, we analyze the digital game Pokkémon published by Niintendo usin
ng the
GamiiRhetoric Moodel and the GamiValue M
Model. We can observe th
he types of rh
rhetoric and values
v
that eexist in Pokéémon-related
d media. Thee basic conccepts of Pokkémon are baattling and getting
g
Pokém
mon through
hout the game story. Som
me players plaace value on the battles, w
while others value
colleccting and am
massing Pokéémon. Havingg sold more than
t
two hun
ndred millionn and sixty million
m
24 |
copies22, the Pokémon video game software provides much value for players all over the world.
Additionally, Pokémon is an open game, which means that enjoyment can be felt even outside of
the game. The Pokémon world contains multiple media channels through which the details of the
world are defined using a transmedia storytelling, including Pokémon-related animation, movies,
comics, card games, festivals, amusement parks and character goods. Transmedia storytelling is
the technique of telling a story or story experience across multiple media or platforms (Dena,
2010) (Ruppel, 2012). In Pokémon, Each media is synergized with the game, and much of the
rhetoric and the value exist in each media in addition to the game itself.
2.3.1. Rhetoric in Pokémon Game
The Pokémon game contains all six types of rhetoric of the GamiRhetoric Model presented in
Section 2.2.1. The visuals of various Pokémon, the visuals and sounds of each city that the player
visits and the brave battle scenes become parts of the curious rhetoric. Because there are over
seven hundred Pokémon23 in the game, the possibility that there are some Pokémon fitting a
player’s preferences is high. These characteristics enhance the agency and the immersion
properties. Additionally, for a player, getting his/her favorite Pokémon and exploring his/her
favorite city strengthen the bond between the player’s interest and the game world. They also
increase the agency property.
The collective rhetoric is added by the elements of badges, experience points and Pokédex24. The
Pokédex heightens the agency property because the recorded Pokémon are only those that players
have got or met. Additionally, the entire game relies on the mechanisms of supporting
incremental achievement following the player’s level. The strong relationship between the game
and the players’ activities contributes to increasing the agency and immersion properties.
In the Pokémon game, a player advances in the game following the game’s story. The story of
the Pokémon world contains ideological messages, such as coexistence and friendship between
players, who are called Pokémon trainers, and Pokémon. These factors provide the narrative
rhetoric. The narrative rhetoric containing the reality and the agency property are generated by
the story progressing based on the player’s control.
Pokémon game has basic mechanisms, such as the elements of getting, battling and exchanging
Pokémon. These elements have the characteristics of the procedural rhetoric. Players get
Pokémon by throwing a Poké Ball to Pokémon, which means that the player and Pokémon
become friends; this feature is one of the main themes Pokémon world. We can only execute these
types of activities in the digital world. The procedural rhetoric adds the agency and the
immersion property with immediate feedback through the interactions between the player and the
digital world.
22
http://www.pokemon.co.jp/corporate/business/ (The number is based on the data on March, 2014.)
23
The number is based on the data on October, 2014.
24
Pokédex is an illustrated guide that includes Pokémon’s data.
| 25
A Player undertakes the basic actions of battling and exchanging Pokémon as a Pokémon trainer
with non-player characters in digital world; however, they can perform these activities with actual
people. The existence of actual relationships and interaction among players is a part of the social
rhetoric. The economic rhetoric, such as virtual economy and the rarity of Pokémon, also exists in
the game world. The social rhetoric and the economic rhetoric provide a strong relationship to the
real world. This rhetoric gives digital games reality, which is crucial in increasing the agency and
the immersion property.
2.3.2. Values in Pokémon Game
In this section, we discuss the value in each type of rhetoric as described in the above section.
Regarding the curious rhetoric, players can derive the aesthetic value from the graphics of cities
and landscapes in the game and the empathetic value from the Pokémon, which look similar to
players. The empathetic value is also generated by the Pokémon that the player gets and raises.
This effect is related to the collective rhetoric and the narrative rhetoric. The sources of the value
differ depending on the situation. If the source that generates empathy concerns only Pokémon’s
visual appearance, then only the curious rhetoric influences players. However, players can also
empathize with Pokémon because they have spent substantial time together and had dramatic
interactions with the Pokémon. In that case, a player’s Pokémon cannot be replaced by other
Pokémon, although they share an identical visual appearance. The key factors are the collective
rhetoric and the narrative rhetoric. A description of brave and thoughtful characters or a story
containing the coexistence of people and Pokémon includes the ideological factors and conveys
the ideological value through the narrative rhetoric. The procedural rhetoric can provide various
values. The variations among Pokémon and their moves during battle enable players to consider
infinite strategies. This variation relates to the informative value by enhancing the possibility that
the players will make decisions through their preferred methods. During the blistering battle,
players can feel the stimulative value. An interaction with Pokémon is part of the procedural
rhetoric and provides significant serene value for Pokémon fans. The social rhetoric and the
economic rhetoric generate values among social communities. Getting particularly popular
Pokémon is connected to the common value; in contrast, getting rare Pokémon generates the rare
value.
2.3.3. Enhancing Rhetoric and Value through Other Media
Pokémon is an open game with which many media are synergized. The analysis in this section
explains how the original game derives additional rhetoric and value through other media, such as
animation, movie, festival events, toys and other goods.
Animation is strongly related to the narrative rhetoric. Although the actor who performs the
actions of getting Pokémon, battling, and exploring is the player himself/herself in the digital
game, the performer of these actions is an animated character in the animation. Then, a translation
of the narrative rhetoric occurs. This process encourages audiences to think deeply about
ideological aspects, such as the importance of bravery, friendship and challenge. It increases the
ideological value. Regarding the Pokémon-related events, the curious rhetoric is incorporated
into them. The curious rhetoric from participating in the real world events enhances the agency
26 |
and the immersion, which leads the participants to feel great interest in the game and empathy for
the characters. Additionally, Pokémon events often contain the collective rhetoric with the
economic value because there are some rare Pokémon that can only be got at the events. The
experience of participating in the events becomes visible in the form of collecting rare Pokémon
in the digital world. The Pokémon movie is screened every year, and players can get rare Pokémon
related to the movie. The main Pokémon in the movie often have background stories in which the
narrative rhetoric defines the meaning of the Pokémon’s existence. This type of story enhances
the empathetic value of the Pokémon. In the real world, collection of Pokémon goods alters the
collection of digital Pokémon. It is also the collective rhetoric, which can generate the empathetic
value, the rare value and the serene value. The tangibility of the real goods increases the rare
value.
In Pokémon, the combination of many types of rhetoric immerses players in the Pokémon world.
One of Pokémon’s main themes, collection is comparatively easy to incorporate into the real
world while maintaining consistency. Manufacturing goods relating to many types of Pokémon
provokes empathy in many people. Another main theme, battle, is also easy to realize in the real
world because there are many physical games involving battle between people using objects, such
as chess, poker and other card games. Various media can support realizing aspects such as
collection and battle, which make the contents of Pokémon more attractive. In these ways, the
narrative of the virtual Pokémon world, whose leading character is the player himself/herself,
enters the real world.
2.4. Incorporating Gameful Digital Rhetoric into the Real World
We analyze gameful digital rhetoric in digital games synergized with other media in Section 2.3.
In this section, we discuss incorporating gameful digital rhetoric into the real world to make the
real world meaningful and valuable. Through the analysis of the existing game with the
GamiRhetoric Model and the GamiValue Models in Section 2.3, we found that there are both
appropriate and inappropriate cases in which to incorporate gameful digital rhetoric into the real
world.
Incorporating the social rhetoric and the economic rhetoric into the real world tends to succeed
because these factors exist in the real world by nature. The collective rhetoric is also easy to use.
For example, the collection of cards, seals or other goods prevails among many people. If the
theme of collection is consistent in the game world, then many fans consider collection
meaningful and valuable. In particular, the collection of tangible things in the real world increases
the agency and the immersion properties. Regarding the curious rhetoric, we must consider the
boundary between the digital fictional world and the real world. Embodying the virtual characters
in the real world through the ubiquitous computing technologies is a relatively easy method by
which to enhance the real world; however, the degree of the influence depends on the target
individual. People who think that there is a strong boundary between the digital fictional world
and the real world consider the embodied object meaningless. Therefore, the curious rhetoric
loses its power as rhetoric. However, whether the fusion of gameful digital rhetoric and the real
world succeeds is influenced by the game’s theme. In cases in which the main theme in the digital
| 27
world is also universal in the real world, such as the theme of “love” or “music”, we can blur the
boundary because we can feel reality in the theme. We must pay attention to incorporate the
narrative rhetoric. When incorporating a fictional narrative into the real world, it is possible to
enhance the agency property. Role-playing by playing a fictional role in the real world without
losing one’s grasp on reality is effective in incorporating gameful digital rhetoric into the real
world. However, when the audience of a narrative loses their sense of reality, they cannot play a
fictional role because they are aware that the narrative remains inside the fictional world, which
has no direct relationship to the real world. Then, the rhetoric can exist only in the fictional world,
and it hardly influences the audience’s behavior and thinking in the real world. Although the
audience of a realistic narrative may understand the meaning in the narrative, giving only a
realistic narrative becomes less valuable. We must consider the tradeoff between the degree of
reality and fictionality when we use the narrative.
To evaluate the influence of gameful digital rhetoric in the real world, we conducted some
experiments. These experiments are a first step in considering how to incorporate gameful digital
rhetoric into the real world. In the experiments, we discuss the following three aspects, which are
often found in games: storytelling, gift economy, and feedback. The types of the rhetoric and the
value do not always exist independently, and a scene will include a few different types of the
rhetoric and the value. Consequently, it is useful to consider the influence of the gameful digital
rhetoric based on a general scene.
Six people (five male and one female) participated in the experiment, and their ages ranged from
21 to 28. We created some situations based on each scene described above, and the participants
completed questionnaires under various configurations. This discussion is useful for influencing
human behavior by incorporating games’ power as a form of gameful digital rhetoric into the real
world.
2.4.1. Analysis of Storytelling for Encouraging Collective Action
The experiment investigated a style of a narrative. The aim of the experiment was to investigate
whether a narrative in a game has a greater effect than a narrative in traditional media, such as a
book or movie.
In this experiment, each participant was presented with two types of narratives that were used in
the two configurations. Both narratives represented the necessity of participating in collective
action to achieve a sustainable society; however, the manners of presenting the narratives differed.
The first narrative was written from a third-person perspective that contained many general
sentences (e.g. “Recently, the environmental problem has become serious.” or “To solve the
environmental problem, it is important for many people to co-operate.”). Conversely, the second
narrative contained sentences from a first-person perspective, as if the reader were a person who
was concerned about the problem and performed concrete activities to protect nature, with a style
typically used in digital games. Additionally, the second narrative expressed the influences of
collective action with concrete roles or numbers (e.g. “You are the chosen person with the special
power to save the world.” or “If you set the temperature of your air-conditioner even one degree
higher, you can reduce your use of CO2 by 33 kg and save 1,800 yen in a year.”).
28 |
After the experiment, we asked the participants’ opinions about the two configurations. The
participants answered the following questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale. Here, 5 was the most
positive answer (e.g. excellent, very good, strongly agree, I could absolutely), and 1 was the most
negative answer (e.g. very bad, strongly disagree, I couldn’t at all).
Q2.1: Can you understand the importance of taking some action to contribute to solving the
environmental problems?
Q2.2: Do you intend to take some action to contribute to solving the environmental problems?
In Q2.1, the acceptability of the first narrative was 4.00, and that of the second narrative was 4.17.
In Q2.2, the acceptability of the first narrative was 2.83 and of second narrative 4.00. The score of
the second narrative exceeded that of the first narrative in both Q2.1 and Q2.2. All of the
participants responded that the experiment with the second narrative motivated them more than
the first narrative. In the first narrative, participants answered, “I can understand that
environmental problems are important issues, but I cannot understand how the problem is related
to me.” and “I cannot imagine what I can do to help solve the problems or what the effect of my
current behavior is on our society.” Conversely, with the second narrative, one participant stated,
“It is easy to understand the importance because there were some examples of concrete activities
and concrete numbers.” and “I feel a sense of closeness with the narrative.” From the results of
the experiments, we argue that the second narrative provided more of the agency property than the
first narrative; then, the narrative rhetoric became more powerful as rhetoric in the second
narrative. The style of narratives significantly affects human behavior, and some ideas from
digital games are useful in creating better narrative. Specifically, a digital game typically uses
narrative from the first-person perspective, and both the curious rhetoric and the collective
rhetoric can augment the narrative to present concrete information to complement the information
presented in the narratives. Incorporating strong narrative rhetoric through games' power, such as
providing the first-person perspective, visualizing concrete numbers with scores or points, and
procedural representation based on players' control contribute to increasing the informative value,
allowing better decision making. It is a promising way to provide the agency property to
encourage participants to take desirable actions. It can also enhance the ideological value, leading
people to think at a deeper level.
2.4.2. Analysis of Gift Economy
In this experiment, we compared the effects of a favorite person/character and a human stranger,
and each participant experiences two configurations with a favorite person/character and a human
stranger. In the experiment, we also investigated how a participant has positive feelings toward a
gift received from his/her favorite person/character. After the experiment, we asked the following
questions to each participant, similar to those in Section 2.4.1.
Q2.3: Under the condition that “you are given a gift by your favorite person/character”, please
answer the following questions I – III.
Q2.4: Under the condition that “you are given a gift by a stranger”, please answer the following
questions I – III.
| 29
I: How much happiness do you feel?
II: How much rarity do you feel about the gift?
III: How much reciprocity do you feel when you are asked for a favor?
In Q2.3-I and Q2.3-III, all of the participants’ answers were 5.00, and in Q2.3-II, the average was
also high, 4.50. In contrast, the results related to the gift from the stranger recorded low scores.
The average degree of happiness was 2.33, rarity was 2.50, and reciprocity was also 2.33. For all
of the questions, all of the participants responded that the experiment with a favorite
person/character gave them more delight than an interaction with a stranger. With a favorite
person/character, one participant answered, “I want to cherish and reciprocate a gift if I was given
a gift by my favorite.” and another participant said, “I think I cherish the gift more than had I
bought it by myself.” Conversely, a participant who received a gift from a stranger said, “It [the
degree of happiness] depends on whether the gift is pleasant or useful for me.” There were some
negative opinions, such as “I have doubts when a stranger gives me a gift.” or “The gift from a
stranger is terrible.” This result shows that the curious rhetoric did not work well in the case of a
stranger. Gifts from strangers are not sufficiently meaningful to generate emotional benefits,
especially the empathetic value and the economic value. Although being ‘given a gift’ is the same
in both configurations, the attitude of participants was largely different. The important factor to
motivate people appears not to be a mechanism, such as a ‘gift’, but rather the meaning attached
to the mechanism. Focusing exclusively on the mechanism may create a danger of rendering a
service meaningless. Additionally, we suggest that building relationships among friendly
community members results in better influences on participants’ attitudes and behavior because
the empathetic human - even if virtual - evokes a positive feeling about the experience among
participants.
2.4.3. Analysis of Feedback
Feedback is one of the frequently used technologies in the area of the persuasion technology.
Feedback with visual or sound information can influence people through the five human senses;
consequently, it is related to the curious rhetoric. In addition, long-term accumulated feedback
contains the collective rhetoric. To influence human behavior, we can use both positive and
negative feedback. Therefore, we focus on the influence of positive and negative feedback in the
experiment. All the participants answered the following questions under the assumption that they
were trying to undertake desirable behavior to achieve their aims and use an information service
that reflected the status or results of their behavior.
Q2.5: If your information service temporarily shows your very favorite objects, what do you think
this means?
Q2.6: If your information service temporarily shows your hated objects, what do you think this
means?
In Q2.5, participants stated about their favorite objects “I have achieved my goal or I have
overcome some stages toward my goal.” and “I tend to take desirable actions.” All the
participants’ answers were related to positive things. In contrast, the answers to Q2.6, such as “I
30 |
have failed to achieve my goal.” and “I tend to take undesirable actions.” showed that the
participants had a negative impression of the feedback. Although we did not tell the details of the
“information service” in Q2.5 and Q2.6. to the participants and the feedback was temporary, it
was effective in conveying the meaning whether or not the participants’ behavior was desirable.
After the participants answered the above questions, we added the following conditions: “The
information service in Q2.5 is the service that shows “your behavior is desirable for your goal”
by using representations of your very favorite objects. The information service in Q2.6 is the
service that shows “your behavior is undesirable for your goal” by using representations of your
hated objects.” Then, we asked the following questions.
Q2.7: Please answer the following questions I – II when you understand the meaning of services
in Q2.5.
Q2.8: Please answer the following questions I – II when you understand the meaning of services
in Q2.6.
I: Do you want to continue your desirable action in the future?
II: Do you want to continue to use this service in the future?
The average was 4.50 in both Q2.7-I and Q2.7-II. One reason for the higher scores is reflected in
one participant’s answer, “I feel pleasant because my good behavior shows good representation.”
Another participant answered, “I feel I should do my best in order to see my favorite object.” We
argue that continuous positive feedback, which is classified as the collective rhetoric, is effective
in encouraging users to continue their desirable behavior. In Q2.8-I, the average was 4.17,
indicating that negative feedback can also motivate users to undertake desirable behavior.
However, the average in Q2.8-II was 2.33. A participant said “I do not want to see my hated thing.”
Other participant said “Even if I reconsider my undesirable behavior, I may search for a different
way to perform desirable behavior without using the service because I reject my hated thing too
strongly.” Although negative feedback conveys the meaning about something bad, negative
collective rhetoric is not undesirable to guide behavior because users avoid having a relationship
with the services. Negative feedback is meaningful, but does not provide the value.
2.4.4. Summary and Discussion
The above experiments and analyses include different gameful digital rhetoric in each scene.
Games are complex forms that contain many elements, such as game mechanics, dynamics, and
virtual expressions. Therefore, it is important to consider games from framing aspects. Discussion
based on the frames provided by the GamiRhetoric Model and the GamiValue Model presents
some useful knowledge to incorporate gameful digital rhetoric into the real world.
We extract design guidelines to incorporate gameful digital rhetoric from our experiments. The
guidelines are as follows:
I: Regarding the narrative rhetoric, providing narrative with a first-person perspective helps
move people. This style of narrative increases the agency and the informative value.
| 31
II: Regarding the curious rhetoric, using an empathetic object is effective. It increases the
empathetic value, the rare value and others. When a person considers the object something
that is unrelated to him/her, and especially views it as a stranger, the person’s feelings may be
negatively affected.
III: Regarding the collective rhetoric, showing some positive expressions contributes to
motivating a person. Positive expressions lead the person to have positive feelings, such as the
stimulative value and the serene value.
Because the experiments in Section 2.4 are part of an entire gameful digital rhetoric, it is
necessary to investigate the efficiency of various frames based on more scenes. We must conduct
more case studies to improve our models. However, we believe that this guideline is a promising
tool to enhance the meaning of the real world through gameful digital rhetoric.
2.5. Conclusion
In this chapter, we propose two models based on the concepts typically used in digital games to
assist in the design and analysis of gameful digital rhetoric, which is useful to enhance the
meaning of the real world. The first model is the GamiRhetoric Model, which defines six frames
to examine how to enhance the meaning of virtual object. The second model is the GamiValue
Model, which defines eight frames to attach value to virtual objects. We show how the rhetoric
and the value are used in digital games by analyzing the digital game Pokémon. Additionally, we
discuss a way to enhance the rhetoric and the value in both the game world and the real world
through multiple media channels. Our analyses show how the rhetoric in the GamiRhetoric Model
and the value in the GamiValue Model successfully influence human behavior in the real world.
The objective of our research is to navigate people towards human well-being by enhancing the
meaning of the real world with information technologies. As a first step toward achieving this
objective, we provide gameful digital rhetoric defined by the GamiRhetoric Model and the
GamiValue Model. We enhance these models in order to apply them to navigate people in the
real world and create the Rhetoric-based Design Framework and the Value-based Design
Framework. There are some differences between the GamiRhetoric/GamiValue Model and
Rhetoric-based/Value-based Design Framework because the former focus on the digital world
and the latter target the human behavior in the real world. We introduce the Rhetoric-based
Design Framework in Chapter 5 and the Value-based Design Framework in Chapter 6.
32 |
| 33
Chapter 3 Case Study I: Micro-Crowdfunding
3.1. Introduction
This chapter explains a case study about a community-based mobile crowdsourcing system
named Micro-Crowdfunding as a platform system for encouraging collective action 25 .
Micro-Crowdfunding is a new type of community-based crowdsourcing architecture that is based
on the crowdfunding concept and uses the local currency idea as a tool for encouraging people to
increase their awareness of how important it is to sustain small, common resources through their
minimum efforts. It aims at motivating people to participate in achieving a sustainable society.
Micro-Crowdfunding present small tasks as a form of micro-mission and we gamify the basic
concept of the micro-mission by introducing the mechanical rhetoric such as virtual currency,
role-playing and social interaction among community members.
In this chapter, we present the basic concept of Micro-Crowdfunding and its prototype system.
We describe several experimental results which show how economic and social factors are
effective in facilitating Micro-Crowdfunding. Our results show that Micro-Crowdfunding
increases the awareness about social sustainability, and we believe that Micro-Crowdfunding
makes it possible to motivate people for achieving a sustainable society.
3.2. Background
3.2.1. The Necessity of Collective Action
Free resources that are shared by a number of people, such as public toilets or natural environment,
tend to be overused as a consequence of the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968). This problem
occurs because each individual derives a personal benefit from using the resource, whereas any
25
This chapter is based on the following paper:
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Micro-Crowdfunding: Achieving a Sustainable Society through Economic
and Social Incentives in Micro-Level Crowdfunding,” In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on
Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Article No. 29, Dec. 2013.
34 |
costs are shared among all of the users; this circumstances then lead to inconsiderate use. An
example of such behavior is the wasteful use of free plastic shopping bags, which are filling
landfills. A common strategy for addressing the tragedy of the commons is to impose a tax on the
use of the resource. An environmental tax can be widely adopted for covering the cost of
maintaining the resources. However, for taxpayers, it is not clear how the tax is used for
maintaining each common resource that is shared by the members of the community. People must
experience a feeling of having contributed to the sustainability of the resource to be motivated to
pay the necessary cost.
A wide range of studies have been published that connect questions of environmental
sustainability and ecological responsibility to topics in Human Computer Interaction (HCI).
DiSalvo et al. present a comprehensive review of this research (DiSalvo, et al., 2010). They note a
broad focus on individual rather than collective action, on information technologies as a
persuasive force in attitude and behavior change, and on the adoption of existing HCI methods,
tools, and theories as a means to a solution. Specifically, they note a shortage of papers that
conceive of environmental sustainability as a problem that has a significant political aspect.
A community-based approach overcomes this issue. With such an approach, a community
member can propose a mission for maintaining the community’s sustainability, and other
members of the community can then complete the mission. However, members usually do not
have enough time to contribute to a mission. In particular, people who live in urban areas are very
busy and have large numbers of commitments. Therefore, they usually forget the importance of
sustainability in our society. In our daily environments, we have numerous small, common
resources that require a high cost for maintenance if the government, nonprofit organizations and
individual companies take care of them. However, maintaining these resources typically
necessitates missions that can be achieved with a small amount of effort in a person’s spare time.
In our urban life, we usually have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of small amounts of
spare time.
Crowdfunding is an emerging method of funding new ideas or projects by borrowing money from
crowds. If the benefit of participating crowdfunding is of high scarcity value, it has a high
incentive for the contributors. However, existing crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter,
which is one of the most popular crowdfunding infrastructures, require participants to contribute
real money; thus, only people who have extra money can participate.
3.2.2. Digital Currency
Micro-payments have been used in a variety of e-commerce services. First, they were introduced
as a potential method for measuring Web content usage through users paying for page visits to a
site (Geer, 2004). Recently, micro-payments have become a popular transaction mechanism for
buying music and applications (Rivest & Shamir, 1997). They have also played an important role
in controlling free-riders in peer-to-peer systems by charging individuals for downloads and
replenishing credit based on sharing habits (Golle, et al., 2001). Finally, micro-payments have
been explored as a method for altering consumer behavior, aiming to improve sustainable habits
(Yamabe, et al., 2009).
| 35
Local currency refers to complementary currency used only in a defined region. Aging money is a
typical currency system in which local currency is used (Gesell, 1958). People can use local
currency only within a region for local and small-scale money circulation, where the currency can
be used as payment in a local shopping area or as a token of gratitude for volunteer work. Local
currency has been drawing attention as a means to reactivate a community or stimulate a regional
economy. In Japan, specifically, the NHK satellite television broadcast of “Michael Ende’s Last
Message: Questioning Money from Its Roots” and the book published on the program26 became a
catalyst for local currency efforts, and the broadcast and the book had a substantial influence on a
large number of regional Japanese communities. In Japan, more than 660 local currencies
currently exist27, including a currency named Rate28, issued by Sanjo City in Niigata Prefecture. r29
is a local currency used around the Shibuya region in Tokyo, issued by Earth Day Money
Association, and it has further spread from that region. Also, outside of Japan, there are
well-known local currencies, such as Ithaca HOURS30, used in Ithaca, New York State, USA, and
Local Exchange Trading System (LETSystem)31, which began in Canada and has spread to other
countries, such as the United Kingdom and Australia.
3.3. Micro-Crowdfunding
3.3.1. Basic Concept
In this section, we introduce the basic concept of Micro-Crowdfunding, which aims at increasing
people’s awareness of the importance of sustaining our society and navigating people to
participate in achieving a sustainable society. In traditional community-based crowdsourcing
systems, completing tasks is motivated through social incentives, and then individuals complete
the tasks through their own spirit of reciprocity for strangers. This incentive is not strong enough
to complete the micro-missions referenced in Micro-Crowdfunding. In Micro-Crowdfunding,
completing micro-missions is motivated within a community whose members are known to each
other. An economic incentive is also used to motivate the community members to complete the
tasks, but the incentive is not in the form of a monetary reward. Instead, Micro-Crowdfunding
increases people’s awareness of the meaning behind completing micro-missions, thereby
increasing their motivation to complete the micro-missions. Using mobile phones is also a key
factor in lowering the hurdle for contributing to the community. Its members increase their
activities in the face of smaller incentives because activities can be performed anytime and
anywhere in community-based crowdsourcing, as shown in (Liu, et al., 2012).
26
Ende’s Last Message, https://www.nhk-book.co.jp/shop/main.jsp?trxID=C5010101&webCode=00804962000
27
The number is based on the data on January, 2011.
28
Rate: Sanjo City’s Local Currency, http://www.city.sanjo.niigata.jp/seisaku/page00240.html, In Japanese
29
r: Earthday Money’s Local Currency, http://www.earthdaymoney.org/. In Japanse
30
Ithaca HOURS, http://www.ithacahours.com/
31
LETSystem, http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/design/home.html
36 |
The main characteristics of the approach are as follows:
The crowdfunding concept is adopted to allow people to choose among the small, common
resources to which they would like to contribute in order to maintain their sustainability.
The currency used in the proposed approach is based on the aging money concept, which
encourages people to participate in Micro-Crowdfunding before the money’s value is
degraded.
The interaction in Micro-Crowdfunding is very lightweight. People in a community can
easily propose new micro-missions in Micro-Crowdfunding and fund them from their smart
phones through a simple interaction.
The participants can share information and details about a micro-mission and receive
appropriate feedback for the activities that they perform.
The micro-mission in Micro-Crowdfunding can be achieved with minimal effort by individuals in
their spare time. Additionally, it provides community members with some economic and social
incentives. Micro-Crowdfunding includes a mechanism through which participants receive an
amount of virtual currency as a reward. This mechanism offers the participants an economic
incentive. Additionally, cooperation within a community provides a social incentive.
In Micro-Crowdfunding, we aim to provide an opportunity to everyone who wishes to contribute
and take part in making our world better. The project in this service is called a micro-mission
because it requires only a small amount of time to be completed and because it attempts to achieve
the sustainability of a small, common resource in a person’s spare time with minimum effort.
Instead of using real money, Micro-Crowdfunding adopts a special mechanism of local currency
from an economic perspective. A local currency is a currency that is not backed by a national
government and is intended to be traded only in a small regional area. As a tool of fiscal localism,
local money can raise awareness of the local economy. One of the most important aspects of the
local currency is the possibility of adopting different money models, which cannot be adopted by
their legal tender. For example, the aging money model has been a popular example of the local
currency idea. Aging money has been widely used to encourage monetary circulation within a
community because people do not want to save their money for their future. Thus, aging money is
very effective in increasing a community’s economic activity. In the aging money model, the
value of money gradually decreases with time. Defining a suitable money model is desirable
when it is essential to encourage people to spend more money. Because our approach relies on the
aging money model, it is natural that people would like to contribute to more micro-missions
before the value of the money is degraded; thus, they must fund micro-missions as quickly as
possible. To encourage community members to contribute to a micro-mission, we set the rule that
the value does not degrade when a person funds his/her money. When a micro-mission is
completed, half of the money funded to the micro-mission is returned back as a reward to him/her.
This arrangement is an incentive and motivates participants to fund more micro-missions.
Because Micro-Crowdfunding system requires virtual currency, all of the transactions occur
electronically.
| 37
The eenvironmenttal tax is the most typicaal solution fo
or achieving the sustainaability of com
mmon
resouurces. The money
m
colleccted as tax ccan be used to maintain
n the resourcce’s sustainaability.
Howeever, taxpayeers are not aware
a
of how
w the money
y is spent to contribute too sustainabiliity. In
Microo-Crowdfund
ding, people can explicitlly choose to which
w
comm
mon resource they would like
l to
contrribute. This approach
a
inccreases awarreness of theeir contributiion because the effect off their
contrribution can be easily monitored.
m
A
After the miccro-mission to which thhe participan
nts are
contrributing has been complleted, each pparticipant who
w has fun
nded it receiives a comp
pletion
notifiication as feeedback. Thee awareness of their con
ntribution beecomes a strrong incentiv
ve for
peoplle to contrib
bute to the sustainability
s
y of the com
mmon resourrce. We shoow the diffeerence
betweeen the centrralized appro
oach such as environmen
ntal tax and th
he participatoory approach
h such
as croowdfunding in Figure 3.1
1.
F
Figure 3.1
D
Difference
between
b
Cen
ntralized Ap
pproach and
d Participatoory Approacch
In Mi
Micro-Crowdfu
funding, as sh
hown in Figgure 3.2, a member
m
of a community rrelated to a small,
comm
mon resourcee, called a mission
m
orgaanizer, propo
oses a new micro-missio
m
on when he//she is
awaree that an activity must be completedd to maintain
n the sustainaability of thee resource. Typical
Ty
exam
mples of such common ressources are a public shelff used by a un
niversity labooratory or a public
p
sink in a buildin
ng. The prop
posal includees the micro
o-mission’s summary,
s
wh
which specifiees the
necesssary activities and the to
otal amount oof money req
quired to ach
hieve the miccro-mission. Then,
missiion organizeer himself paays some virrtual currenccy as an initial fund off the mission
n. The
microo-mission pro
oposal is perrformed simpply by touching the comm
mon resourcee with the mission
m
organnizer’s smartt phone and sending
s
a phooto that show
ws the resourrce’s current status.
38 |
Figure 3.2
3
An Ovverview of Micro-Crowd
M
dfunding
In thee next step, when
w
some other memberrs, called misssion investors, receive reequests to fun
nd the
missiion, they deciide whether they
t
want to fund the miccro-mission based
b
on the ddelivered ph
hoto. If
somee of them wou
uld like to fun
nd the missioon, then they
y simply click
k on the requeest on their phones
p
to nootify that they
y want to fu
und the microo-mission. When
W
the total submittedd funds exceeed the
targett amount, thee micro-misssion can be exxecuted by any
a member who
w can acceess the resou
urce in
his/heer spare timee. Such a meember is callled a mission
n performer. The missionn is usually a very
simplle task, such as organizing a shelf or ccleaning up a public sink.. After complletion, the mission
m
perfoormer takes a photo of thee resource to show the miccro-mission’s completed status and seends it
to thee mission org
ganizer. Finaally, the misssion organizzer verifies th
he quality off the achieveement,
and a completion
n notification
n of the micrro-mission, which
w
contaiins a photo oof the resourrce, is
deliveered to all off the memberrs who fundeed the missio
on.
3.3.2.
3
Econ
nomic Incen
ntives and Social Inceentives
This section preseents an overv
view of econnomic and social econom
mic incentivees that are used as
mechhanisms to en
ncourage com
mmunity mem
mbers to morre actively participate in micro-missions in
Microo-Crowdfund
ding.
In (N
Nakajima & Lehdonvirta,
L
, 2013), Nakkajima and Lehdonvirta propose
p
five incentives th
hat are
usefuul in design
ning informaation servicees to encourage people’s activity ttowards dessirable
lifestyyles. The fiv
ve incentivess include phyysical, psych
hological, soccial, econom
mic and ideological
incenntives. Econo
omic and social incentivves are especcially importtant in desiggning social media
such as crowdsou
urcing and crrowdfundingg systems beccause econom
mic incentivees are widely
y used
with m
monetary rew
wards in variious activitiees and social incentives are key factorrs in making social
| 39
media successful through interaction among a lot of collective users. Economic and social
incentives are powerful for motivating people to change their behavior. For designing the
Micro-Crowdfunding system, we especially focus on these two incentives for activating
community members to participate in micro-missions within each community.
Not surprisingly, we also found that using economic incentives is a powerful technique for
motivating people to change their behavior. An economic incentive is a tangible reward that users
consider to be valuable; however, the reward is not necessarily actual money or goods. In online
games, millions of players work hard to obtain rare and valuable virtual goods and even trade
those goods for real money at a rate of three billion dollars per year (Lehdonvirta & Ernkvist,
2011). Another example of economic incentives in persuasive technology is an activity-based
billing system (Yamabe, et al., 2009), which uses automatic micro-payments and micro-rewards
to coax users toward desired behavior. Although economic incentives are a powerful tool to
motivate behavior, they can lead to unpredictable results if they are not used carefully (Levitt &
Dubner, 2005).
Regarding social incentives, a set of strategies for persuading users can be found in the literature
on social psychology and sociology. Two concrete strategies explored in our case studies are
social facilitation and conforming behavior (Gasser, et al., 2006). Social facilitation refers to the
tendency of people to perform better on simple tasks while someone else is watching, rather than
while they are alone or working alongside other people. Visualizing one’s differences from others
is a useful technique when using social facilitation. When someone’s performance is
insufficiently high, using visualization to show that his/her performance is less than that of others
can be effective (Cialdini, 1987). Besides, we focus on the following three factors regarding the
influence on human behavior: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, and social proof
(Cialdini, 1987). We show the experiments related to these three factors in Section 3.5.
The Micro-Crowdfunding system uses both economic and social incentives. In this system,
because the virtual currency is explicitly used as local currency to stimulate a community, the role
of economic incentives is obvious. However, the role of social incentives in Micro-Crowdfunding
is not clear at the moment. As shown in (Antikainen & Väätäjä, 2010) (Antikainen, et al., 2010),
economic incentives, such as monetary rewards, does not work well in isolation for achieving
social sustainability; increasing people’s intrinsic motivation is more important. Social incentives
make it possible to increase awareness of the importance of people’s participation to achieve
social sustainability, and their intrinsic motivation is increased. Therefore, the balance of
economic and social incentives is the most essential design factor in making Micro-Crowdfunding
more successful. The experiments related to economic and social factors described in Section 3.4
and Section 3.5 offers useful insights to improve the current design of social media that use
economic and social incentives.
3.3.3. Scenario-based Design
This section presents how each stakeholder in Micro-Crowdfunding experiences his/her
participation and contribution to a mission from the user’s point of view through an example
scenario shown in the storyboards in Figures 3.3.
40 |
(1) Jun is a university student who is currently very busy with his research, and he must go to his
laboratory every day. He is worried about the use of some small, common resources in his
laboratory. In particular, he is bothered by a messy table there. There is a mountain of papers,
trash, and gadgets on the table. He wants to use the table, but he currently has no time to
clean it up because of his busy schedule. “It would be great if someone could help me…” he
thinks.
(2) Next, he decides to create a micro-mission with the title, “Please clean this table” and he
makes an appeal for collecting funds from people who use the same table. He takes a picture
of the dirty table with his smart phone to inform others of its status. Somewhat later, when he
has spare time, he sets the requisite amount of money to 10 bells, where a bell is the unit of
the virtual currency used in the Micro-Crowdfunding service, and he provides 3 bells himself
as an initial fund of the micro-mission using his smart phone.
(3) Kazuya, Ruu and Mao are Jun’s colleagues in the laboratory. They all receive the proposal
about the micro-mission through an email delivered due to Jun’s micro-mission registration.
Kazuya agrees with Jun that the table needs to be cleaned. Thus, he funds 3 bells to the
micro-mission’s fund with his smart phone. The total amount of money becomes 6 bells.
Kazuya often uses the table as well, and he very much wants the micro-mission to be
achieved.
(4) Ruu and Mao are sitting together when they receive the proposal. As soon as they receive the
email, Ruu says, “I feel that it is a good idea for our laboratory members. I want to join the
micro-mission.” Mao also agrees; then, each of them funds 2 bells with their smart phones.
The total amount of money reaches 10 bells, which is the target amount that Jun has chosen.
As a result, the micro-mission “Please clean this table” becomes executable, and all of the
participants are informed about that status.
(5) The next day, Ryosuke, who is also Jun’s colleague, comes to the laboratory at 13:00 to
prepare for his presentation. He concentrates on his tasks and finishes at 16:00.
(6) He has a part-time job at 17:00, so he currently has some spare time. He checks the available
micro-missions in the laboratory and finds Jun’s micro-mission. Ryosuke says “Oh, I can do
this micro-mission before going to my part-time job. It is convenient for me!” He decides to
do it.
(7) A few minutes later, he has completed the micro-mission. The table has become pretty clean.
He takes a picture of the clean table and reports the micro-mission as being complete with
the picture. Jun is impressed by the report. Of course, he confirms its completion. After that,
Ryosuke gets 10 bells as a reward for the micro-mission.
(8) Jun is grateful to all who participated in the micro-mission. He is able to comfortably use the
table now. Kazuya, Ruu and Mao, who have funded the micro-mission, can use the table
comfortably, too. Ryosuke also feels happy because not only he was able to get a reward but
also every participant of the micro-mission thanked him. This consequence leads him to be
proud of completing the micro-mission. All participants are satisfied by using the service.
| 41
Figure 3.3
Storyboards in an Example Sccenario of Micro-Crowddfunding
42 |
3.3.4.
3
Impllementation
n
The Micro-Crow
wdfunding prrototype sysstem is com
mposed of three compponents. Thee first
compponent is an Android
A
phon
ne that posseesses an NFC
C reader as sh
hown in Figuure 3.4. The second
compponent is a computer thatt is connecteed to a serveer embedded in a small, ccommon resource.
The sserver is nam
med Resourcce Managem ent Server. The
T last com
mponent is a server that stores
various informatiion related to the Micro -Crowdfundiing activitiess in a databaase. The serrver is
nameed Micro-Cro
owdfunding Server, whiich knows all
a Resource Managemennt Servers. It
I also
manaages informaation about the
t statistics of micro-m
missions perfo
ormed in resspective Ressource
Manaagement Serv
vers. The sysstem has beeen implemen
nted as an HT
TML532 Web application. Thus,
the paarticipants caan start to usse the Micro--Crowdfunding service eaasily with miinimal effortt.
Figure 3.4
Micro-C
Crowdfundiing Prototyp
pe System
Figurre 3.5 shows the interactiion between an Android phone
p
and a Resource M
Management Server
S
embeedded in a sm
mall, common
n resource annd storing infformation about a commuunity that maanages
the reesource. When a mission
n organizer toouches the NFC
N
card em
mbedded in thhe small, com
mmon
resouurce with his//her Android
d phone, a cam
mera in his/h
her Android phone
p
starts, with which he/she
h
takes a picture of the small, co
ommon resouurce (I). Wheen he/she inpu
uts some infoormation abo
out the
microo-mission an
nd clicks the button, an evvent is delivered the Ressource Manag
agement Serv
ver for
the ssmall common resource (II). Then, the inform
mation, includ
ding a photto that show
ws the
resouurce’s currentt status, is sttored in a dat
atabase in thee server (III). Afterward, mission inv
vestors
receivve emails th
hat contain URLs
U
(IV). IIn the retriev
ved forms, th
hey specify tthe amount of the
microo-mission’s funds
f
by conttrolling a seeek bar on theiir phones and
d this informaation is also stored
in thee database (V, VI). By touching
t
am
mission perfformer’s And
droid phone on the NFC
C card
contaained in a co
ommon resource (VII), iits Resourcee Managemeent Server reeturns inform
mation
aboutt currently available
a
miccro-missionss (VIII), and
d he/she know
ws the micrro-missions. Then,
32
httpp://dev.w3.org/hhtml5/
| 43
he/shhe chooses th
he missions that
t
he/she m
may want to perform (IX
X). After com
mpleting a seelected
microo-mission, th
he mission peerformer touuches the NF
FC card contaained in the common ressource
(X) aand registers a photo that shows the coompleted stattus (XI, XII), which is alsso delivered to the
missiion organizerr via an emaail (XIII). A
After the misssion organizzer’s confirm
mation (XIV, XV),
missiion investorss and mission
n performer can see the success of th
heir investmeent by clickin
ng the
URLss in the emaiils they receiive (XVI).
Figurre 3.5
Inteeraction betw
ween Micro-Crowdfund
ding Compoonents
We ccurrently usee NFC card and an embbedded com
mputer to reaalize the Miccro-Crowdfu
unding
system
m, which maakes resourcee managemennt complex. Although thee current syst
stem is not su
uitable
for sm
mall resourcees because su
uch devices ddo not fit into
o small resou
urces and the costs are hig
gh, we
expecct that the futture Internett of Things (IIoT) will solv
ve this issue soon.
s
The baasic idea of th
he IoT
is thaat the pervasiively presentt variety of thhings or objeects around us
u can interaact with each
h other
and ccooperate witth their neigh
hbors to reacch common goals (Atzorri, et al., 20110) (Hazenberg &
Huism
man, 2011) (Nakajima, 2003). Usingg IoT allowss us to integrate Micro-C
Crowdfundin
ng into
our ddaily environm
ments.
44 |
3.4. Analysis of Economic and Social Incentives
In this section, we present the experiment with the Micro-Crowdfunding prototype system
explained in the previous section. The focus of the experiment was on how economic factors and
social factors affect both the individual and the community. We designed the micro-missions in
the experiment based on the community-currency role-playing game-based method (Powell,
1999). In the experiment, the author of this dissertation defined several possible micro-missions
before the experiment. Each participant in the experiment was assigned a role of mission
organizer, mission investor or mission performer. When assigned the role of the mission organizer,
a participant chose one of the predefined micro-missions and several participants whose roles
were mission investors appropriated their virtual currency for the funding of the micro-mission
proposed by the mission organizer. The mission performer explained how he/she performed the
micro-mission to the other participants. The role of each participant changed in each turn, and we
carried out several iterations so all participants would understand the purpose of the approach.
The approach was effective for understanding how the participants used the Micro-Crowdfunding
system.
Six people (three males and three females) participated in the experiment. The experiment was
performed in our university for one day, and the ages of participants ranged from 25 to 51. The
participants were of several nationalities (three Japanese, one Taiwanese, one Malaysian, and one
Bulgarian). After finishing the experiment, the participants were interviewed and answered a
questionnaire. In the experiment, the micro-missions were related to giving opinions and
suggestions about possible solutions to important social problems. Some examples of such
problems were global warming issues, aging society problems, discrimination, encouraging
women in science and other goals. The micro-missions simplified for the experiment were similar
to the sessions in Professor Tanga’s Guess A Ware (Chamberlain, et al., 2007).
In the experiment described above, participants played one of the three roles: mission organizer,
mission investor or mission performer. One person was a mission organizer, another person was a
mission performer and the others were mission investors. Their roles changed for each turn. The
sequence of activities executed in one turn could be described as follows: (1) the mission
organizer organized the micro-mission; (2) mission investors funded the micro-mission proposed
by the mission organizer; (3) the mission performer executed the micro-mission; (4) the mission
organizer and mission investors thanked the mission performer; and (5) the mission organizer
thanked the mission investors.
In each turn, participants completed one micro-mission. We decided that one set of the
role-playing game included six turns, and we conducted several sets of the game.
3.4.1. Virtual Currency Concept
All of the participants were given 1,000 bells at the beginning of each set. The participants’
currency was increased by executing the micro-mission as mission performers, and it decreased
through the funding of a micro-mission. Additionally, we added extra rules in each set. The extra
rules’ concepts and objectives are described below.
| 45
Rule 1: Reward-reduction rule
In the scenario mentioned in Section 3.3.3, when the mission performer received a reward after
executing a micro-mission, the amount of the currency given as a reward was the same as the sum
of the money funded by the mission investors. Based on the reward-reduction rule, a participant
could obtain half of the sum of the fund. We aimed to evaluate the effect of the reward-reduction
rule on participants’ motivation, particularly for the mission performer. The reward-reduction rule
was more realistic because the administrator of some projects or objects must manage the
administrative cost, and a portion of the reward is allotted to that cost in many cases.
Rule 2: Aging money rule
As mentioned in Section 3.2.2, the value of the money gradually decreased over time in the aging
money model. The money decreased if the participants kept it, whereas funding led to no
reduction. We expected that this fact would encourage the funding activity of the mission
investors.
3.4.2. Economic Incentives and Human Motivation
In this section, we consider the relationship between the economic factors and the participants’
motivations. We asked the following questions, which are related to the economic factors:
Q3.1: Were there any motivation changes for the mission performer in the case of the
reward-reduction rule compared to the case without the reward-reduction rule?
Q3.2: Were there any motivation changes in the case of the aging money rule compared to the
case in which this rule was not adopted?
In Q3.1, four out of six participants responded that the reward-reduction rule did not affect their
motivation, but the reasons were different for each participant. Some of the reasons were that
“The virtual currency does not affect real life.”, “The micro-mission’s goals are more important
than the amount of the reward.” and “I think that the rest of the money will be used for realizing a
sustainable society. It is okay.” On the other hand, the other two participants answered that it
decreased their motivation. We expect that these differences are attributable to each participant’s
personality (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). Introducing the reward-reduction rule would affect the
participants for whom collecting virtual currency is important, but it would not affect the
participants for whom the micro-mission’s goals are most important. However, we believe that
the effect of the reward-reduction rule would be different when there is some relationship between
the virtual currency and real life.
With respect to Q3.2, the aging money rule did not affect the motivation of a few of the
participants. The reason is the same as the first answer to Q3.1, “The virtual currency does not
affect real life.” and “The micro-mission’s goals are more important than the amount of the
reward.” Conversely, some results concerning aging money satisfied our expectations. Some of
the participants said that they wanted to fund as much as possible, which increased the motivation
for the mission performer. A participant said, “I strongly thought that I should use my currency as
soon as possible. In the case that the aging money rule was not adopted, I was thinking that it was
46 |
better to keep my money for a more attractive micro-mission.” This comment shows that the
aging money rule encourages people to use their currency and to participate in the micro-mission.
Additionally, with this rule, the participants felt the reality of the situation. The effect of reality is
expected to be an important factor when designing services by adding virtuality to them using
information technologies, as we explain in Chapter 7.
However, another participant said, “The aging money rule had a negative effect on my motivation
because my currency was decreasing in any case.” Participants like this feel as though they are
suffering a loss, which decreases their motivation. The other participants also said, “I will
continue a micro-mission regardless of whether the goal of the micro-mission is significant or not
for me.” Thus, the system should allow participants to enjoy achieving their micro-missions.
Furthermore, another problem of the aging money rule is that the total amount of money in the
community will decrease. Thus, designing the appropriate aging rate would be a key factor for
leading people into the flow state.
3.4.3. Social Incentives and Human Motivation
In this section, we consider the relationship between social factors and the participants’
motivation. The following questions related to the social factors were asked:
Q3.3: In the experiment, you could know how much money others have funded to the
micro-mission when you played the role of a mission investor. Did it affect your funding amount?
Q3.4: How would you feel if you were not thanked by others after completing a micro-mission as
a mission performer?
Q3.5: How would you feel or how would you behave if you were asked by a stranger to contribute
to a micro-mission?
Five out of the six participants answered that others’ funds affected their decision of how much to
fund to a micro-mission. One participant said, “I cared about others’ opinions, and it was difficult
to behave differently from others.” He also said, “Because there was no anonymity, I was more
considerate when deciding to fund.” Thus, social factors are useful for preventing people from
being inconsiderate, especially among acquaintances. Five people who answered that there were
some effects on the amount of their funding to Q3.3 also stated that no expression of thanks would
bring bad feelings in Q3.4. For example, they said, “In such a case, I won’t be able to continue to
execute the micro-mission as a mission performer.” and “I would become anxious about my
performance.” These responses demonstrate that integrating others’ responses as feedback into
the system is an efficient way to motivate users. Designing good communication among the
participants is also important. Through the experiments, the system encourages and initiates
communication among the participants. We strongly believe that Micro-Crowdfunding is useful
for stimulating and initiating communication in the community in practical situations.
However, with respect to Q3.5, the result might be different for a case in which the participants
are not acquaintances. In the case of a stranger, there is both a positive aspect and a negative
aspect. On one hand, it will be easier to ask a stranger to execute a micro-mission that involves
serious problems than to ask an acquaintance. One participant said, “I will be sensitive when
| 47
asking an acquaintance to complete the micro-mission. I might feel bad due to the micro-mission,
for example, especially if my acquaintance’s performance of executing the micro-mission couldn’t
achieve my expected criteria.” On the other hand, the negative aspect might prevent participants
from behaving actively when there is funding. Another participant said, “I will become more
cautious when I fund because I can’t trust a stranger to the same level I trust my acquaintances.”
If we use the system to activate the community, which includes strangers, it is very important to
determine a way in which participants can easily join and participate in the micro-missions.
After finishing all sets of the experiment, the participants answered a questionnaire. They
evaluated the following items according to a 5-point Likert scale. Here, 5 was the most positive
answer (e.g. excellent, very good, strongly agree, I could absolutely), and 1 was the most negative
answer (e.g. very bad, strongly disagree, I couldn’t at all). These items targeted the participant’s
conscience, feelings and emotions.
Q3.6: Could you share the importance of the problems with the other participants through the
experiments?
Q3.7: Did you feel that the other participants’ opinions were useful to you throughout the
experiments?
Q3.8: Were you glad to be thanked from the mission organizer when you funded the micro-mission
as a mission investor?
Q3.9: Were you glad to be thanked by the mission organizer and mission investors when you
finished executing the micro-mission as a mission performer?
Q3.6, Q3.7 and Q3.9 received high scores that averaged above 4.00. The commonality among the
three questions relates to social factors. From the results of Q3.6, Q3.7 and Q3.8, we are certain
that sharing ideas among people provokes considerable and deep thinking regarding the problems
and can also cause changes in their thinking and emotions. With respect to Q3.9, the results show
that social feedback from others helps people to participate in the micro-mission and makes them
feel appreciated. Happiness is a powerful tool for continuing the given activities. When focusing
on Q3.8 and Q3.9, although both Q3.8 and Q3.9 were about thanks, the score for Q3.8 was lower
than that of Q3.9. We suppose that this discrepancy was caused by the difference in the level of
feeling when contributing to the micro-mission between being a mission investor versus a mission
performer. Designing additional incentives for mission investors is essential. We state concrete
ideas about this issue in Section 3.7.
3.5. Analysis of Social Influence
In the experiments, we focus on the following three factors regarding the influence on human
behavior: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, and social proof. The goal of this section is to
discuss some psychological factors that influence human attitude and behavior in the
Micro-Crowdfunding prototype system, referencing the results of experiments with the prototype
system.
48 |
Eleven people (eight males and three females) participated in the experiments, and their ages
ranged from 20 to 39. The participants were of several nationalities, including Japanese, Chinese
and Mexican, where eight out of the eleven were Japanese. Each participant was presented with
the following two scenarios. In the first scenario, a participant played the role of a member of a
community whose members were all well known to each other. We called this community
consisting only of close friends friendly community. In contrast, in the second scenario, stranger
community, consisted of members who did not know each other, and each participant played the
role of a member of stranger community. The participants answered a questionnaire under the
conditions of the above two scenarios; we then conducted semi-structured interview sessions with
all the participants.
In Micro-Crowdfunding, the influence of reciprocity among participants depends on the
relationships among community members. In Section 3.5.1, we investigate the differences in this
influence between friendly community and stranger community in the experiments. In the case of
friendly community, the influence works well in the scenario without an extra mechanism to
enhance the influence, and each member actively participates in micro-missions.
The influence of commitment and consistency is defined such that if people make a small effort to
achieve a more difficult goal, the likelihood of reaching the goal sooner tends to increase.
Applying this influence to Micro-Crowdfunding, a small effort is investing funds in a
micro-mission as a mission investor, and the mission investor will contribute to more
Micro-Crowdfunding activities as either a mission organizer or a mission performer in the near
future. In Section 3.5.2, we investigate whether a member who has supported a micro-mission as
a mission investor in the past tends to participate in other micro-missions as either a mission
organizer or a mission performer in the same community.
In Micro-Crowdfunding, the influence of social proof may increase among mission investors who
invest funds in the same micro-mission. As shown in the experiments in Section 3.4, almost all
participants answered that other people’s funds affected their decisions of how much to invest in a
micro-mission; as a result, we assume that many participants investing in a micro-mission
increases other people’s participation. In Section 3.5.3, we investigate whether others’ activities
have this influence in both friendly community and stranger community.
3.5.1. The Influence of Reciprocity
We asked the following questions to each participant when belonging to friendly community.
Q3.10: Aki, who is one of your close friends, identifies a problem and organizes a micro-mission
to solve it. You currently have fifteen minutes of spare time. Can you cooperate with the
micro-mission organized by Aki as either a mission performer or a mission investor? You must
take ten minutes to perform the micro-mission as a mission performer. Please select your answer
from “Cooperate”, “Cooperate under some conditions” or “Do not cooperate”.
Q3.11: Please answer this question if your answer in Q3.10 is “Cooperate”. Do you want to
participate as a mission investor or a mission performer? Additionally, please state the reason for
your choice.
| 49
Q3.12: Please answer this question if your answer in Q3.10 is “Cooperate under some
conditions”. What type of condition does your cooperation require?
Additionally, the following questions were asked when participants belonged to stranger
community.
Q3.13: Mr. Ichinose, who is a stranger to you, identifies a problem and organizes a micro-mission
to solve it. You currently have fifteen minutes of spare time. Can you cooperate with the
micro-mission organized by Mr. Ichinose as either a mission performer or a mission investor? You
must take ten minutes to perform the micro-mission. Please select your answer from “Cooperate”,
“Cooperate under some conditions” or “Do not cooperate”.
Q3.14: Please answer this question if your answer in Q3.13 is “Cooperate”. Do you want to
participate as a mission investor or a mission performer? Additionally, please state the reason for
your choice.
Q3.15: Please answer this question if your answer in Q3.13 is “Cooperate with some conditions”.
What type of condition does your cooperation require?
In Q3.10, eight out of eleven participants answered “Cooperate” and three answered “Cooperate
under some conditions”. Additionally, the results show that most participants wanted to be
mission performers when the mission organizer was their friend in Q3.11. Some of the reasons
given included, “I want to contribute to help my friends as much as possible.” and “I show my
good faith through my activity.” These results indicate that the influence of reciprocity works well
within a close community regardless of a mission’s goal. In contrast, in Q3.13 and Q3.14, only
two participants answered “Cooperate” in the case of stranger community, and all of them
wanted to participate in the micro-mission as mission investors. Reasons given in Q3.15 included,
“I will help provided that the mission organizer has cooperated with my micro-mission” and “If
he/she can help me when I need some help [, then I will participate in the micro-mission].” These
results show that people are conscious of the influence of reciprocity when they focus on the
relationships among the benefits to themselves, indicating that a stranger may become a friend if
approached with kindness.
There are clear differences among participants’ consciousness of the use of the economic
incentive. In interviews, participants stated, “I want to apply the monetary reward in stranger
community, but I do not want to do so in friendly community.”, “I am resistant to the
employer-employee relationship among friends.” and “I do not like a clear mechanism to show
the amount of debt.” Although visualizing information about a community is one of merits of
using information technologies, it is not always the best method of motivating participants. When
designing a social information infrastructure, the social influence of reciprocity should not be
introduced as a support tool, and it should be designed as a process to alter human attitudes and
behavior. However, introducing this mechanism is not easy. For example, a participant stated, “I
cannot feel others’ feelings of gratitude if there is an easy mechanism to represent ‘thanks’ to
others.” An easy mechanism, such as “Like!” on Facebook, is useful to show one’s interest but
seems superficial in representing gratitude. Finally, when the economic incentive is effective, we
must carefully address monetary rewards to show the participants’ achievement.
50 |
From the results of the experiments, we conclude that extrinsic motivational mechanisms, such as
monetary rewards, points and badges, become less important when participants are all close
friends. The mechanisms that make participants feel that others are real friends are more effective
than the extrinsic motivational mechanisms. As described in Section 2.4.2, an empathetic
human/character can create a powerful positive effect. Therefore, using empathetic virtual
human/character is a promising approach to making other participants feel like close friends.
These results indicate that incorporating digitally mediated virtuality incorporated in the real
world to strengthen the bonds among friends increases participants’ motivation to cooperate.
3.5.2. The Influence of Commitment and Consistency
For the experiment on the social influence of commitment and consistency, the following scenario
was provided to the participants:
“So far, friendly community’s members have performed some micro-missions, and you have also
participated in a micro-mission as a mission investor. All the community members except you
actively participate as mission organizers and mission performers. You know generally that these
micro-missions are good for environmental sustainability in your community but do not
understand their importance.”
Additionally, the participants were asked the following question:
Q3.16: Under the conditions of the above scenario, will you become either a mission organizer or
a mission performer at some time? Please choose among “Become a mission organizer or
performer”, “Become a mission organizer or performer under some conditions” and “Do not
become either”. Additionally, please state the reasons for your answer.
Most of the participants answered that they wanted to become either mission organizers or
mission performers provided that their friends made efforts to perform micro-missions and had
participated in some past micro-missions as mission investors. The reasons for participation in the
experiments are classified into the following two types: curiosity-oriented and
cooperativeness-oriented. One cited reason supporting the former type was “I want to experience
the activity that my friends are really into.” and one supporting the latter type was “We need
cooperativeness for a community’s sustainability.” In the scenario, we did not inform participants
of the micro-mission’s clear goal; however, these answers showed that there was an influence of
commitment and consistency. Understanding the clear goal of a micro-mission is not important in
the first step of participating in the micro-mission. However, to maintain desirable activities, the
goal of the micro-mission appears to become more important. Two out of the eleven participants
answered, “I will not become a mission organizer or a mission performer because the presented
mission’s goal is not clear.” Another participant answered “I will try the mission because I may
understand its importance.” If the participants understand the goal of a micro-mission without a
large cognitive load, then the participants are more likely commit to contributing to the
micro-mission.
| 51
In the interviews, participants also discussed the risk of the bystander effect 33 named social
loafing. Some stated, “I ask others to contribute to a mission if they perform it better.” and “I feel
that I must do it by myself when a community is small.” Although the visualization of the reward
or achievement does not always work well as noted earlier, visualizing participants’ contributions
as social achievements is effective. Like the influence of commitment and consistency, attracting
participants to micro-missions through virtuality and conveying their importance through
fictionality to commit to reaching the goal at a later stage is also effective. If a fictional story
contains ideological messages representing the importance of the micro-mission, participants can
understand the meaning of the goal with minimal effort (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2013).
3.5.3. The Influence of Social Proof
To gauge the social influence of social proof, participants are asked the following questions:
Q3.17: Assume that you often play at Akihabara with friendly community's friends. The members
of the community start a micro-mission to clean Akihabara. One of the friends in the community is
a mission organizer, and the other three members serve as mission investors. Each mission
investor funds 200 units of the virtual currency used in Micro-Crowdfunding to support the
micro-mission. You now have 1000 units of the virtual currency. How much do you want to
contribute to this micro-mission?
Q3.18: Some members of stranger community start a micro-mission to clean area S, which is
unknown to them. One community member is a mission organizer, and the other three serve as
mission investors. Each mission investor funds 200 units of the virtual currency to support the
micro-mission. You now have 1000 units of the virtual currency. How much do you want to
contribute to this micro-mission?
Although the goals of the micro-missions were not clear, all the participants wanted to fund over
200 units of the virtual currency in Q3.17. The influence of social proof provided by close friends,
then, has a strong influence on people’s activity. However, the amount of funds differed among
participants in Q3.18. Regarding Q3.18, one participant stated, “It depends on the purpose of the
micro-mission.” The goal of the mission becomes more important than other members’ behavior
in this case. However, we found an anchoring effect (Kahneman, 2011) in both friendly
community and stranger community because almost all the participants decided the amount of
funds they would contribute based on 200 units of the virtual currency, which is the amount
funded by others specified in the questions. The anchoring effect is effective in steering
participants to more desirable situations. Incorporating the anchoring point through fictionality
seems natural to motivate participants to fund the appropriate amount of the virtual currency. For
example, a virtual character may offer an anchoring effect to advance a micro-mission. If the
character in the fictional story funds the specific amount as an anchoring point, it induces the
participant to fund a similar amount. We suppose that the influence of social proof among
strangers will work well when a participant finds information on other participants’ contributions
33
http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/bystandereffect.htm
52 |
in various places. If participants feel more reality with this information, the trustworthiness of the
information increases the power of social proof. Transmedia storytelling is a promising way to
present information in various places to encourage human behavior (Sakamoto & Nakajima,
2013). In particular, ambient and ubiquitous visual expressions of the information are useful
techniques to offer information with a low mental load (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013).
Strengthening the bonds within a community and increasing the trust among community
members enhances the influence.
3.5.4. Discussion
The results of these experiments show that the influences of reciprocity, commitment and
consistency, and social proof have strong impacts on participants within a community whose
members are close friends. We suppose that the trust within a community is one reason for the
results. Additionally, introducing virtuality and fictionality encourages Micro-Crowdfunding
activities; however, the reality of the introduced virtuality and fictionality is an important factor
in increasing the activities, as we mention in Chapter 7. As described in the previous subsection,
understanding the importance of the goal of a micro-mission is essential to appreciating the
value of reaching the goal in the future. When people are sure that there will be value for them
in achieving the goal, they actively perform micro-missions to do so. The value is not always
offered as the extrinsic motivation like the monetary reward, points and visible achievements. It
can instead offer the intrinsic motivation, such as the close bonds through friendship, honor and
life satisfaction. Additionally, the discussion presented in this section shows that the social
influences of reciprocity, commitment and consistency and social proof may be strong even in a
community consisting only of strangers if the community members can feel closer to each other
through virtuality and fictionality.
We present our findings to gamify information services to encourage their participation. As
noted above, gamification is one of the most popular topics in building future information
services (Deterding, et al., 2011). Of course, games offer pleasure, and embedding game
elements into the services to encourage participants seems promising. However, our experience
shows that the gamification-based approach does not work well if the underlying infrastructure
service is not well designed. First, we found it essential to identify the major psychological
factors, rather than system factors such as key performance indicators (KPI), to increase
participants’ motivation. Then, service designers must identify when the psychological factors
have pitfalls that obstruct the service operation and remove those pitfalls through gamification.
An underlying infrastructure service should therefore work well in some cases. Gamification
does not compensate for bad design of an underlying infrastructure service.
Micro-Crowdfunding uses several types of techniques to spur activism, and the basic scenario
works well when participants belong to the same community. Additionally, we identify several
psychological factors, such as reciprocity, social proof, and commitment and consistency.
Besides, incorporating ideological messages is essential to increasing human intrinsic motivation
and altering people’s attitudes and behavior toward a better lifestyle (Sakamoto, et al., 2013),
because people may not alter their behavior without intrinsic motivation. One essential element in
increasing human intrinsic motivation is encouraging people to create their own stories while
| 53
participating in the activities. Perhaps the success of it depends on whether a participant can
create his/her own story with the gamified services. While incorporated fictional stories help a
user create his/her own story, some people can create their own stories from even a few game
elements, such as when playing a board game or working on a puzzle. We think that the question
of whether the gamified services are effective depends on users’ ability to create their own stories.
We believe that virtuality and fictionality help create a user’s story to enhance his/her motivation.
3.6. Analysis of Virtual Expressions
3.6.1. Reflecting Human Behavior in Virtual Expressions
The basic approach of Micro-Crowdfunding to offer economic and social incentives is promising
to encourage people to complete missions that are related to the sustainability of their
communities. However, the strategy does not return proper feedback that stimulates people’s
emotions to alter their lifestyle. Our solution is to adopt virtual expression to increase a
psychological incentive. In this case, we choose a persuasive ambient mirror proposed in
(Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013) as a virtual expression for Micro-Crowdfunding. A persuasive
ambient mirror monitors people’s current attitudes and behavior by using sensors and presents
visual and fictional expressions reflecting their current attitude and behavior. The fictional
expression offers more emotionally effective feedback than factual feedback. For example, in the
Mona Lisa Bookshelf, people’s housekeeping of their public bookshelf is reflected on a Mona
Lisa picture (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013). To increase the persuasiveness of ambient
feedback, we also consider the adoption of an approach used in documentary games (Frasca,
2007) to incorporate ideological messages represented as procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007). As
shown in (Sakamoto, et al., 2013), ideological messages can be incorporated into the real world
by representing goods or characters that become metaphors for the ideological concept.
We add three types of persuasive ambient mirrors to return ambient feedback have been added to
the original Micro-Crowdfunding design, as shown in Figure 3.6. The first type of persuasive
ambient mirrors is installed as a public display in various places for community members. It
shows a scene of a natural landscape, and the fictional scene reflects the accumulated contribution
of all members in a community. If their efforts are not sufficient, the landscape becomes polluted,
but the landscape becomes clean if the community members complete a sufficient number of
missions. The polluted state shows that the surrounding environment cannot maintain
sustainability without the efforts of many members. This provides a strong incentive to encourage
other members to contribute to missions. The second type of persuasive ambient mirrors is shown
on a community member’s mobile phone. It shows a fictional flower garden with a large number
of flowers blooming in the garden if the member’s contribution is good. The flower garden
reflects each member’s individual efforts and offers him/her a psychological incentive to increase
his/her individual contribution. The third type of persuasive ambient mirrors shows an ideological
message stating that the government likes to steal the people’s money for useless projects that
increase the government’s reputation but that do not benefit the people. The procedural rhetoric
contains an ideological message pointing out the current problems in our environmental tax
system.
54 |
Figu
ure 3.6
Perrsuasive Am
mbient Mirro
ors in Micro
o-Crowdfunnding
3.6.2.
3
The Influence of
o Persuasiive Ambien
nt Mirrors
In thiis section, w
we present sev
veral experim
ments to valiidate our dessign using peersuasive am
mbient
mirroors. In our ex
xperiment, we
w set up twoo configuratiions: the first one with ppersuasive am
mbient
mirroors and the second
s
with
hout them. T
The mission used in the experiment was to cleaan the
particcipants’ public table. Add
ditionally, wee evaluated tw
wo cases usin
ng persuasive
ve ambient mirrors.
In thhe first case, a mission performer c leaned the public
p
table to make thee landscape more
beauttiful. In the second case, the
t first persuuasive ambieent mirror showed a monsster that attem
mpted
to desstroy the natu
ural landscap
pe. When thee public desk
k was cleaned, the monstter disappeared.
In thee experimentt, we surveyeed acceptancee of the enhaancements on
n a 5-point Liikert scale, similar
to those in Sectiion 3.4.3. After twenty six participaants (twenty two males and four fem
males)
attem
mpted to usee the persuaasive ambiennt mirrors, they answerred the survvey regardin
ng the
respeective persuasive ambientt mirrors. Thhe participantts were betw
ween the agess of 21 and 52
2.
The aacceptability
y of the first persuasive aambient mirrror was 3.73,, the second was 3.65, an
nd the
third was 2.38. We
W also interv
viewed particcipants to und
derstand the reasons for ttheir acceptance in
detaill. Most of th
hem were fam
miliar with ccomputer science technollogies. One oof the participants
said, “The first and
a second persuasive
p
am
mbient mirro
ors easily deelivered the m
meanings, bu
ut just
changging colors is
i not enough
h. Inserting ttextual messa
ages on the pictures
p
woulld also be eff
ffective
to maake the messa
ages clear. However,
H
retuurning appro
opriate feedback is effectiive to encourrage a
comm
munity to heelp each meember contrribute to acchieving a sustainable
s
ssociety.” An
nother
particcipant said, “It
“ is hard to
o deliver ideoological messsages with only a picturee, but I underrstood
that tthe picture meant
m
that thee current situuation of som
mething was not
n good.”
| 55
The results show that persuasive ambient mirrors containing fictional stories are promising
because the destruction of nature by a monster can be easily understood and can motivate
participants to protect nature. However, this approach to expressing the ideological concept was
not clearly understandable by participants in the experiment.
3.7. Some Issues in Designing Micro-Crowdfunding
This section presents six issues that were discussed while designing the current
Micro-Crowdfunding prototype. The first issue is to make it clear how our approach is different
from the tax-based approach. In (Yamabe, et al., 2009), a new way for realizing sustainable
behavior change, called activity-based micro-pricing, was proposed. In this approach, a person
pays a small amount of money when he/she consumes some small, common resource. Because
the approach minimizes the transaction cost, we can charge a very small amount of money; as a
result, the approach makes it possible to charge for people’s small activities. The objective of the
approach is to offer a very lightweight payment method, such that people might not be aware of
the existence of the payment. However, for achieving sustainability, people must eventually be
aware of what they are currently contributing towards a sustainable society. In our approach, a
person explicitly commits to contributing to a micro-mission, which we believe would increase
the motivation to participate.
The second issue concerns the weakness behind the benefits of contributing to micro-missions. Of
course, frequent participation in contributing to micro-missions would ultimately achieve a
sustainable society due to increases in the participants’ motivation. However, it is difficult for a
participant to feel a satisfactory benefit because contributing to micro-missions looks similar to
making a donation, where the donation works based on the person’s social incentive. As in the
case of traditional crowdfunding services, a mission investor can expect rewards, such as rare
items, tickets to limited events, or something that cannot be bought with traditional money.
Under the current design, when a micro-mission is completed, half of the money funded to the
mission is returned back as a reward to the mission investors. During the time in which a mission
investor is funding his/her money, its value is not degraded, which becomes an incentive and
motivates him/her to fund more micro-missions. In this case, the aging speed of the currency is a
critical issue for making Micro-Crowdfunding work well and preventing currency inflation.
The sustainability issue is essential for everyone, and we must account for how we contribute to it
in our daily life. In typical approaches, a social incentive is widely adopted to encourage people to
act in more eco-friendly ways. However, there are personalities for which social incentives do not
work well (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). This circumstance means that the approach based on social
incentives works well for people who like to cooperate or compete with others. In contrast,
economic incentives including real money usually work well for all personalities. Designing
incentives that work well for all personalities is an important research topic when developing
social mechanisms for everyone.
The current design allows any member in a community to propose new micro-missions and
choose the price for completing micro-missions. This approach enables new micro-missions to be
56 |
initiated anytime that anyone finds new tasks that must performed to maintain the sustainability of
a common resource. A problem with this approach is that there might be nobody willing to
complete the micro-mission. In an alternative process, the person who would like to complete a
micro-mission could propose it by himself/herself. However, in this case, verification of the
quality of the micro-mission achievement is needed, but it is a challenging issue to motivate a
person to verify a micro-mission. While designing the current prototype, we decided that the
former approach is desirable because someone proposes a new micro-mission through rational
and objective thinking and by considering the micro-mission to be necessary for maintaining the
sustainability of the common resource and not to earn money for him/her.
We also need to consider how to control each community to propose a new micro-mission that is
consistent with the target goal of achieving a sustainable society. Augmented TCG, which we
describe in Chapter 4, is a system integrating a fictional character into existing physical games
and it can increase people’s awareness of pursuing more desirable lifestyles through a concept
named transmedia storytelling. Incorporating fictionality into Micro-Crowdfunding by assigning
a fictional role to community members motivates them to propose and complete a micro-mission
towards the target goal defined in Micro-Crowdfunding if a fictional story embedded as
transmedia storytelling presents ideological messages that identify the importance of achieving
the micro-missions. Because the real world can be represented abstractly and sometimes
ironically in a fictional story through framing to simplify or exaggerate essential and important
concepts in our daily life34, people easily notice the concepts relevant to achieving an ideal,
sustainable society. Incorporating fictionality also allows people to use more appropriate
metaphors than in a real documentary or non-fictional story. In particular, Japanese animation
stories contain complex ideological social messages towards futuristic lifestyles (Sakamoto, et al.,
2013) to increase people’s intrinsic motivation. They can offer many effective metaphors to
increase our self-efficacy through the positivity expressed in the stories. This approach also
allows the Micro-Crowdfunding system to incorporate ideological incentives alongside the
emotional values in the Value-based Design Framework, which we describe in Chapter 6, and
improves upon our current approach as a pervasive game (Magerkurth, et al., 2005) (Montola, et
al., 2009) that blurs the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries between fiction and reality by
making the magic circle35 disappear (Stenros, et al., 2007).
3.8. Conclusion and Future Directions
This chapter proposed a new approach to achieving a sustainable society based on the
crowdfunding concept, which was called Micro-Crowdfunding. This approach leverages
economic and social incentives for motivating members of communities to propose and perform
micro-missions and raising important social issues into conscious awareness by investing funds.
34
Frames, Framing and Reframing, http://www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/framing
35
The magic circle, which is coined by Huizinga (Huizinga, 1955), is a boundary separating the ordinary life from
ludic play. Everything inside the magic circle is, in some way, transformative.
| 57
The chapter presented a basic concept of Micro-Crowdfunding and its prototype implementation.
We also described several experimental results which show how economic and social factors
were effective in facilitating Micro-Crowdfunding. Our results showed that Micro-Crowdfunding
increases the awareness about social sustainability, and we believe that Micro-Crowdfunding
makes it possible to motivate people for achieving a sustainable society.
One problem with the current approach is the possibility that no one would be willing to maintain
some common resources. Additionally, an infrastructure maintained by the tax-based approach is
still necessary. For example, collecting garbage and disposing of it are not easy problems to solve
with only a community-based approach. However, the insufficiency of taxes results from the cost
of managing the sustainability of all of the common resources. It is an interesting problem to
consider how to encourage people to contribute to the sustainability of unattractive common
resources and to complement the existing tax-based approach with Micro-Crowdfunding.
We must also discuss how our virtual currency is circulated in a community in which aging
money can be replaced with real products because changing money into products offers larger
benefits. This circumstance might discourage people from investing money into
Micro-Crowdfunding.
The national deficits in many developed countries are very serious problems. However,
increasing taxes might not be a good solution because such increases could lead to reduced
economic activity. Our approach, named Micro-Crowdfunding, is a first step toward solving this
issue and is realized by increasing the awareness that people have toward the contributions they
make to sustaining small, common resources.
58 |
| 59
Chapter 4 Case Study II: Augmented TCG
4.1. Introduction
This chapter proposes Augmented Trading Card Game (Augmented TCG) system as a case study
of incorporating virtual objects into the real world36. Augmented TCG enhances remote trading
card game play with virtual characters used in the fictional stories of popular animations and
games. Using well-known virtual characters is a promising approach to enhance information
services, since such characters provoke people’s empathetic feelings easily, and it is also easy
for people to recall the leitmotif of the character’s fictional stories.
In this chapter, we explain the basic design and implementation of Augmented TCG and show
some experiments about the way players use the system, realizing the game, and what their
feelings and impressions about the game are. The findings of this study would be useful for
enhancing physical artifacts and our real world activities with virtuality and fictionality through
ubiquitous computing technologies. We also discuss how our approach can be extended to
design a new type of transmedia storytelling by considering Augmented TCG as one form of
transmedia storytelling.
4.2. Background
4.2.1. Virtuality and Tangibility with Ubiquitous Computing Technologies
Jordan described physio-pleasure as pleasure derived from the tangibility of a physical object
(Jordan, 2002). Ubiquitous computing technologies have made the physical objects that surround
us more virtual by embedding computers into them. Recent advances in virtuality offer promising
directions for the future. For example, proactive ambient media (Nakajima, et al., 2011) enable us
36
This chapter is based on the following paper:
Mizuki Sakamoto, Todorka Alexandrova, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Introducing Virtuality to Enhance Game-related
Physical Artifacts,” International Journal of Smart Home, Vol.8, No.2, pp.137-152, Mar. 2014.
60 |
to change our attitudes and behavior or make better decisions to improve our lifestyle. In ambient
media, information about a user’s current situation can be represented in a peripheral display or
projected onto a local artifact using a projector. Virtuality is essential to proactive ambient media
as it is designed to make invisible information visible.
Ambient media also demonstrate a problem that often occurs when we introduce virtuality into
our daily life. Because the virtual objects are not material, people cannot touch or manipulate the
objects in a tangible way. Thus these objects lose their sense of reality. As described in (Ishii &
Ullmer, 1997), future tangible technologies may solve this problem by materializing the virtual
objects as if they were traditional physical objects. For example, a mobile augmented reality
toolkit called Satch37 allows the development of an application that can touch and manipulate a
virtual object on an image captured by a camera. However, users still do not feel as if the object is
real because they can only touch it on a touch panel.
The impact of introducing virtuality in our daily life has not been thoroughly discussed; although,
digital books have become common, and virtual worlds such as that in The Elder Scrolls V:
Skyrim38 are almost indistinguishable from the real world. It is important to examine the effects of
replace real things with virtual things. In modern games, physically tangible things are replaced
by virtual things, and multiple players can easily enjoy playing a game remotely without meeting
each other. Although the rules of the game do not change, the style of play is significantly affected
by the game’s realization method (Sakamoto, et al., 2013).
Ubiquitous computing technologies can enhance the trading card game experience. Through
remote trading card game play, computers offer new possibilities to extend the original trading
card game play. The Eye of Judgment39 uses augmented reality technologies to display special
effects on the real trading cards. This technology allows for special effects to be shown on
physical cards that are used by the players. Duel Accelerator40 is an online-based Yu-Gi-Oh!
TCG41 where each player chooses his/her avatar and virtual trading cards, which display special
effects during the duel, are used. The special effects are an emotional stimulus for the player, and
thus the pleasure of the game is increased. However, virtual cards lose the sense of the physical
tangibility of the cards, which makes it difficult to motivate players to enjoy collecting cards
(Sakamoto, et al., 2013). Additionally, Skype duel42 uses Skype43 to show each player’s cards on
the opposite player’s display; and voice communication between the two players is also possible.
37
http://satch.jp/en/
38
http://www.elderscrolls.com
39
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_Judgment
40
http://www.yugioh-online.net/v3/newvisitors/
41
http://www.yugioh-card.com/
42
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yu-Gi-Oh-Skype-Duel/363252383750629
43
http://www.skype.com/ja/
| 61
In the new trading card game CyberOne44, each paper card has a sequence number. When the
number is entered into the system, the corresponding virtual card appears in the online trading
card game. The player can enjoy the tangibility of the cards as well as additional special effects,
which is an advantage of the virtual cards. Once the full set of cards in the player’s deck is entered
into the system, the duel occurs automatically without any further action of the player, and the
final result of the duel is returned to the player, showing the strength of his/her deck selection. The
enjoyment of constructing an original deck still remains for the player. Another advantage is that
the two players do not need to be playing at the same time because they only need to construct
their decks.
Augmented reality techniques can be used to enhance existing games. For example, (Tokunaga, et
al., 2004) describes several augmented reality games that are enhanced versions of traditional
physical games. Specifically, Augmented Go, which we describe in Section 6.3.1, demonstrates a
promising approach to maintaining the advantages of the physicality of the board game while also
adding virtuality. Additionally, in Smart Playing Cards (Flörkemeier & Mattern, 2006), each
card contains an RFID tag, which allows the system to keep track of who is using particular cards.
Some pervasive games (Magerkurth, et al., 2005) (Montola, et al., 2009) also incorporate both
virtual and tangible objects. For example, in Pac-Man and Ghosts, human players in the real
world experience a computer graphics-generated fantasy-reality using wearable computers
(Magerkurth, et al., 2005). The basic concepts from pervasive games can also be useful in
realizing our goal. As shown in (Cuendet, et al., 2012), the use of tangible rather than virtual
objects in gaming helps to improve human performance in the real world.
4.2.2. Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game and Remote Play
In Augmented TCG, we adopt the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG because it is popular in Japan. Additionally, the
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has a number of sources of pleasure in addition to playing the game, including
completing collections of cards, structuring decks, communicating with other players, trading,
battling and forming associations with the Yu-Gi-Oh! television animations and comics 45 .
Therefore, the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG offers various sources of pleasure for people who have different
preferences (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). Thus, this is suitable for discussing how various values
affect players’ behavior. The Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG is a trading card game based on the Duel Monsters
game portrayed in the popular Yu-Gi-Oh! comic. The battle between the players with the
Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards is called duel, and a table to put a player’s cards in front of the player is called
the duel field. Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are categorized into three types: Monster, Spell and Trap cards. A
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG player structures his/her own original deck by selecting his/her favorite cards
from the several thousand Yu-Gi-Oh! cards currently available. This leads to each user having
his/her own unique and original deck that reflects his/her own personality and taste. Yu-Gi-Oh!
TCG is a turn-based game, which is played in a one-to-one or two-to-two manner.
44
http://www.onlinegamer.jp/game/737/
45
http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/
62 |
In Japan, trading card games such as Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG are very popular among children, but most
of players stop playing as they grow older because they no longer have time to meet and play with
other people. However, because of the complicated rules and interesting strategies involved in
trading card games, these games are still popular among adults. Thus, playing trading card games
remotely has become typical in our busy modern society. Remote play is also becoming more
popular for many other games, such as chess or poker. In this section, we describe some
problems and limitations related to existing styles of remote trading card game play.
There are already several systems that support remote trading card game play. For example,
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG on Nintendo DS46 uses Wi-Fi to connect remote players. In this version, the
trading cards are digitally represented and thus, players do not have the sense of the physical
tangibility of the cards, which significantly decreases the pleasure and enjoyment of the game for
some of players (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). The physical tangibility of the cards is essential to allow
players to identify with their cards. Therefore, to overcome the described limitations of the
existing systems, in Augmented TCG, we allow players to use their own collection of physical
paper cards, but the card can also be augmented by having additional information displayed on it.
Some players feel uncomfortable communicating directly with a real opponent who is a stranger
(Sakamoto, et al., 2013). However, using only an avatar to represent the opponent, as in the
existing online trading card games, does not offer enough of a sense of reality for the player. We
believe that using virtual characters from animation or game stories to represent the opponent,
with movements that are synchronized with those of the real opponent, would offer more of a
sense of reality than the avatars used in the current online trading card games. Additionally, in
Japan, trading card games are very closely associated with animation or game stories, and the
trading card games are a part of the stories. For this reason, players often relate to these stories
and their characters while playing the games, which makes the games even more enjoyable.
In the current online trading card games, some players tend to quit the game if they are expecting
to lose. This is a typical behavior of players whose only goal is winning the game. Such players
feel pleasure and satisfaction only when winning the game and do not enjoy the gaming process
itself. This unfair play is one reason why many trading card game players come to dislike playing
the online versions of the trading card games (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). Even the unfair players,
however, are familiar with the comic, animation and game stories. As described before, the
characters in these stories convey values and attitudes such as the importance of friendship and
the pleasure of honest and fair play. Involving these characters in a game may remind players of
these ideological messages and encourage them to behave fairly.
Many Japanese young adults admire animation and game stories and have done so since they
were children. If some of the hurdles to the use of remote trading card game play are eliminated
by solving the problems described in this section, then many people will continue playing the
games throughout adulthood. If more young adults maintain their passion for Japanese modern
culture, then a positive social change in our country could result.
46
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/
| 63
4.3. Auggmented Trading
T
Card
C
Gam
me
Augm
mented TCG enhances thee remote tradding card gaaming experience in a gam
ame played by
b two
peoplle. The basicc design apprroach is simillar to that of the augmentted reality gaames introdu
uced in
(Tokuunaga, et al., 2004), whicch integrates physical and
d virtual item
ms. As shownn in Figure 4.1, the
two pplayers are lo
ocated in diffe
ferent places. Each playerr’s cards, in his/her
h
duel fi
field on the taable in
front of him/her, are captured
d by a camerra and projeccted onto thee other player
er’s table. Th
he two
playeers can comm
municate with
h each other via Skype iff desired; thu
us, it is possib
ible for the players
to inttroduce them
mselves to eacch other direectly instead of using virtu
ual characterrs.
Figurre 4.1
An O
Overview off Augmented
d TCG
Figurre 4.2 illustraates the gamee setup for a pplayer. A cam
mera is set up
p behind the small display
y near
the pllayer and cap
ptures the im
mage of his/hher cards. Im
mages of the opponent’s
o
ccards are projjected
onto the table using a projecto
or that is set up on the taable. We implemented thee Augmented
d TCG
on M
Mirage middlleware infrasstructure, whhich is CORB
BA-based an
nd hides the complex neetwork
progrramming from the playerrs (Sakamotoo, et al., 2013). The following threee approachess were
choseen for the Au
ugmented TC
CG to augmennt the traditio
onal trading card games.
64 |
Figuree 4.2
Augm
mented TCG
G Prototype System
In thee first appro
oach, each pllayer is reprresented by a 3D model of a virtual character used in
popullar animation
ns and gamees, and this ccharacter is shown to the player’s oppponent. On a large
displaay, shown in
n Figure 4.2, a virtual chharacter is shown;
s
this movement
m
oof this characcter is
synchhronized witth those of th
he opponentt. In the currrent implementation, MiikuMikuDancce47 is
used to show thee 3D models of the virttual characteers. MikuMiikuDance is free softwaare for
creatiing 3D movies using virtu
ual characterrs. The virtuaal character is controlled uusing MS Kin
nect48,
and iits movemen
nts are synch
hronized withh the movem
ments of the opponent. PPlug-in softw
ware is
addedd in MikuM
MikuDance to reflect ccaptured datta from Kin
nect into seeveral param
meters
impleemented in MikuMikuDa
M
ance to movee a virtual ch
haracter’s 3D model.
In thee second app
proach, Augm
mented TCG
G augments a player’s leeading card. During the game,
anothher virtual ch
haracter depiicted on onee of the playeer’s cards ap
ppears on a ssmall display
y near
the pplayer, as sho
own in Figu
ure 4.2, oncee that card is
i drawn from the deck and supportts and
encouurages the pllayer until the end of the game.
In thee third approach, the opponent’s cardss are shown on a small diisplay near thhe player. Ussually,
the deetails of the opponent’s cards
c
are harrd to see cleaarly and read
d during playy. An expert player
p
may automaticallly know such
h informatioon by just recognizing th
he character on a card, but
b for
ordinnary players, this issue may
m decreasse the pleasu
ure of the gaame. In Auggmented TCG
G, the
47
httpp://www.geocitiies.jp/higuchuu
u4/index_e.htm
48
httpp://www.xbox.ccom/en-ca/kinecct
| 65
quality of the projected card images is not high enough to allow most players to gather this
information; this circumstance may, however, help a player to focus on his/her own play strategy.
4.4. Analysis of Behavioral and Emotional Influence
We recruited six participants (five males and one female) for our experiments. They all performed
the duel in the experiments against the author of this dissertation, who has a deep knowledge of
the trading card game and could lead and control the experiment so that all the participants played
the game under the same conditions. The participants had more than three years’ experience with
the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and they knew the characters in the animation stories very well. They were
21-22 years old university students. The generation of the participants is especially familiar with
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. Additionally, most active players are male players. Therefore, the selection of
participants is reasonable for producing useful insights, and their opinions show how our
approach is promising from an expert’s point of view. Before the experiments, players could not
talk to each other. None of them knew about Augmented TCG. Additionally, they were told how
the rules of the game were simplified right before the experiment. During the experiments, each
participant plays a different duel against an expert player who is the author of this dissertation, has
more than ten years’ experience with the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and has several thousand Yu-Gi-Oh!
cards for analyzing their respective values. We observed the participant’s duel and conducted
interviews with him/her after the duel based on the contextual inquiry method (Beyer &
Holtzblatt, 1999). All of the experiments were recorded, and all dialogs in the experiment were
transcribed to facilitate analysis of the dialogs.
For the experiments, as described in this section, the rules of the game were simplified to make
the duel shorter, and special predefined decks of cards were used. The decks were prepared by the
author of this dissertation. She is also very familiar with the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG animation story and
knows well how each character structures the deck and uses the cards in the animation. Therefore,
for each possible virtual character to be chosen by a participant to represent him/her in the game,
a suitable deck consistent with the animation story situation was prepared. For each of the virtual
characters that were available to be chosen by the participants to represent them in the game, a
suitable deck consistent with the animation story situation was prepared. In the current version of
the Augmented TCG, the virtual character’s behavior does not precisely reflect the real behavior
of the player, but are exaggerated as appropriate to the current play situation. The experiments are
described in detail in the following subsections.
4.4.1. Playing against a Virtual Character from TCG Animation
In this experiment, participants could choose either Yugi or Kaiba, who are the main characters in
the Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story, for their own character according to their preferences. Yugi is
always surrounded by many friends, and his success is the result of his strong bonds with his
friends, who love the trading card game. Kaiba is a lonelier hero who always seeks strength in
the game but does not accept help from others, even in a critical situation. In the story, however,
he eventually learns the importance of friendship. Most young boys want to follow one of these
two characters because of their typical, attractive and ideal personalities.
66 |
After the game, we interviewed the participants about their impressions about the virtual
character representing their opponent. One participant said, “I could feel I am playing against
Yugi, but Yugi used in the experiment does not offer enough.” The movement of the character was
sometimes not like that of the real Yugi in the animation story. This participant also said, “I would
definitely more enjoy a game against Yugi, and would like to win the game if the movement is more
realistic.” Another participant said, “The facial expression of the character is poor and it is a very
important issue playing a game against a real person.” Additionally, one participant stated, “The
voice should be the same as the voice of the character in the animation story.” Moreover, if the
player’s opponent was really female, some participants found it strange because both Yugi and
Kaiba are male characters. In the animation story, players usually play Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG standing
up, and we therefore chose to have the characters standing during the game, but in the real world,
players are usually sitting. Some participants found the characters’ standing positions to be unreal,
but if the characters were sitting, the participants also felt that this was inconsistent with the
personalities of Yugi and Kaiba.
4.4.2. Playing against a Virtual Character from an Another Game
In the second experiment, we chose Link from The Legend of Zelda as an opponent character for
the players. Link is a chosen hero to save his world and bravely stand against a lot of challenges.
His strength, cool and bravery are primary factors of his popularity. The reason to choose Link as
the character in our experiment is that we would like to investigate how a popular and heroic
character from another unrelated-to-TCG story affects the behavior and emotion of a player. In
the experiment, all the participants knew Link well; thus, it is easy to discuss how players’
preference for a character affects players’ behavior. In particular, for some young players in Japan,
favorite virtual characters are like close friends, and so they like to play with the character for a
long time.
The results in the second experiment differed depending on whether the participant liked this
character. Participants who were not interested in Link did not care about the presence of Link, but
if Link was their favorite character, then they found playing the game against Link more enjoyable.
One of the male participants stated, “If the character is a pretty girl, I may be more excited to play
the game.” Additionally, a female participant told us, “I feel that Link is my boyfriend, so playing
against him increases my pleasure and positivity.”
4.4.3. Playing against a Human Player
We compared the case when the participant directly saw his/her human opponent with when a
virtual character ware used to represent the opponent, as shown in Figure 4.3.
| 67
Figurre 4.3
Playying againstt a Human Player
P
Theree were somee opinions, such
s
as “If I know the op
pponent playyer well, theen the real person
p
view is more prefe
ferable and in
ncreases the reality of the game.” or “When the oopponent pla
ayer is
a strranger, using
g a virtual character iss preferable because I don’t feel ccomfortable either
showing myself or seeing the
t
opponennts.” From these
t
answeers, we founnd that theree is a
differrence betweeen the case when a partticipant know
ws the oppon
nent player w
well and thee case
whenn the opponeent player is a stranger. F
For a player who did nott like to see tthe stranger as an
opponnent player directly, rep
presenting thhe opponent player as a virtual chara
racter is help
pful to
increaase his/her motivation
m
to play the dueel. On the otther hand, th
here was a paarticipant preeferred
seeinng the real view
v
of the opponent pplayer. Thereefore, the prreferred reprresentation of
o the
opponnent dependeed on the plaayers’ prefereences or personality. Forr a participannt who sets a value
on wiinning a duel, the real gazze and face eexpression off the opponen
nt player is esssential in orrder to
predict his/her tacctics and con
nsequent movves. That is why
w in such case
c it does nnot matter wh
hether
the oppponent play
yer is real or is
i representeed with a virtu
ual characterr, but the mosst important is that
if he//she is repressented by a virtual
v
charaacter then thaat character should
s
offer a gaze and a face
expreession exactlly the same as the real oopponent plaayer’s one att that momennt. The discu
ussion
teachhes us that the
t reality of
o the virtuaal characterr is essential to satisfy and motivaate all
persoonalities (Sak
kamoto, et al., 2013).
4.4.4.
4
Cheeering a Playyer by a Viirtual Charracter
In thee experimentt, a small dissplay shows a virtual character that is illustrated oon one of thee cards
in thee player’s decck and that en
ncourages thhe player to win
w according
g to the duel’ss current situ
uation,
as shhown in Figu
ure 4.4. We have designeed a new carrd that depiccts Dead Masster from Bllack
49
Rockk Shooter as
a a characteer for this exxperiment, and
a the card is includedd in the deck
k of a
49
httpp://blackrockshoooter.wikia.com
m/
68 |
particcipant. We feel
f
that this character does not co
onflict with or violate th
the atmospheere of
Yu-Gi-Oh! world
d. We choose the characcter becausee we need a character tthat can be easily
identiified by all participants, and
a the charaacter has som
me features that clearly disstinguish him
m from
otherr characters. The
T use of Dead
D
Master iinvestigates the effect of the associatiion between a card
and thhe character to encouragee players. Bllack Rock Shooter
S
has two
t worlds. D
Dead Masterr is an
enem
my of Black Rock Shootter in anotheer dimension
n world, but in the daily world the tw
wo are
very close friendss. This becom
mes a persuaasive message conveying the meaningg that playerss need
to keeep and devellop their frien
ndship even if they fight seriously in a game.
Figure 4.4 Encouragiing a Playerr by a Virtua
al Characterr
In thhe experimen
nt, a special deck was sstructured in
n advance fo
or each partticipant to control
carefu
fully the situaation of his/h
her duel. Thee deck’s conttents dependeed on the chaaracter with which
w
the paarticipant chose to play. Then,
T
in the dduel, the partticipant alwaays removed the card dep
picting
Deadd Master from
m the deck at
a the beginnning of the gaame. Once th
hat card had been drawn out, a
smalll display nex
xt to the play
yer displayedd Dead Mastter until the end of the dduel. Dead Master
M
suppoorted and enccouraged thee player durinng the game by using enccouraging boody gestures..
Afterr the experim
ment, one of the participaants said, “Itt is desirablee that the carrd depicting Dead
Masteer does not lose
l
to the atttack of the oppponent playyer.” However, another pplayer who was
w not
intereested in the character tolld us, “It is more enjoya
able if the pa
articipant’s ffavorite character
encouurages him.”
” One of the other
o
particippants said, “II feel that thee character ddoes not enco
ourage
me ennough using only
o gesturess. It is better that the charracter talks or
o advises mee.” He also to
old us,
“It is desirable tha
at the characcter behaves like a cheerlleader.” Dead Master is a serious charracter,
and so if that charracter behavees like a cheeerleader, som
me players wh
ho know the animation sttory of
Blackk Rock Sho
ooter may feel
f
the unreeality due to
o the loss of
o consistenccy with the story.
Addittionally, ano
other particip
pant told us, “The enco
ouragement should
s
be lik
ike the one in the
animaation story.”
” Most particcipants said, “The presence of the cha
aracter increeases the pleasure,
but itt is hard to consider win
nning the gaame just from
m that encou
uragement.”” The particiipants’
comm
ments showeed that they were
w
quite aaware that th
he character depicted
d
on one of their cards
| 69
appeaared on the small
s
display
y without theem being infformed in adv
vance about this feature of the
system
m, but the ch
haracter’s en
ncouragemennt needs to be
b stronger an
nd to be chaanged accord
ding to
the siituation in eaach participan
nt’s play.
4.4.5.
4
Show
wing an Op
pponent Pla
ayer’s Card
ds on a Small Display
y
In thee experimentt, detailed in
nformation abbout the card
d that the opp
ponent playeer currently uses
u is
show
wn on a small display nextt to a player, as shown in
n Figure 4.5. Information about the strrength
level shown in thee card is hard
d to see durinng the game, and so show
wing detailed information about
the caards near a player
p
is useeful to suppoort better deccision makin
ng and strateegy choices by
b the
playeer.
Figuree 4.5
Show
wing a Card in a Small Display
D
One pparticipant saaid, “If moree hints to chooose a card in
n my deck aree shown, it iss helpful to make
m
a
betterr decision.” Another participant told us, “If the teextual inform
mation in a ccard is repressented
as vissual informa
ation, a playeer’s cognitivee overload iss decreased and
a [this] m
makes it possiible to
makee a better deecision.” Add
ditionally, onne of particiipants said, “If the card shown in a small
displaay expressess special effeects, the effeccts make me more excitin
ng.” These hhints or effeccts are
usuallly adopted in
n computer-b
based Yu-Gi--Oh! TCG th
hat uses virtual cards.
We ffound that th
he necessity of such detaails strongly depends on a player’s ggoals. If a player’s
main goal is to win
w the duel, then it is im
mportant for him/her to show
s
the supperiority of his/her
h
favorrite deck, bu
ut he/she may
y not have eenough know
wledge about the opponeent players’ cards.
Hencce, he/she willl need to seee more inform
mation on thee opponent’s cards to playy well. If a player’s
main goal is to plaay a game an
nd communiccate with a frriend, then winning
w
a dueel will be relaatively
unimportant. In su
uch a case, the informatiion on the displayed card
d is not very iimportant beecause
he/shhe can alway
ys ask his/heer friend, whho is an opp
ponent playeer during thee game, forr more
inform
mation if neecessary, and
d such comm
munication could
c
even strengthen
s
thhe friendship
p. If a
playeer is an experrt of Yu-Gi-O
Oh! TCG, thenn he/she willl be familiar with
w most off the cards, an
nd just
70 |
seeing the shape of the illustration on the card will be enough for him/her to know its functionality.
Thus, for him/her, it is not important to see the small details of the cards. However, we believe that
being able to show detailed card information will always have a positive impact on the enjoyment
of the game.
4.4.6. The Effects of Using a Virtual Character from a Popular Animation Story
The most important characteristic of Augmented TCG is the use of a virtual character to augment
traditional trading card games. In this section, we discuss our observations from our experiences
with designing and playing Augmented TCG, about the effects of using a virtual character in this
way.
As already mentioned, most of the participants in the experiments, all of whom had watched the
Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story, felt that including popular virtual characters from the animation in the
game can make it more enjoyable and exciting. The desire to imitate these characters may also
become an incentive for the users to change their behavior. Negative feedback may be used to
achieve moral play, but changing a user’s general attitude is not easy (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta,
2013). The most important insight is that it is possible to use a virtual character as a symbol that
reminds the player of the character’s story during the game, and in this way, the story may convey
values such as the importance of friendship, honesty, and thoughtfulness. This approach could
have the power to change the player’s attitude towards fair play.
As mentioned above, the results of our experiments and interviews with participants have
indicated that the relative reality of the virtual characters, such as their facial expressions,
movements and behavior, is important for players’ enjoyment of the game. Reality is an important
criterion for evaluating a design (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). In Augmented TCG, the virtual
character’s behavior should be consistent with the character’s behavior in the animation story, and
this consistency is important to players’ sense of their reality in the game. For example, cards that
are not used by the character in the animation should not be used in the game, and the movements
of the virtual character should be consistent with its movements in the animation. The number of
cards owned by the character in the game should be consistent with the corresponding number in
the animation as well. Excessively realistic expressions, however, may lead to the uncanny valley
problem (Mori, 1970) if the achieved realness is perceived as not being completely realistic. The
balance between the realness and the virtuality of the virtual characters is important for design
strategies when introducing virtuality into the real world.
Most people, especially Japanese people, like fictional stories in which the characters are able to
do whatever they want by using hidden magic abilities. For example, many Japanese people
attach pictures of favorite characters to their bags and mobile phones. These action increases their
identification with their bags and mobile phones. If the stories become more pervasive in our
daily life, then the boundary between the real world and the fictional world becomes more blurred.
Therefore, fictional stories can be used to enhance our daily activities. These stories can increase
people’s positive thinking in the real world and enhance their self-efficacy to do what they want
because through participation in these games, people can develop the illusion of having special
extraordinary abilities. In their daily life, people may not feel as if they are able to change their
| 71
undesirable behavior because as daily life becomes more and more complicated, we do not have
enough time to consider the importance of the more desirable behavior.
Many Japanese animation and game stories emphasize the importance of positivity. Thus, the
characters in these stories can help to increase people’s positivity as they play a game. This is
especially true for many young Japanese people who have grown up with fictional stories, such as
game, animation and science fiction stories. Positivity is an important factor that can increase
people’s self-efficacy to solve difficult problems, such as those involving environmental
sustainability or human well-being, which has been observed in psychology research
(Fredrickson, 2009). Positivity is very useful for making our life more meaningful (McGonigal,
2008) and is essential for success in our life. Our approach to incorporating virtuality into the real
world is a possibly powerful way to increase people’s positivity.
4.5. Introducing Virtuality into Transmedia Storytelling
Enhancing real world games such as trading card games with fictional stories is a promising
direction for designing a new form of transmedia storytelling (Dowd, et al., 2013). In this section,
we discuss some design implications of incorporating virtuality into physical artifacts that may be
important for designing future daily artifacts enhancing with transmedia storytelling. In
transmedia storytelling, a fictional story is told across multiple media platforms, which are
distributed throughout the real world. In our approach, we use some items from a story to remind
people of the story. For example, in the Augmented TCG, a trading card is an item that appears in
the story, and Yugi and Kaiba as virtual characters also remind the players of the story. Virtual
characters are designed to be remembered for a long time; therefore, a character from an
animation story is suitable to be used as a reminder of the story.
Seichi junrei is a typical geek culture activity in Japan and is related to Japanese animation,
comics and games. “Seichi” means “sacred land”, “junrei” means “pilgrimage”. In seichi junrei,
people visit famous locations from animation, manga and games. Anime fans take pictures at a
specific location at the same screen/angle as it appears in the animation and then upload the
pictures to their blogs. The most important aspect of seichi junrei is that something is brought
from the fictional story to the real world. The fans create new stories using these pictures and the
virtual characters from the fictional stories, and share them within their community.
Recent animated movies use many scenes from the real world to increase the realness of the
fictional movies. A participant of seichi junrei tries to find the scene that appears in the movie in
the real world and takes a photo of the scene. The participant enjoys finding these scenes and
visiting the locations of the scenes. Then, he/she takes a photo, as in a scavenger hunt. The photos
are usually uploaded to the Web, and many other people enjoy looking at the photos.
In Japan, especially, animated movies have recently been used to promote the local districts that
appear in the stories. Some districts work to attract people who like the stories by offering extra
new original stories to those who visit the districts. This strategy suggests that it is possible to
promote districts using fictional stories. If real products that the district is known for appear in the
stories, then it will increase the feeling that the stories are realistic, especially if the audience is
72 |
familiar with the products. If the stories are attractive, they will also promote the products to
people who do not live in the district.
The above phenomenon, which is an interesting example of harmonizing the real world with the
fictional world, suggests new possibilities for incorporating virtuality into the real world. Stories
embodied in the real world through transmedia storytelling increases our sense of reality. By
incorporating virtual characters from the stories into the real world, each person can create his/her
own story based on these stories, as in Seichi Junrei.
As already described, virtual characters from animations and game stories are widely used in
multiple media channels. For example, in Pokémon, synergy among games, movies, and
television programs is used to make the Pokémon story more popular and to make the story
pervasive in its fans’ daily life. Additionally, in the Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story, the story teaches
its audience how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and why the game is attractive. Using multiple
channels to communicate messages to people through transmedia storytelling is an effective way
to convey the messages because each channel can convey the message in a special way. This
approach is also typically used in current advertising because one medium alone cannot deliver
advertising to a large audience of people.
4.6. Some Issues in Designing Augmented TCG
In the current Augmented TCG, a player must manually teach the system which cards he/she likes
to use. If the system could automatically detect the player’s cards, then the usability of the system
would be dramatically improved. The automatic detection of cards can be easily realized by
inserting an RFID into each card, similar to the approach described in (Hazenberg & Huisman,
2011). In our system, it is sometimes difficult to clearly see the opponent’s cards, and in such case,
a player must explain which card he/she is using and the effect of the card. If detailed information
about each card were automatically shown on the duel field, then the players would not need to
engage in such extra communication using a voice communication system or a chat system.
Additionally, in Augmented TCG, it would be easy to detect mistakes made by players, which
would be very helpful because sometimes it is hard even for a semi-expert player to understand
the complex rules of a game.
As described in Section 4.3, Augmented TCG uses physical cards. To augment the cards, we
displayed special effects on them. This approach increases a player’s cognitive load because
he/she needs to look at both his/her cards and at the display. When participants became
enthusiastic about the game, they usually forgot about the existence of the display. It would be
better to use more immersive technologies to enhance the physical cards directly. We suggest two
possible approaches for solving this problem. The first would be to use a projector to project the
special effects onto the cards. It is, however, not easy to install a projector to accurately project the
special effects onto a player’s cards. The second approach would be to use a head mounted display.
This would require accurate identification of the movements of a player’s head. In the Yu-Gi-Oh!
animation story, a player usually wears a head mount display, so this approach may be accepted as
natural by people who are familiar with the animation story.
| 73
One of the problems in using virtual characters is copyright. There are many free 3D models for
MikuMikuDance on the Web, but many have been deleted due to copyright issues. The freely
available models offer new possibilities to enhance games because the models can be easily
customized. In Japan, it is popular to create new characters and stories from existing ones. Using
a customizable virtual character in Augmented TCG may create a new playing style of trading
card game, and the new stories created about the characters may enhance the story’s message.
4.7. Conclusion and Future Directions
This chapter proposed Augmented TCG system as a case study of incorporating virtuality into the
real world. Additionally, we explained the basic design and implementation of Augmented TCG
and show some experiments about the way players use the system, realizing the game, and what
their feelings and impressions about the game are. Specifically, we have discussed the impact of
introducing virtual characters used in animation and game stories into the game.
Reality is a very important criterion for the design and augmentation of physical artifacts. This
does not mean that we need to offer the same physical items that we have used before. Adding
virtuality offers the possibility of offering more sophisticated user experiences. It is important to
consider how a player feels about physical items, and this consideration remains important after
virtuality is introduced. The Value-based Design Framework, which we introduce in Chapter 6,
will be an essential tool. For example, the facial expressions of an opponent offers useful
information for formulating a game strategy, and these facial expressions becomes the
informative value defined in the framework. However, it is not necessary to present the
opponent’s exact facial expressions; only the information from the expressions that the player
needs for playing the game is needed. For instance, the information may be offered in the form of
textual messages. Additionally, as described in Section 4.3, the tangibility of cards is important.
The value that players place on the cards is the economic value in the framework. If they feel that
the cards are worth collecting, then the cards are satisfying a need. If people see virtual cards as
having the economic value, then they may not feel that the cards need to be tangible.
Gaming will be one of the most important media in the future because the interactivity of gaming
gives players a feeling of autonomy. As described in (Deci & Ryan, 2000), autonomy is one of the
most important factors in a healthier lifestyle. As described in Section 4.4.6, the positivity of
typical Japanese animation stories can help to increase our self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a key for
increasing our quality of life.
The insights described in this chapter should be considered in future projects using virtuality to
enhance physical artifacts. In the future, the approach will allow us to design new artifacts that
will help to increase people’s positive thinking and self-efficacy, and to enhance their intrinsic
motivation to tackle serious social problems.
74 |
| 75
Chapter 5 Rhetoric-based Design Framework
5.1. Introduction
This chapter investigates how to design collective human behavior in crowdsourcing by using
gameful digital rhetoric50. The first topic is to extract seven insights from multidisciplinary
literature surveys and our experiences in building and operating three community-based mobile
crowdsourcing services: Micro-Crowdfunding, MoboQ and BianYi. We have already introduced
Micro-Crowdfunding in Chapter 3, so we show an overview of MoboQ and BianYi in this
chapter. Our seven insights summarise a variety of sociocultural and psychological techniques
that can be used to influence human behavior when designing future crowdsourcing. The second
topic is to present the Rhetoric-based Design Framework which enhances the GamiRhetoric
Model in Chapter 2 to match with the real world by using the above seven insights for designing
gameful digital rhetoric. The framework consists of five types of rhetoric and each type of
rhetoric offers a different frame for choosing sociocultural and psychological insights to design
their influence on human behavior. We present Collectivist Crowdsourcing, which is a concrete
example applying the Rhetoric-based Design Framework and show two scenarios to enhance the
basic strategy and several challenges to discuss the current approach.
5.2. Crowdsourcing and Collective Human Behavior
Crowdsourcing is a promising approach to exploit our social power and to enhance our human
ability and possibilities (Howe, 2008). The roles of crowdsourcing have recently expanded in a
50
This chapter is based on the following papers:
Mizuki Sakamoto and Tatsuo Nakajima: “A Community-based Crowdsourcing Service for Achieving a
Sustainable Society through Micro-Level Crowdfunding,” In Proceedings of The Internet, Policy & Politics
Conferences 2014, Sep. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Hairihan Tong, Yefeng Liu, Tatsuo Nakajima, and Sayaka Akioka: “Designing Incentives for
Community-Based Mobile Crowdsourcing Service Architecture,” In Proceedings of 25th International Conference
on Database and Expert Systems Applications, pp. 17-33, Sep. 2014.
76 |
variety of new areas, such as citizen science, civic engagement, and political campaigns, and will
become increasingly important in a modern society (Oxford Internet Institute, 2014).
Additionally, a new approach, community-based mobile crowdsourcing (Liu, et al., 2013) (Liu,
et al., 2012), in which people voluntarily contribute to help other people anytime and anywhere
using mobile phones, has been reported. The required task is usually trivial and consequently can
be performed with minimal effort and low cognitive load. This approach offers a new method of
developing services to address serious collective action problems, such as achieving social
sustainability from the bottom up (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014). These approaches differ from
traditional crowdsourcing, which uses only monetary rewards to encourage performing tasks
(Kittur, et al., 2008) because in community-based mobile crowdsourcing, service designers
should consider the trade-offs among different types of sociocultural and psychological
techniques to enhance participants’ influence on the designs. To expand the scope of
crowdsourcing, it should account for coordinating collective human behavior towards a common
goal achieved through crowdsourcing activities. However, the current design of crowdsourcing is
very ad-hoc and there are few reports to present a guideline for designing crowdsourcing in terms
of a variety of motivational and influential factors related to collective human behavior. It is
important to expand our knowledge to build future crowdsourcing that can be used for various
purposes, and it is a promising method of collective action problems that are essential to
addressing many serious social problems (Oxford Internet Institute, 2014).
In the real world, each person may not be able to make a decision based on the best strategy, and
this is a reason that collective human behavior is a difficult issue. As we described in Section
1.3.2, each person is affected by various surrounding situations to prevent him/her from choosing
the best strategies. Therefore, our dairy infrastructure must both navigate and coordinate a person
through various sociocultural and psychological techniques both to influence the person and to
provide an opportunity for reflective thinking.
5.3. Case Studies of Community-based Mobile Crowdsourcing Services
This section presents overviews of our case studies of community-based mobile crowdsourcing
services: Micro-Crowdfunding, MoboQ and BianYi. We have introduced Micro-Crowdfunding in
Chapter 3, so we show an overview of MoboQ and BianYi in this section.
5.3.1. Using Crowds for Sensing Context Information: MoboQ51
The location-based, real-time, question-answering service, MoboQ, is built on a micro-blogging
platform for people to help each other with minimum effort (Liu, et al., 2013). Using MoboQ, end
users can ask location- and time-sensitive questions that are difficult to answer with ordinary
Q&A services, such as whether a restaurant is crowded, whether a bank has a long waiting line, or
whether any tickets remain for an upcoming movie at the local cinema as shown in Figure 5.1.
51
This section summarizes the paper entitled “Using Stranger as Sensors: Temporal and Geo-Sensitive Question
Answering via Social Media” (Liu, et al., 2013)
| 77
Figure 5.11
MoboQ’’s Concept
MobooQ analyses the
t real-timee stream of thhe micro-blog
gging servicee Sina Weiboo52, searches for
f the
Weibbo users who are most likeely to be at thhe given locaation at that moment
m
basedd on the conttent of
their micro-blog posts,
p
and pushes questiions to thosee strangers. Note
N
that thee answerers in
i this
system
m are Sina Weibo
W
users, not MoboQ
Q users, and may
m not even
n be aware oof the existen
nce of
MobooQ. This dessign takes ad
dvantage of the populariity and furious growth raate of Weibo
o. The
real-ttime nature of
o micro-blogging platfoorms also maakes it possib
ble to expectt a faster ressponse
time than with traaditional Q&
&A systems. To some ex
xtent, MoboQ
Q utilises Weeibo users ass local
humaan sensors an
nd allows a questioner too extract con
ntext informaation at any given locatiion by
askinng the human
n sensors whaat is happeniing around th
hem.
The m
main compon
nents of Mob
boQ are as foollows:
Communication Mod
dule: This m
module consiists of the REST
R
(Repreesentational State
53
Transfer)) Web Service, with an oopen API to client
c
applicaations and thhe Sina Weibo
o API.
It managees communiccations betw
ween an askerr from Mobo
oQ and an annswerer from
m Sina
Weibo.
52
httpp://weibo.com/
53
httpp://www.w3.orgg/TR/2002/WD-webarch-200220830/
78 |
Ranking Engine: Thee ranking enngine searches and seleccts the best candidates on
o the
Weibo platform to answer a questtion.
Client Ap
pplications: Each cliennt applicatio
on includes a Web sitee, a mobile Web
applicatio
on, and a nattive mobile application to
t present th
he questions and to answ
wer the
user in an
n accessible and
a interactivve form.
The MoboQ serrver, which comprises tthe commun
nication module and raanking engine, is
impleemented usin
ng Ruby on Rails
R 54. The m
mobile Web is implemented using HT
TML5 technology.
Figurre 5.2 shows the system overview
o
of M
MoboQ.
Fig
gure 5.2
M
MoboQ’s Sysstem Overviiew
Becauuse MoboQ is
i a Q&A sysstem betweeen people who are likely to
t be compleete strangers, it is a
challeenge to motiivate potentiial answererrs from Weib
bo to answerr strangers’ qquestions. From a
desiggn perspectiv
ve, we conceentrate on tw
wo aspects simultaneously: 1) how to establish
h trust
amonng the answeerer, the Mo
oboQ platform
m, and the asker;
a
and 2)
2 how to prrovide appro
opriate
beneffits to the can
ndidate answ
werers.
Earlyy studies sugg
gest that lack
k of trust is onne of the greaatest barriers to inhibit Innternet transaactions.
To suupport onlinee trust buildin
ng, the conteent of the Mo
oboQ query message is uuniquely desiigned;
i.e., itt includes thee reason thatt the candidatte answerer is
i selected (ee.g. “Hi, we ffound that yo
ou just
visiteed #Location
n#.”). The UR
RL of the askker’s profile page
p
on Mob
boQ site show
ws that the assker is
a reall person, and
d another URL to the quesstion’s page on
o MoboQ iss provided too help the ansswerer
learn about the seervice. All off the necessaary informatiion is open to
o the candidaate answererrs, and
we hope that thiss information
n helps the aanswerer un
nderstand thaat this is nott a spam message;
insteaad, it is a reaal question from a real peerson who is seeking help
p.
54
httpp://rubyonrails.oorg/
| 79
Our system also utilises findings from social psychology as incentives. Social incentives, such as
social facilitation and social loafing, are two commonly cited behavior that can affect
contributions to social media (Cialdini, 1987). The social facilitation effect refers to the tendency
of people to perform better on simple tasks while someone else is watching, rather than while they
are alone or working alongside other people. The social loafing effect is the phenomenon of
people making less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone
because they feel that their contributions either do not count or are not evaluated or valued as
much when they work in a group. This is considered one of the main reasons that groups are less
productive than the combined performance of members working alone. Different mechanisms are
employed in MoboQ to take advantage of positive social facilitation and avoid negative social
loafing as follows:
A public thank-you message is provided to publicly and prominently display individuals’
efforts.
The query is a public message and therefore, individuals should know that others can
easily evaluate their work.
Each question is sent to as many as 15 people in a separate message so that the unique
value of each individual’s contribution can be evaluated.
MoboQ was designed and implemented during the autumn of 2011 and was released in China in
early 2012. We collected 15,224 questions until the beginning of October 2012. We received
29,491 responses from 162,954 Weibo candidate answerers. This indicates an 18.0% reply rate
for Weibo strangers. Because MoboQ sends one question to as many as to 15 candidate answerers,
the overall average response rate for a question is 74.6%; 28% of the answers arrived within 10
minutes, 51% arrived within 20 minutes, and 72% arrived within an hour. This result
demonstrates that the approach is feasible in real-world conditions.
5.3.2. Crime Mapping via Social Media: BianYi
A crime map is a tool that visualizes crime information based on the geographical location of
crimes. In earliest times, the police used a crime map to recognise the inherent geographical
component of crimes by sticking pins into maps displayed on walls, where each pin on the map
represented a crime incident. With the progress of GIS and the Internet, a crime map places the
pins, which are shown as colour spots, on a digital map that can be available on a mobile phone.
Accordingly, the police have recently used crime maps for crime analysis, and ordinary citizens
have used these maps to obtain an understanding of neighbourhood crime or even to receive alert
notices when a crime occurs in the place in which he/she is interested.
Currently, social media services, especially micro-blogs, have become an indispensable part of
people’s daily life, in which they can share events around them, such as what they have seen and
what events have occurred around them, by posting text messages, geo-information, photos, and
even videos on social media.
The BianYi system, as shown in Figure 5.3, is a crime map that we developed that is automatically
created from crime data published on micro-blogs to achieve a secure society by reporting crimes
80 |
that hhave occurred
d in our areas. Unlike sim
milar crime maps,
m
such ass SpotCrime555 or WikiCriimes56,
whichh are not ressponsible forr the crime ddata uploadeed to maps and
a make noo representation or
warraanty about th
he accuracy or
o content off any data con
ntained, Bian
nYi obtains crrime data obttained
by annalysing miccro-blogs posted during 2010 to 201
13 from Sinaa Weibo andd Tencent Weibo
We 57,
whichh serve as op
pen crime databases.
Figure
F
5.3
An Overvieew of BianY
Yi
The ccurrent versio
on of BianYi consists of thhe following
g two modulees: a crowd-m
map module and
a an
inform
mation flow monitoring module.
m
C
Crowd-map module: Thee module off
ffers a user in
nterface, which visualizees crime dataa on a
ddigital map and
a shows th
he user the s eriousness of
o each crimee through intteractions wiith the
ccrime data. We have im
mplemented the modulee using the open-sourcee crowd-maapping
5
sservices of th
he Ushahidi58
platform, w
which is also
o supported on
o mobile phhones.
IInformation flow
f
monitoring modulee: This modu
ule is a core component of data collection
ffrom social media.
m
It deteermines the tyype of keywo
ords to be useed to search A
APIs, what ty
ype of
m
micro-blogs should be collected,
c
annd how the contents co
ollected from
m micro-blog
gs are
cconverted to crime data.
55
httpp://spotcrime.coom/
56
httpp://www.wikicrrimes.org/
57
httpp://t.qq.com/
58
httpp://www.ushahiidi.com/
| 81
Information flow monitoring module can be broken down into the following two sub-modules:
Key conversations extraction module: Sensitive crime information is collected through the
topic search function of the Sina Weibo APIs and the micro-blog search function of the
Tencent Weibo API. BianYi focuses on the ‘steal’ type of crime and therefore, keywords such
as ‘steal’, ‘thief’, and ‘pickpocket’ are used as the parameters.
Data cleaning module: This module primarily provides the functionality of filtering the
contents of micro-blogs to input into the crime database format of the Ushahidi platform.
Specifically, in the first step, the module filters data that are extracted at the key
conversations extraction steps from the micro-blogs and excludes spam, such as repeated
records, and unavailable geo-messages. In the second step, the module matches all of the
micro-blogs’ attributes to the crime incident database columns, (e.g. a crime description and
geo-information in the micro-text) is matched to a crime description, and a
micro-blog-post-created time is matched to an incident-occurred time.
The initial version of BianYi did not obtain as much sensitive data as we expected. The limitations
of the Sina Weibo API, such as the fact that the micro-blog search API service was closed for a
time and only 200 search result records related to one topic were available, may be part of the
reason for this lack of data. We also found that users were not willing to send crime data to
micro-blogs that contained geo-information. Using the crime type ‘steal’ for search APIs may be
another component of the lack of data because people did not know where or when things were
stolen. In fact, it is difficult for people to record non-current location as either GIS (Geographic
Information System) or a common text. A new method is required for users to map location timely
and accurately. One solution is for micro-blogs to prepare a specific interface to report crime data
from users.
The second version of BianYi adds the natural-language processing module to the data-cleaning
module to extract location information from the micro-blog content and to convert the
information into geo-information using Google Map APIs 59 . In this version, we continue to
experience some problems when extracting location information from text in the micro-blogs.
The primary reason for these problems is that the location information described in the
micro-blogs is not clearly described enough by users that can be translated for Google Map APIs.
The crime data in BianYi, as extracted from micro-blogs, have been obtained from verified
individual users, organisational users, and media users, such as police offices, TV programs, and
news media, as verified by both the Sina Corporation60 and the Tencent Corporation61. Because
trust is a significant factor in crowdsourcing, the functionality of verified account features in
Chinese micro-blogging will be a key factor for users to evaluate crime reports’ reliability.
59
https://developers.google.com/maps/
60
http://www.sina.com/
61
http://www.tencent.com/en-us/
82 |
5.4. Seven Sociocultural and Psychological Insights
In the following respective subsections, we present seven insights extracted from our experiences
with developing and operating our three community-based mobile crowdsourcing services:
Micro-Crowdfunding, MoboQ and BianYi. The insights include discussion complemented with
the results of the multi-disciplinary literature surveys.
5.4.1. Insight on Curious Stimulative Effects
All of the three case studies use mobile phones to access crowdsourcing. Thus, people can access
them anytime and anywhere. The most important factor when using mobile phones is that people
can use the services when they have a little time, for example, in their spare time. In urban cities,
such as Tokyo, people usually have a great deal of spare time while waiting for trains or food or
for the beginning of a meeting or an event. These days, many young people in Tokyo watch their
mobile phones in their spare time. If a crowdsource micro-task is lightweight and can be
completed in a short time, such as a task requested by MoboQ, the possibility of a user attempting
to complete such a micro-task is higher. However, people need to have an incentive to perform the
task, even if the task is not difficult.
A useful motivational factor for performing a task is curiosity, which can develop human intrinsic
motivation. Curiosity allows us to enjoy performing a task without considering its direct benefits
to us (Deci, 1980). Stimulative impulses that increase people’s emotional benefit, such as
interests, happiness and comfort, are important factors in maintaining people’s curiosity; however,
when the same impulses are received over a long period, curiosity may be decreased (McGonigal,
2011). If people feel enough curiosity, they are willing to complete a proposed task, but there is a
trade-off between their curiosity and the time required to complete the task. For example, in
Micro-Crowdfunding, if people do not have an interest in sustainability, they do not want to
become either a mission organiser or a mission performer. A task that inspires less curiosity must
be completed within a shorter time before a person loses his/her curiosity. When people do not
feel enough curiosity to complete a task, a service must offer other incentives. In BianYi, if the
number of crime reports is increased, participants may increase their curiosity because they may
be interested in a crime map’s changes, but if there is no change for a long time, they may lose the
curiosity that inspires then to participate.
We also must consider the fact that people’s curiosity about the values of a micro-task changes
according to their diverse situations because differences among people are diverse and their
capacities have cognitive limitations. For example, if people have too many choices, they may not
value a favorite choice among their many options (Schwartz, 2003). Additionally, if we have too
much information, we must rely on heuristics when making a decision and may have serious
biases about the decision (Todd, 2007). In particular, information overload causes mental
exhaustion and thus, a loss of curiosity (McGonigal, 2011).
The curiosity factor also shows that we should be careful when evaluating a new service because
most people usually feel curiosity for their own service first. In other words, which type of
curiosity that encourages people should be carefully considered during the evaluation.
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5.4.2. Insight on Social Effects
Helping others based on altruism is an essential mechanism in crowdsourcing that increases its
participants’ activities, such as in our case studies. To enhance the strength of the mechanism,
various social factors should be taken into account. Most of the game mechanics in gamification
potentially help us make the basic mechanism of crowdsourcing work well. However, as shown in
(Zuckerman & Gal-Oz, 2014), if the effect implemented by game mechanics does not cause
participants to feel meaningful values, it does not motivate them. Meaningfulness is one of the
most important factors in designing social effects (Nicholson, 2012). An important design issue is
not only to discuss game mechanics in crowdsourcing but also to offer participants perceived
values that make their activities meaningful.
Social factors can be classified into three types. These factors are very strong because they
primarily influence human behavior unconsciously. The first type of social factor is reciprocity:
people help other people. This trait encourages users to complete tasks to support other people
(Cialdini, 1987). The trust relationship among people is the key to success when using reciprocity.
When two persons are not well known to each, a social effect that increases both persons’
empathy is effective to strengthen the power of reciprocity. Reciprocity works well if people
believe that others have are grateful for their help. We carefully designed our case studies,
especially MoboQ, to maintain the trust relationship among people by showing both why a person
needs a support from others and that the claim is not dishonest. Additionally, after completing a
task, people receive gratitude. This reduces the effect of personality and therefore, social media
based on this technique works well for most people. Similarly, in BianYi, only crime reports from
trusted participants are stored in the database. Building the trust relationship depends on cultures
and therefore, we should be careful when expanding crowdsourcing to multiple countries
(Weinschenk, 2013). The second type of social factor is social facilitation. Visualizing one’s
differences from others is a useful technique when using social facilitation. When someone’s
performance is insufficiently high, using vizualisation to show that his/her performance is less
than that of others can be effective (Cialdini, 1987). MoboQ adopted techniques to increase social
facilitation to motivate participants. The third type of social factor is self-respect or self-esteem.
Because self-respect is also related to economic factors, we discuss it in the next subsection.
When using crowdsourcing to solve collective action problems, we must consider how a shared
good should be managed. If each person considers only his/her individual benefit, a shared good
cannot be well-maintained (Miller, 2003). One serious issue to solve problems is to increase the
number of free riders to manage shared goods when the number of community members is
increased (Olson, 1965). In Micro-Crowdfunding, a new micro-mission is proposed within a local
community and the mission is performed and encouraged within that community. As shown in
Chapter 3, a local community must have members who know each other well to increase the
effect of social influence among community members in Micro-Crowdfunding because such
knowledge is important to increase the empathy that encourages crowdsourcing activities. In
BianYi, if many participants report their found crimes, others may feel that their contribution may
not be required to build a more useful crime map. It is essential for the system to show participants
that their help always contributes to realising a secure society.
84 |
In the case studies, the social media developed for research purposes usually do not initially have
many users, as shown by the case of the user study in its early phase. Therefore, when designing
the case studies, we decided to use reciprocity or social facilitation as much as possible. These
incentives can work well even if the community size is small.
5.4.3. Insight on Economic Effects
Exchanging valuable things is another crowdsourcing mechanism. As previously shown,
monetary rewards are typically used as the economic factor of traditional crowdsourcing. That
money is a useful tool for activating our market for performing more micro-tasks. Money is
typically used as a monetary reward, but it can also be used to increase a community’s activities,
as shown in Micro-Crowdfunding. In a local economy, local currency is an effective tool to
complement global currency to support our economy (Gesell, 1958). As shown in many recent
online games, virtual economy is a useful concept for augmenting traditional economy
(Lehdonvirta & Castronova, 2014). Goods implemented by digital technology can be exchanged
in virtual economy as valuable goods similar to real goods. For example, beautiful clothes or
strong weapons are a typical good in the virtual economy because a player can buy it using his/her
money in popular online games.
Self-respect is the most popular way to encourage people to complete a task in social media and
typically, self-respect is stimulated using badges and leaderboards to increase a user’s self-respect
(Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013); thus, we applied self-respect in the early design of our case
studies to add virtual badges that symbolize self-respect. However, this did not work well (Liu, et
al., 2012) and therefore, the current prototypes do not use that approach. It is important to
understand why this approach did not succeed. The use of a badge based on people’s self-respect
is also based on a feeling of rarity, such as earning a Mr. Bill badge or becoming a mayor in
Foursquare. Rarity is a type of economic incentive. In most previous studies, monetary rewards
have been discussed as an economic incentive but for people, rare objects can be considered the
same as a monetary reward (Lehdonvirta & Castronova, 2014). That is, if people do not feel the
value of objects, they may want to exchange them for other objects. If an object similar to money
can be used, it can be exchanged with others. Thus, it is essential for people to perceive the rarity
of virtual goods. Additionally, to make self-respect effective, a large number of participants is
necessary to increase the rarity of the goods. This is an important issue if a new crowdsourcing
platform does not have enough participants in its early deployment. An economic incentive may
not work every time, as shown in (Antikainen & Väätäjä, 2010), because focusing exclusively on
economic benefits kills people’s curiosity, which is an important factors in the success of
community-based mobile crowdsourcing, as described in Section 5.4.1. The above experience
indicates that the game mechanics used to offer virtual, rare goods do not work successfully in
some cases. This claim is consistent with an experience described both by (Liu, et al., 2012),
(Nicholson, 2012), and (Zuckerman & Gal-Oz, 2014).
Helping other people by investing money is also useful for increasing awareness of the necessity
to achieve a goal (Gesell, 1958). People usually believe that money can be used to increase
economic benefit, but we found based on our experiences with Micro-Crowdfunding that money
is also useful to increase people’s awareness of important issues. Money can be exchanged
| 85
between individuals; therefore, it can be used as a tool to remind them of the necessity of
completing a task to achieve their goal. Conversely, the gamification-based approach usually
leads only a few people to participate heavily in the target activities (Denny, 2013). Thus, that
approach may not be suitable for increasing awareness of the activities’ importance.
Another problem is caused by the intangibility of virtual goods (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). If people
do not feel that virtual goods are meaningful, they may not want to complete a micro-task to
obtain them (Lehdonvirta & Castronova, 2014). Conversely, there is an advantage of using virtual
goods. Depending on the situation, the use of virtual goods can easily change the meaning of
those goods (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013). In particular, if the goods provide metaphors that
show how completing micro-tasks is meaningful for people, the quality of performing
micro-tasks is increased (Rogstadius, et al., 2011). However, the tangibility and the flexibility of
virtual goods become a trade-off in designing gameful digital rhetoric.
5.4.4. Insight on Ideological Aspects
To motivate people to complete a micro-task, they must be made consciously aware of the
necessity of their participation to achieve their goal in their activities (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In
traditional media such as movies and literature, a narrative is typically used to teach people why
achieving their goals is essential for them. When a micro-task is related to solving serious social
problems, such as environment sustainability or human well-being, behavioral changes are
essential to encourage people (Dolan, 2010) (Wolfe, et al., 2014). A narrative is used to identify
the necessity to achieve the goal of a person’s activities (Allison, 2006). Additionally, autonomy
and competence are important factors to increase one’s motivation to perform a micro-task
through behavioral changes. Ryan and Deci claim that the process to cause people to have a
conscious purpose to achieve their goals is essential to develop human motivation (Ryan & Deci,
2000). For example, as shown in BianYi, if participants believe that offering more criminal reports
decreases the number of crimes and thus secure their cities, then their motivation to inform on
criminals will be increased.
It is difficult to remind participants why a micro-task is important to achieve their goals in the
absence of a large amount of information, for example, sustainability in Micro-Crowdfunding or
the security of daily life in BianYi. Learning the importance of people’s activities takes a long time
and requires a large cognitive load. Therefore, the narrative approach is not suitable for
mobile-based social media. A narrative that is used to teach the necessity of completing a task is
the key for efficiently increasing a conscious and more internalised motivation. If a narrative is
popular and includes a clear ideological message, characters or goods appearing in the narrative
become a metaphor to remind people of the necessity of their participation through the ideological
message embedded in the narrative. For example, in BianYi, some metaphors are offered to
represent the narrative of why crime reporting is important to secure a city. If metaphors can be
shown according to people’s current situations, the possibility of becoming aware of the
important ideological message presented in a narrative becomes high. Additionally, a sense of
participation is important to increase people’s activities (Fuad-Luke, 2013). In MoboQ, because a
query is a pubic message, participants can evaluate others’ efforts. This makes sense of their
participation and reminds them that their MoboQ activities can help others.
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5.4.5. Insight on Goal-Setting and Challenges
Achievement is often used in games, and it is a useful incentive to motivate people (Jull, 2005). In
video games, a narrative is typically represented through a sequence of challenges (Frasca, 2003).
By setting a goal, people attempt to achieve the goal according to the narrative. When a task is
very simple, people can complete it without exerting a great effort. In an MMORPG, a sequence
of challenges allows players coordinated for the purpose of achieving their common goal.
Because such an approach embeds a narrative into a game, a player feels that achieving the goal is
part of the given narrative. However, if the complexity of a challenge represented as a micro-task
is increased, as in Micro-Crowdfunding, more effort is required; therefore, providing an explicit
goal becomes important. In games, the goal is divided into several sub-goals, and a player can
achieve those sub-goals step by step because each subsequent sub-goal is usually achieved with a
small amount of increased effort (Jull, 2005). In the real world, we may not be able to offer such
easily achievable sub-goals because the progress required to achieve the goal in the real world is
not usually linear. For example, daily, constant exercise does not reduce people’s weight linearly;
this is one reason that people abandon exercising (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013). However, if
the sub-goal is fictional and the goal is not difficult to achieve, the hurdle to achieve the final goal
becomes lower. This increases people’s competence in achieving the goal because they have
already achieved the first step toward the final goal (Cialdini, 1987). Additionally, if there are
multiple choices for achieving the goal, a person’s autonomy is increased (Deci, 1980). This is
essential to develop human intrinsic motivation for achieving their goal.
In Micro-Crowdfunding, each micro-mission is independent and thus, it is not easy to achieve the
final goal for social sustainability. A mission organiser should be conscious of his/her mission as a
sub-goal to achieve a sustainable society. One solution is to incorporate a micro-mission given in
a fictional narrative in the real world. Of course, maintaining consistency with the real world is
important, to have a sense of reality when achieving sub-goals (Frome, 2006). Fictional narratives
may contain ideological messages that make us aware of the important social issues in our daily
life (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014), which offers a promising possibility towards better human
navigation.
5.4.6. Insight on Collectivity
People usually like to know where they are and how their efforts are necessary to achieve their
goals. In BianYi, a crime map of a city shows how crimes are reported so that participants can
know the dangerous areas of a city. These techniques show the results of the accumulated efforts
of either individuals or collective. These techniques are also popular in gamification. For example,
a status bar to show the contribution of individuals or collective is useful to show their
accumulated contributions. Additionally, a scoreboard to show a participant’s current progress
towards his/her goal is effective to motivate people’s activities.
In (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013), accumulated feedback is proposed to present how long
people’s efforts continue. The paper shows two types of accumulated feedback. One is a positive
feedback and the other is a negative feedback. In our case studies, we use only positive feedback,
but it is claimed that the balance between two types of feedback is important to navigate human
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interaction. In (Weinschenk, 2013), a punishment, which is a typical negative feedback, is
reported as ineffective and it is better to avoid using it as much as possible. Of course, if a
punishment is continued for a long time, people are significantly demotivated, but as shown in
Section 2.4.3, negative feedback may be useful to remind that people’s behavior is temporarily
undesirable.
It may not be effective to show the real, accumulated results of people’s efforts if their efforts are
not reflected in their results because they find it difficult to maintain their motivation if their
efforts does not show any results (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013). In this case, it is better to use
a fictional effect that shows their efforts, not the results of their efforts. The approach is also
popular in a video game such as Wii Sports62. In real sports, it takes a long time to master skills in
sports and many of us abandon learning. However, if mastering skills in sports does not reflect the
results of people’s real efforts, they may continue to learn the skills.
Finally, a collection is another type of collective techniques. If people collect many of their
favorite goods, their motivation to collect new goods is also increased. In Micro-Crowdfunding,
participants are willing to save money, which is a collective technique. However, in
Micro-Crowdfunding, participants’ saving money means economic stagnation. Thus, aging
money that does not become the mean of a collective technique is adopted because saving money
is a very strong temptation for most people.
5.4.7. Insight on Agency and Immersion
In the previous subsections, we show several sociocultural and psychological insights that
influence people. Including these insights in crowdsourcing is not always effective. For example,
in BianYi, participants need to have a sense of closeness to the city to show a crime map.
Additionally, participants should understand the map as the known city’s map. In
Micro-Crowdfunding, a micro-mission should be related to a sustainable society so that
participants will be encouraged and aware of the need to achieve their goal. To motivate
participants’ contribution to MoboQ, they must be aware that their efforts help others.
The success of these designs depends on how participants feel the meaningfulness of their
activities. Agency and immersion properties are useful concepts that are used in video games
(Frasca, 2001). Agency property indicates that participants can control the effects of their
activities, and immersion property indicates that those effects reflect participants’ real activities
without violating reality. Analysing the insights described in the previous subsections, the above
properties are essential to render meaningful the effects of the techniques described in insights in
Section 5.4. In particular, the insight increases the property of agency and help participants to
more easily understand the need achieve their goal. The effect produced by sociocultural and
psychological techniques should be meaningful for participants, and they should feel a sense of
reality related to the effects of their participation.
62
http://wiisports.nintendo.com/
88 |
When incorporating a fictional narrative in the real world, there is a possibility or properly
enhancing agency property. By playing a fictional role in the real world without losing one’s
grasp on reality, role-playing is effective in incorporating gameful digital rhetoric into the real
world. This type of role-playing is called pervasive role-playing (Montola, 2007). A person’s
imaginary experience becomes tangible if he/she feels that the embodied fictionality is realistic
(Frome, 2006). In the past, live action role playing participants usually wore costumes to play
roles in a fictional world (Montola, et al., 2009). Recently, cosplay has become popular among
young people: in this practice, participants play the roles of fictional animated characters by
wearing the characters’ typical costumes (Lamerichs, 2014). Advances in wearable technologies
enable our daily clothes to change dynamically according to people’s role-playing to increase
their agency property in the future. Besides, the sacred land of animation refers to the places that
form the backgrounds or the scenery of the animation, and many anime fans visit those places, as
we explained in Section 4.5.
Ubiquitous computing technologies can incorporate gameful digital rhetoric more seamlessly
into the real world. The immersion property enables people to play fictional roles in the real world
and requires them to represent gameful digital rhetoric in the real world. A virtual form, which we
introduce in Chapter 6, is an abstraction to ambiently blend fictional expressions expressed as
gameful digital rhetoric in the real world by using ubiquitous displays and projectors. In
(Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013), there are several case studies to demonstrates the current
situation of human behavior as ambient fictional expressions. These technologies may be used to
enhance the meaningfulness of the insights described in this section.
5.5. Gamifying Collective Human Behavior
Our approach is based on gameful digital rhetoric for enhancing people’s perceived rhetoric and
value in crowdsourcing activities. The Rhetoric-based Design Framework consists of five types
of rhetoric that give respective frames to use various sociocultural and psychological techniques
presented in the insights. We also show how rhetoric is used in the design of Collectivist
Crowdsourcing. In particular, Section 5.6 shows two scenarios to enhance the basic strategy of
Collectivist Crowdsourcing with rhetoric and their analysis to extract their potential pitfalls.
Before presenting the Rhetoric-based Design Framework and Collectivist Crowdsourcing, this
section first discusses the advantages of rhetoric incorporated into the real world.
5.5.1. Incorporating Fictionality into Gameful Digital Rhetoric
Fictional narratives play an important role in product advertisements because they increase the
appeal of the advertised products (Mattila, 2000). Incorporating fictionality into narratives
enriches our experiences because such narratives can more easily translate abstract, real-world
meanings in a manner that is both attractive and easily understood. For example, fictional
narratives can represent either non-existent or future narratives. These narratives can flexibly
offer us a broad range of information using non-existent artifact such as magical and mysterious
creatures. Because the real world can be represented both abstractly and sometimes ironically in a
fictional narrative through framing to either simplify or exaggerate essential and important
| 89
concepts in our daily life, people easily notice the concepts that are relevant to achieving an ideal,
sustainable society. Fiction also allows people to use more appropriate metaphors than
documentaries or other nonfiction. Because a typical fictional narrative describes brave heroes,
dignified heroines and mysterious magicians whose strong self-efficacy enables them to achieve
difficult goals, when we play these roles in the real world, our behavior are altered and our own
self-efficacy increases.
It is also easy to embed ideological messages in fictional narratives, thus making it possible to
teach the necessity to solve various social issues. In particular, Japanese animation and game
narratives contain complex ideological social messages related to futuristic lifestyles (Sakamoto
& Nakajima, 2014) to increase people’s conscious and internalised motivation. These narratives
can offer many effective metaphors to increase our competence through the positivity they
express. Additionally, incorporating ideological messages increases a narrative’s dramatic
tensions and increases people’s curiosity about the narrative (Okada, 2010). This indicates that
many typical dramas contain ideological messages and that dramas may be used to remind the
messages by showing their metaphors. In Japan, there are also several emerging infrastructures
that create new narratives from already-existing narratives about characters such as NicoNico
Douga63. Many young Japanese create their own narratives to explain their daily activities as a
type of myth or destiny on the infrastructures. They also propose virtual festivals, and many of
them join a festival and achieve their goals together. Thus, relying on the creative community
creates a narrative for coordinating various missions to achieve a common goal, which is a
promising approach. Fictionality embedded in the real world offers various possibilities to
enhance the meaning of our real world.
5.5.2. Rhetoric-based Design Framework for Influencing Human Behavior
Gameful digital rhetoric representing fictionality has a powerful influence on people. In this
Chapter, we focus on using that power to enhance crowdsourcing activities. This means that
gameful digital rhetoric is incorporated in crowdsourcing activities to influence human behavior.
In fictional game worlds, players frequently tend to cooperate to achieve a common goal because
they reap their own individual benefits by achieving that goal. In MMORPG, multiple players
must cooperate to achieve a complex mission. However, in the real world, people usually find it
difficult to understand the need to achieve their common goals and their individual benefits by
achieving such goals. By incorporating gameful digital rhetoric that explicitly incorporates such a
message in the real world, people feel that the meaning of the real world is enhanced. That effect
influences their behavior and encourages them to cooperate in performing micro-tasks to achieve
their common goal.
To design a player’s experiences in a digital game, a game designer first designs some game
elements such as a virtual world, a character, a narrative and social and economic mechanics in
the game. Next, the designer considers their effects on the player. We also use this approach for
designing participants’ experiences in crowdsourcing activities. In our approach, we first decide
63
http://www.nicovideo.jp/
90 |
digitaal objects thaat are incorp
porated into ccrowdsourcing activities. Next, we ddesign the ob
bjects’
rhetoric. To desig
gn rhetoric th
hat is both meeaningfully and
a emotionaally engagedd, the sociocu
ultural
and ppsychologicaal insights sh
hown in Secction 5.4 can
n be used to design the influences of
o that
rhetoric on participants’ behav
vior. By incoorporating ob
bjects in the real world, rrhetorical meeaning
is enhhanced.
To deesign gamefu
ul digital rhettoric of each virtual objecct, we introdu
uce the Rheto
toric-based Design
D
Fram
mework, whiich consists of five fram
mes to design the mean
ning of a diigital objectt. The
Rhetooric-based Design
D
Fram
mework show
wn in Figurre 5.4 is a semiotic
s
moodel for desiigning
rhetoric that coordinates colleective humann behavior in
n crowdsourccing, where tthe model co
onsists
of fivve types of rh
hetoric: curio
ous rhetoric,, narrative rhetoric,
r
colleective rhetorric, social rh
hetoric
and eeconomic rheetoric. Each rhetoric
r
essenntially corressponds to inssights presentted in the preevious
sectioon. The mod
del is influen
nced by the MDA frameework (Hunicke, et al., 2004), whicch is a
popullar model to analyze digiital games.
Figuree 5.4
Rhetooric-based Design
D
Fram
mework
The curious rhetoric influen
nces people through peeople’s five senses, inclluding visuaal and
auditoory senses th
hat offer us emotional enggagement su
uch as interests, happinesss and comforrt, and
increaase their cu
uriosity to motivate
m
theiir activities. This rhetoric corresponnds to the in
nsight
descrribed in Sectiion 5.4.1. The narrative rrhetoric contains an argum
ment specifieed in a narrattive. A
typicaal narrative teaches
t
peop
ple what theyy should do in
n their desiraable daily liffe. Narrativess have
two aaspects. The first aspect describes
d
ideeological meessages in narratives, whiich corresponds to
the innsight describ
bed in Sectio
on 5.4.4; thee second aspeect relates to
o goal-settingg in the narraatives,
whichh correspond
ds to the inssight describbed in Sectio
on 5.4.5. Th
he collectivee rhetoric presents
particcipants’ accu
umulated effforts and is one of the essential motivations
m
ffor participants to
continnue their effo
orts. The collective rhetorric correspon
nds to the inssight describeed in Section
n 5.4.6.
Finallly, the socia
al rhetoric an
nd the econoomic rhetoricc offer norms, rules and mechanics, which
w
are tyypically used
d to coordinaate people colllectively in the real world. The sociaal rhetoric an
nd the
econoomic rhetoricc include varrious social oor economic mechanics
m
su
uch as the maarket econom
my, the
gift eeconomy, alttruistic socieety, battle annd role-playin
ng mechaniccs, where theese mechanics are
also ttypical underrlying mechaanics used in popular videeo games64. Rhetoric
R
is em
mbedded into
o basic
servicces as underllying mechan
nisms to increease people’s activities. When
W
using tthe social rheetoric,
64
Som
me typical mecchanics used in
n the real worrld and games are explained in (Cialdini, 1987) (Jordan,, 2002)
(Laamerichs, 2014)).
| 91
the insights presented in Section 5.4.2 must be taken into account. Similarly, the insight presented
in Section 5.4.3 must be taken into account when the economic rhetoric is used. All rhetoric
require consideration of the insight presented in Section 5.4.7 to make them more meaningful.
Community-based mobile crowdsourcing contains multiple rhetoric to influence people from
multiple angles. When designing crowdsourcing activity with the Rhetoric-based Design
Framework, a designer first chooses a visual or auditory form that is incorporated into
crowdsourcing activities. Our approach refers to the rhetorical form of a virtual object as
micro-rhetoric. Next, we choose a proper rhetoric and consider its effect on human behavior.
During this phase, we can consult techniques identified in the insights to render the effect both
meaningful and emotionally engaged. We show examples of how to use micro-rhetoric in the
scenarios described in Section 5.6.2 and Section 5.6.3.
5.5.3. Designing Crowdsourcing for Collective Action
In this section, we show the basic design strategies of Collectivist Crowdsourcing. We define the
goal of Collectivist Crowdsourcing as achieving a sustainable society. Free resources that are
shared by a number of people, such as public toilets or the natural environment, tend to be
overused as a consequence of the tragedy of the commons, as we mentioned in Section 3.2.1.
This problem occurs because each individual derives a personal benefit from using a resource,
whereas any costs are shared among all of the users; this circumstance leads to inconsiderate use.
Each participant proposes a micro-task that improves his/her surrounding environment.
Participants in Collectivist Crowdsourcing support and perform micro-tasks in pursuit of their
common goal to achieve a sustainable society.
The most important design strategy involves using a local community to encourage more
crowdsourcing activities, as shown in Figure 5.5. The design strategy is to adopt an altruistic
society as the social rhetoric, but altruism alone is not strong enough to motivate participants, and
other temptations usually obstruct people’s altruistic behavior (McGonigal, 2011). Thus, we must
incorporate other insights to influence people, as shown in Section 5.4. If each local community
consists of a small number of members, the possibility of a free ride is decreased (Olson, 1965).
This design is essential for crowdsourcing for collective action because the existence of a large
number of free riders significantly decreases the motivation of active participants. This approach
is also important to increase curiosity because community members who know each other can
propose a new micro-task that may be of interest to members within the same community. In our
approach, to increase motivation, other rhetoric will be added to the basic design by adding a
variety of micro-rhetoric.
92 |
Figu
ure 5.5 Strructuring Crrowdsourcin
ng with Local Communnities
In Coollectivist Crrowdsourcing
g, each comm
munity mem
mber plays on
ne of the folllowing three roles.
The ffirst is a taskk proposer, th
he second is a task perforrmer, and thee third is a taask supporterr. This
desiggn is heavily influenced by
b the designn of Micro-C
Crowdfunding
g. The task pproposer submits a
new m
micro-task th
hat may be off interest in hhis/her local community. The task perrformer perfo
orms a
task submitted by
y a task pro
oposer and a task supporter supportss his/her com
mmunity eith
her to
subm
mit a new miccro-task or to
o perform a ssubmitted tassk.
5.6. Colllectivist Crowdsou
C
urcing: Sccenarios and
a Analy
ysis
5.6.1.
5
Issuees in Scenaario-based Design
D
for Collectivistt Crowdsou
urcing
In thee following subsections,, we show hhow the Rhettoric-based Design
D
Fram
mework is ussed to
desiggn Collectivisst Crowdsourrcing. We foccus on a locaal community
y and how meembers in thee local
comm
munity are coordinated
c
through a sset of rhetorric defined in
i the Rhetooric-based Design
D
Fram
mework. Eacch subsection presents different ap
pproaches to
o enhance thhe basic strrategy
descrribed in Secttion 5.5.3. We
W conduct a scenario an
nalysis, whicch is a usefuul tool to disscover
potenntial pitfalls in the design
n (Fahey & Randall, 19
998), and we discuss how
w to overcom
me the
pitfallls.
Whenn designing scenarios,
s
wee first considder what typees of rhetoricc defined in th
the Rhetoric--based
Desiggn Framewo
ork are used
d and whichh techniques are suitablee to enhancee its basic design
d
strateegies. The most
m
basic rhetoric is the social rhetoric orr the econoomic rhetorric. In
comm
munity-based
d mobile cro
owdsourcing,, we first asssume an altru
uistic societyy in which people
p
instinnctively help others’ activ
vities. Howevver, most of them
t
are usu
ually simultanneously busy
y, lazy
and eegoistic. Thus, if there aree not enoughh motivationaal impulses, people
p
will nnot participatte in a
comm
munity’s actiivities. We fo
ocus on usinng the markett economy as
a the econom
mic rhetoric in the
first sscenario, whiich is describ
bed in Sectioon 5.6.3. We then
t
focus on
n using the ggift economy as the
| 93
social rhetoric in the second scenario, which is described in Section 5.6.2. In the second scenario,
we enhance the gift economy with favorite or empathetic virtual humans for increasing social
influence with strangers.
Next, we discuss how the narrative rhetoric is incorporated into the basic strategy. Each scenario
differently introduces the narrative rhetoric to incorporate the narrative to help participants
achieve their common goal. In the first scenario, a narrative is offered through a metaphor
represented by virtual money. In the second scenario, participants understand ideological
messages in the narrative while they play a sightseeing game.
Subsequently, we consider how the curious rhetoric and the collective rhetoric can be used to
increase participants’ motivation to participate in Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities. Social
influence is an important factor in evaluating the success of the design. We primarily discuss three
social influence factors: reciprocity, social proof, and commitment and consistency as presented
by Cialdini, who explains social influence (Cialdini, 1987). In Collectivist Crowdsourcing,
proposing interesting micro-tasks is important to increase participants’ motivation. If performing
micro-tasks is curious to them, they are intrinsically willing to perform them without extra
extrinsic rewards.
In these scenarios, gameful digital rhetoric is incorporated as a set of micro-rhetoric. Materiality
is essential to motivate people (Jordan, 2002) (Sakamoto, et al., 2013)65. If people do not feel
materiality in gameful digital rhetoric, their motivation is significantly degraded. Of course,
gameful digital rhetoric is not a real thing, so materiality is illusionary, but if participants feel a
sense of reality in gameful digital rhetoric, we feel that gameful digital rhetoric is materialised.
In the following subsections, we show the two scenarios that enhance the basic design strategy,
and we discuss the effect of incorporating gameful digital rhetoric. In the analysis of the
following scenarios, we found some issues necessary for discussing potential pitfalls, but it may
be difficult to analyze them using only scenarios related to particular issues. We have developed
prototypes and conducted their user studies to perform experiments to investigate the potential
pitfalls.
5.6.2. Collectivist Crowdsourcing based on Market Economy
In our scenario shown in this section, we adopt the market economy as the economic rhetoric.
Instead of using real money, we adopt a special mechanism known as a local currency (Gesell,
1958). A virtual currency is a micro-rhetoric in virtual world, but it affects our real life. As a tool
of fiscal localism, a local currency can raise awareness of the local economy. As shown in Section
5.4.3, using money is dangerous in that it demotivates participants’ intrinsic motivation.
Additionally, as shown in Section 5.4.6, when money is used as the collective rhetoric, activities
in the market economy are reduced. To solve this issue, we adopt the aging money model (Gesell,
1958). Aging money has been widely used to encourage monetary circulation within a regional
65
In (Jordan, 2002), materiality is also explained as physio-pleasure.
94 |
comm
munity, as sh
hown in Secttion 5.4.6. A
Aging money
y also solves the serious problem to use
u of
usingg currency an
nd how each participant eearns money
y before startting his/her aactivities. Th
he rule
that eeach particip
pant receives some moneyy periodicallly is easily applied
a
withoout the probllem of
moneey inflation th
hat accompaanies aging m
money.
We inncorporate th
he narrative rhetoric inccluded in vid
deos shown in
i public dissplays deploy
yed in
manyy places, and the metapho
or shown by vvirtual money is used to recall
r
a narrat
ative. This sceenario
is based on the insight
i
descrribed in Secction 5.4.4. If videos are shown in many placees, the
possibility of wattching moviees is increaseed. Thus, most of the partticipants willl know the videos.
v
Howeever, it is im
mportant to usse a particulaarly impressiive scene, go
ood or characcter as a mettaphor
show
wn on the mon
ney because people usuaally remembeer only these impressive iitems.
To eencourage co
ommunity members
m
to contribute to more micro-tasks,
m
we establissh the
rewarrd-reduction rule, which states that vaalue does nott degrade wh
hen a person ffunds a micro-task
with hhis/her virtuaal currency, as
a explainedd in Section 3.4.1.
3
When a micro-task is completed
d, half
of thee money pro
ovided by a participant is returned as
a a reward to him/her. This arrangement
proviides a benefit for particip
pants to fundd more micro
o-tasks, which
h also increaases their curriosity
by siggnalling thatt their contrib
bution has beeen successfful, but this sign
s
should nnot offer too much
inform
mation, as sh
hown in Secttion 5.4.1. Thhe photo takeen when com
mpleting a miicro-task is used
u
as
the cuurious rhetorric for the saame purpose..
The m
metaphor off virtual mon
ney becomees the collecctive rhetoricc. This increeases particiipants’
self-rrespect, as sh
hown in Secttion 5.4.3, iff the metapho
or shows parrticipants’ effforts. We alsso use
the ccollective rheetoric for vissualizing all others’ contrributions in the
t status baar to increasee their
sociaal influence, as shown in
n Section 5.44.2. This au
ugments the social influeence of the social
rhetooric used in the
t scenario. As shown in Section 5.4.7,
5
to refleect a particippant’s activitty, the
effectt of the micro-rhetoric sh
hould be meaaningful.
The ffollowing sceenario presen
nts how eachh stakeholder in Collectiviist Crowdsouurcing experiiences
his/heer participattion in and contributionn to a miccro-task, and
d Table 5.1 shows a list
l
of
microo-rhetoric used in the sceenario.
Table 5.1
5
A list o f Micro-Rheetoric in Sceenario 1
| 95
(1) Asuka must go to her laboratory every day. She worries about the use of some small, common
resources in her laboratory. In particular, she is bothered by a table that has been left in
disorder. She wants to use the table but has no time to clean it up because of her busy
schedule. She thinks that it would be great if someone could help her.
(2) Asuka decides to create a micro-task with the title, “Please clean this table” as a task
proposer, and she makes an appeal for funds from other people who use the table. When she
has spare time, she sets the requisite amount of virtual coins at 10 ecos, with an “eco” being
the unit of the virtual currency used in Collectivist Crowdsourcing and using her mobile
phone, she provides 3 ecos as an initial contribution to the micro-task. When she contributes
her virtual coins, the virtual coin represents a metaphor showing that she is contributing to
social sustainability.
(3) Chihaya, Masahiro and Shin are Asuka’s colleagues in the laboratory. They all receive the
micro-task proposal through an email delivered due to Asuka’s micro-task registration.
Chihaya agrees with Asuka that the table must be cleaned. Thus, as a task supporter, she
contributes 3 ecos to the micro-task’s fund with her mobile phone. Chihaya also often uses
the table and she very much wants the micro-task to be achieved. Each community member’s
mobile phone shows a status bar to indicate others’ contributions to the micro-task.
(4) Masahiro and Shin are together when they receive the proposal in an e-mail. Masahiro
considers it to be a good idea for his laboratory members to join the micro-task. Shin agrees;
each then contributes 2 ecos with his mobile phone as task supporters. The current status of
the contribution as a task supporter can be presented in a status bar on each community
member’s mobile phone. The total amount of money contributed reaches 10 ecos, which is
the target amount that Asuka has chosen. As a result, the micro-task “Please clean this table”
becomes executable, and all of the potential task performers are informed.
(5) Maki, who is also Asuka’s colleague, comes to the laboratory and has some spare time. She
checks the available micro-tasks in the laboratory and finds Asuka’s micro-task. Maki
decides to execute the tasks as a task performer.
(6) Maki has completed the micro-task. The table is now relatively clean. She takes a photograph
of the clean table and reports the micro-task as complete, including a photograph. Asuka
confirms the completion of the task. Maki then receives 10 ecos as a reward.
(7) Asuka is grateful to all who participated in the micro-task. Maki also feels happy because she
not only received a reward but was also thanked by every participant in the micro-task
because the received money acts as a metaphor that she has significantly contributed to a
sustainable society. Consequently, she is proud of having completed the micro-task.
(8) Half of the funded money is returned to participants who supported the micro-task. The
virtual coin represents a metaphor of a narrative presenting their contribution to the
sustainable society, and the narrative is frequently shown in public media. Thus, they know
the narrative well before beginning the micro-task. Finally, they are aware of the necessity of
their contribution to achieve a sustainable society.
96 |
In the scenario, the goal of Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities is shown as a metaphor
expressed through virtual coins. There are several potential pitfalls of the design. The first pitfall
is that participants may not be aware of the metaphor or they may not understand the meaning of
the metaphor. In this case, the participants choose their activities according to their individual
benefits only. The second pitfall is that the participants cannot be reminded of the ideological
message in the narrative, even though they understand the meanings of the metaphor. We assume
that the narrative is frequently shown in public displays deployed in various places, but the
participants usually do not understand the deep messages in the narrative shown in public displays
because they merely watch the narrative in the displays without thinking reflectively. We must
consider an alternative approach to raise the awareness of the message and to explain how the task
contributes to achieving the common goal.
This analysis assumes that participants in a micro-task belong to the same community. The setting
has a significant influence on participants’ behavior because the social influence named
reciprocity typically affects community members. Thus, when a task proposer is an influential
community leader who contributes significantly to the community, other members are likely to
participate in additional crowdsourcing activities. However, in the real world, not all participants
may be members in the same community. In this case, we must enhance the scenario to exploit
reciprocity among strangers.
The social influence known as commitment and consistency is important to altering people’s
behavior. If people make a small effort to contribute to reaching a more difficult goal, the
possibility of reaching the goal sooner is increased. In Collectivist Crowdsourcing, if the number
of task supporters increases, there is a possibility that the participants know their community’s
activity and that their small efforts encourage the future proposal or performance of micro-tasks.
The social influence named social proof is important in altering people’s behavior. In this scenario,
each task supporter’s contribution is visualized on his/her mobile phone so that notifications of
people’s contributions encourage others to participate in Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities.
However, there is a possibility that no one will contribute to the activities, a phenomenon known
as social loafing. Therefore, it is important to add another mechanism to encourage contributors to
join activities as early contributors. Competition among participants also increases the effect of
social proof. In the current scenario, a status bar is introduced to show others’ contributions to
their community. When a participant feels that his/her contribution offers a visible benefit, he/she
feels that the service is meaningful. The status bar needs to show who contributes the current
activities and the person should be an acquaintance of the recipient. Game elements, such as
badges and leaderboards (Deterding, et al., 2011) that are also commonly used in gamification,
are effective tools to introduce competition into Collectivist Crowdsourcing and to enhance the
social proof.
This scenario adopts a virtual currency in a crowdsourcing activity. The currency is not real
money and cannot be exchanged for real money, which may cause a problem because people may
not feel any reality to earn the virtual currency. However, with the aging money adopted in the
scenario as our currency model, a participant is immediately aware of the decrease in its value.
This awareness increases a sense of ownership because its value reduction is both visible and
| 97
tangible in the real world. Thus, the strategy increases the materiality of the virtual currency. In
particular, some findings in behavioral economics show that people are more sensitive to the
decrease in the value of money than to its increase (Kahneman, 2011). These findings provide
evidence that the aging money sustains a feeling of the reality of virtual currency.
To complement the scenario analysis, we can use the experiment with the Micro-Crowdfunding
prototype system described in Section 3.4.2 to extract more potential pitfalls in the economic
strategies of the scenario to implement the scenario. In the experiment, we designed the
micro-missions in the experiment based on the role-playing game-based method (Powell, 1999),
which each participant in the experiment was assigned a role of mission organizer, mission
investor, or mission performer. We can consider the role of a mission organizer as a task
proposer, a mission investor as a task supporter, and a mission performer as a task performer.
Six people (three males and three females) participated in the experiment and the ages of
participants ranged from 25 to 51. We wanted to know the effect of economic factors, especially
the reward-reduction rule and the aging money rule that were explained in Section 3.4.1.
Regarding the reward-reduction rule, four out of the six participants responded that the
reward-reduction rule did not affect their motivation, but the reasons were different for each
participant. The other two participants answered that the rule decreased their motivation. We
expect that these differences are attributable to each participant’s personality, as described in
(Sakamoto, et al., 2013). We found that introducing the reward-reduction rule would affect the
participants for whom collecting virtual currency was important, but it would not affect the
participants for whom the micro-task’s goals were most important.
In terms of aging money rule, adopting the aging money model did not affect the motivation of
some of the participants. Conversely, some of the participants said that they wanted to fund as
much as possible, which increased the motivation for the mission investor. The comments from
these participants showed that aging money encourages people to use their currency and to
participate in the micro-task.
From the experiment, we found that the aging money concept affected both positively and
negatively. Regarding the positive aspect of the aging money, the participants felt the reality of
the situation. The effect of reality is expected to be an important factor when designing services
by adding gameful digital rhetoric to the use of information technologies. We describe the
importance of the reality in Chapter 7. However, by adopting aging money, a participant felt that
she was suffering a loss, which decreased her motivation. The information services should allow
participants to enjoy achieving their micro-tasks. Furthermore, another problem of aging money
is that the total amount of money in the community will decrease. Thus, designing the appropriate
aging rate would be a key factor for leading people to enjoy their tasks.
Unlike the real money, we can arrange virtual currency flexibly. It means that there are various
ways of designing the economic rhetoric. We have to consider not only positive aspects of the
rhetoric but also negative aspects of the rhetoric when we enhance the real world through
gameful digital rhetoric.
98 |
5.6.3. Collectivist Crowdsourcing based on Gift Economy
The second scenario uses the gift economy as the economic rhetoric and adds fictionality to
encourage crowdsourcing activities to increase empathy and trust relationships among
participants in a local community of Collectivist Crowdsourcing. As discussed, the first scenario
may not work well when participants are not acquainted with each other. One enhancement is to
replace strangers with favorite or empathetic virtual humans, which increases the likelihood of
participation in crowdsourcing activities. As shown in Section 5.4.2, to make social influence
effective, members in a local community should know each other. A virtual human gives a
participant a valuable gift before asking him/her to contribute to crowdsourcing activities. In
Japan, a beautiful imaginary girl named Bish jo is very popular (Galbraith, 2011); she is used
both to offer agency and to increase empathy for daily goods to increase their ownership (Allison,
2006). We use Bish jo as a virtual human. Section 5.4.4 explains that incorporated fictionality is
useful to overcome this issue in the real world. As shown in Section 5.4.7, to increase the
meaningfulness of the effect, a virtual human should be a favorite of or empathetic to participants.
To incorporate the narrative rhetoric, we decided to use a game as a gift from a virtual human; a
narrative is described in the game. This means that participants can know the ideological message
in the narrative while they play the game. As described in Section 5.4.5, it is possible to add
various missions that make participants aware of the necessity to participate in their activities in
the game. Recently, a game on a mobile phone has been very popular, and people try to play the
game in their spare time. Thus, a game is a desirable good as a gift to convey the message to
participants. This overcomes the difficulty of using the narrative rhetoric in our mobile-based
approach.
The other enhancement is to show the visual effect of participants’ current contributions towards
the goal. This visualization significantly increases people’s willingness to contribute to
crowdsourcing activities because goal setting becomes obvious when both the goal and the
distance to the goal are clearly presented. As described in Section 5.4.6, the effect may not be
linear according to a participant’s effort and in this case, there is no final goal. Thus, the
scoreboard presents the total quantity for performing micro-tasks, along with their quantity in
each week, month and year.
Additionally, to increase participants’ curiosity about playing a game, we add the curious rhetoric.
In this scenario, a game given as a gift is a simulation to visit beautiful cities and offers several
choices for visiting one of the cities. This increases the participants’ curiosity, as described in
Section 5.4.1. If participants are interested in visiting the city, their curiosity about playing the
game is also increased. When completing a micro-task, a virtual stamp is shown on a shared table
to notify participants of the completion of a contributed micro-task. As shown in Section 5.4.1,
stimulative visuals are important for designing the curious rhetoric, but should not offer too much
information for understanding the message.
The following scenario presents how each stakeholder in Collectivist Crowdsourcing experiences
his/her participation in and contribution to a micro-task, and Table 5.2 shows a list of
micro-rhetoric used in the scenario.
| 99
Tablee 5.2
A list oof Micro-Rheetoric in Scen
nario 2
(1) T
The sustainab
ble environm
ment is one off the most imp
portant topiccs to discuss in modern society
bbecause it wiill greatly inffluence futurre lifestyles. Rica wants to contributee to improvin
ng the
ccurrent situation and beegins to advoocate addresssing variou
us environmeental probleems to
oothers who livve in her cityy.
(2) A
As a small firrst step, she proposes
p
am
micro-task to clean up a sh
hared table aand asks otheers for
thheir coopera
ation in crow
wdsourcing acctivities beca
ause a smalll start is esseential to spreeading
aawareness off the importa
ance of helpiing improve the current situation. Shhe also show
ws that
ccompleting a micro-task is
i one small ccontribution to achieving
g the final gooal.
(3) E
Each task sup
pporter is reepresented ass a Bish jo virtual idol that will parrticularly ressonate
w
with the poten
ntial task perf
rformer becaause all of thee participantss are fans off an anime in which
thhe virtual ido
ols grow with
h each otherr’s help.
(4) E
Each virtual idol
i
gives a game
g
as a gifft that involves exploring precious andd beautiful foreign
fo
ccities to all po
otential task performers
p
bbecause youn
ng people consider visitinng cities in foreign
fo
ccountries to be
b one of thee most fun paastimes, and
d those young
g people connstitute most of the
pparticipants in
i Collectivisst Crowdsouurcing. They like to learn
n about citiess that they will
w be
aable to visit in
n the near fu
uture.
(5) O
One potentiall task perform
mer, Shouta, strongly favo
ours the virtu
ual idol Ai, w
who represen
nts one
of the task sup
pporters. Sho
outa enjoys pplaying a gam
me that Ai ga
ave him on his
is mobile pho
one. In
pparticular, the city explorred in the gaame is one th
hat Shouta wants
w
to learrn more abou
ut and
vvisit in the neear future. Additionally,
A
Shouta feelss that the gifft is very pre
recious becau
use Ai
ppersonally givves it to him. Whenever SShouta achievves a mission
n in the game,
e, Ai receives a new
aaccessory, an
nd she is glad
d to collect m
more accesso
ories. Shouta
a becomes veery happy beecause
A
Ai enjoys a co
ollection of her
h accessoriies.
(6) W
While Shouta
a is playing the
t game, Aii appears in the game an
nd asks Shouuta to perforrm the
m
micro-task prroposed by Rica.
R
Shouta does not know Rica direectly; howevver, Ai tells Shouta
S
thhat Rica is a precious friend of Ai, caausing Shouta
a to feel a seense of closenness to Rica.
(7) SShouta perforrms the micro
o-task and reeports its com
mpletion to Ai,
A and Ai app
ppreciates Shouta’s
ef
efforts. One of
o Ai’s owneers also make
kes a small contribution
c
to Collectiviist Crowdsou
urcing
100 |
activities. The person‘s scoreboard shows that his/her contribution advances the total one
step toward its goal, which increases the possibility that people will participate in other
Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities in the near future.
(8) A shared table is now clean due to Shouta’s efforts. Returning to the table, Rica is impressed
with the work. She indicates that the group is one step closer to the goal and appreciates all
who have helped her by displaying a virtual stamp on the table. The stamp shows a metaphor
as a reminder the narrative in the game used as the gift. When finding the stamp on the clean
table, all of the participants are reminded the narrative, which shows the importance of
environmental sustainability that they learn while playing the game.
In the above scenario, although the goal of a community is shown in a narrative presented in a
game, the need to achieve the goal of Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities is not directly
presented during the activities. Therefore, there is a possibility that some participants may not be
aware of the need to improve the current situation if they do not play the game and do not
understand the narrative presented in the game. In particular, organising and cleaning a shared
table is not directly related to a sustainable society. Thus, it is not easy to discern the mere need to
joint Collectivist Crowdsourcing. However, if the participants enjoy the sightseeing game, the
possibility that they understand the need to achieve their common goal becomes high because the
game enables them to consider its necessity reflectively. Finally, if the purpose of the narrative is
education, this strategy does not create an enjoyable narrative.
In the scenario presented in Section 5.6.2, we assume that the participants are members in the
same community and that helping each other is essential in their daily life. Therefore, the social
influence of reciprocity works well in the scenario without an extra mechanism to increase the
influence of reciprocity. In the scenario in this section, some virtual goods and idols are
introduced to address the shortcomings of the previous scenario. At first in the scenario, we
assume that none of the participants knows any of the other participants, but that the participants
will have favourable feelings toward virtual idols that represent other participants. Specifically, if
a virtual idol appears on a popular television program, most of the participants will likely know
the idols well, and some will feel strong positive feelings toward the idols. Additionally in this
scenario, a virtual idol gives gifts to a participant before asking the participant to join to
Collectivist Crowdsourcing, increasing the reciprocity effect to encourage participants to perform
a proposed micro-task (Cialdini, 1987). We may also use a virtual idol that has some visual
similarities to a participant. For example, when a virtual idol’s typical behavior closely resembles
that of a participant, participant strongly empathises with the virtual idol.
In this scenario, the virtual idol receives an accessory when a participant plays a game and
completes a mission in that game. The design increases his/her willingness to play the game and it
increases the possibility of understanding the need to participate in Collectivist Crowdsourcing
activities. Conversely, in this scenario, the participant has already contributed to the virtual idol to
obtain a new accessory. Thus, reciprocity for the idol has been satisfied, and the participant may
feel that he/she does not need to return something more in exchange for the virtual idol. This may
reduce the expected effect of the reciprocity in the scenario.
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It is challenging to add materiality to the virtual goods used in the scenario. In this scenario, we
use a game as a gift for addressing the problem. The game explores a precious and beautiful city
in which a player has a strong interest. While playing the game, he/she has an aesthetic experience,
which is precious to him/her. In this scenario, the gift is a game rather than other digital items,
such as virtual goods or virtual clothes. This fact has a strong impact on the player’s appreciation
for the gift because the interaction with the game is a realistic and tangible experience for him/her.
Similarly, the rarity of a gift has a strong influence on people’s behavior (Lehdonvirta &
Castronova, 2014). That rarity significantly increases a sense of ownership. In this scenario, the
empathetic virtual idol gives a gift to a participant. If he/she feels that the virtual idol is a very
precious friend to him/her, the rarity of the gift is also increased.
We also find some potential pitfalls by using the results of the experiments in Section 2.4.1 and
Section 2.4.2. Six people (five males and one female) participated in the experiments and their
ages ranged from 21 to 28. The experiment in Section 2.4.1 focuses on the narrative rhetoric and
the experiment in Section 2.4.2 is related to the curious rhetoric, so these results are useful to
consider more about the above scenario, whose key factors are the narrative rhetoric and the
curious rhetoric.
The experiment in Section 2.4.1 investigated a style of a narrative. The aim of the experiment was
to investigate whether a narrative in a game has more of an effect than a narrative in traditional
media, such as a book or a movie. In this experiment, each participant was presented with two
types of narratives that were used in the two configurations. Both narratives represent the
necessity of participating in collective action to achieve a sustainable society, but the manner of
presenting the narratives is different. The first narrative provided the sentence from a third-person
perspective that contains many general sentences. Conversely, the second narrative represented
the sentences from the first-person perspective, with a style is typically used in a digital game. In
addition, the second narrative expressed the influences of collective action with concrete roles or
numbers.
After the experiment, we asked opinions about the two configurations. All of the participants
responded that the experiment with the second narrative motivated them more than the first
narrative. We found that the style of narratives significantly affected human behavior, and some
ideas from digital games are very useful in providing better narrative from the experiment.
Specifically, a digital game typically uses the narrative from the first-person perspective, and
both the curious rhetoric and the collective rhetoric can augment the narrative to present
concrete information to complement the information presented in the narrative.
The experiment in Section 2.4.2 was to investigate the effect of the favorite person/character. We
compared the effect of a favorite person/character and a human stranger, and each participant
experienced two configurations with a favorite person/character and a human stranger. In the
experiment, we also investigated how a participant feels the rarity of a gift from one of those
favorites.
All of the participants responded that the experiment with a favorite person/character gave them
more delight than an interaction with a stranger. With a favorite person/character, comments from
102 |
all participants were positive. Conversely, when a stranger gave a gift to a participant, some
comments contained negative words such as ‘doubt’ or ‘terrible’. Although “given a gift” is the
same in both configurations, the attitude of participants was largely different. It seems that the
important factor to motivate people is not a mechanic such as a gift, but instead, the meaning
attached to the mechanics. Focusing exclusively on the mechanics may create the danger of
making a service meaningless. In addition, we suggest that making the relationship among
friendly community members results in a better influence on the participant’s attitude and
behavior because the empathetic human - even if virtual - causes participants to evoke a positive
feeling about the experience. We can conclude that it is useful to create the story of gamified
services through the narrative rhetoric with a first-person perspective and the empathetic object
as the curious rhetoric.
5.7. Some Challenges in Designing Gameful Digital Rhetoric
This section contains several discussions for the challenges in exploiting gameful digital rhetoric
in the design of future crowdsourcing.
5.7.1. Cultural and Personal Diversity
As described in (Jordan, 2002), the personal and cultural difference of each person affects his/her
perceived value of a product and service. For example, one person may perceive value in
jewellery, but another person may not enjoy this value. This means that each person may feel a
different benefit on achieving the same goal. For example, in the second scenario described in
Section 5.6.3, virtual idols and rare gifts are used to motivate participants. If the participants are
interested in them, many will participate in Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities. However, the
same benefit may not motivate some other participants, and each participant has a different
personality and culture. Therefore, it is desirable to offer a variety of micro-tasks with different
benefits in crowdsourcing activities. These facts also show that supporting multiple techniques to
influence participants is important in attracting more participants to crowdsourcing activities. The
common goal of collective action is achieved by respective participants through performing
these different micro-tasks.
As shown in (Midden, et al., 2011), using social facilitation or social loafing depends on a
person’s cultural background. In a collective culture, social facilitation works well, and social
loafing becomes a more serious problem when designing social media. The success of MoboQ
may thus operate differently in China, where these social incentives are more effective.
Additionally, in crowdsourcing, a bias referred to as the liability of foreigners among international
workers is reported, and there is a substantial regional unevenness in the workers who perform
micro-tasks (Lehdonvirta, et al., 2014).
5.7.2. Incorporating Fictional Rhetoric into the Real World
In the first scenario described in Section 5.6.2, virtual currency is used to fund people who
perform micro-tasks. If the incorporated gameful digital rhetoric becomes more realistic, then the
virtual economy will truly become part of our daily economy. For example, a participant may use
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his/her own money to buy something in a fictional world. This approach is useful to blend the real
and fictional worlds because virtual currency used for crowdsourcing activities that are performed
in the real world can also be affected in a fictional world. This potential creates a new possibility
for proposing micro-tasks that can be performed in a fictional world. This approach blurs real and
fictional micro-tasks, where fictional micro-tasks are used to motivate participants because
fictional micro-tasks are more related to people’s favorite fictional narratives, and the necessity of
Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities can be presented more clearly.
The next challenge is to increase the sense of reality in gameful digital rhetoric embedded in the
real world. When participants lose a sense of their reality, they cannot play a fictional role because
they are aware that they remain inside the fictional world, which has no direct relationship to the
real world. In Chapter 7, we develop several design patterns to increase a sense of reality when
we incorporate gameful digital rhetoric with fictionality into the real world. For more effective
gameful digital rhetoric, we need better fictional narratives to offer participants the opportunity to
play more attractive roles.
5.7.3. Narratology versus Ludology
As described in Section 5.4.4 and Section 5.4.5, there are two ways to embed narratives in
crowdsourcing activities, and the scenarios described in Section 5.6 adopt different ways to
embed narratives in Collectivist Crowdsourcing. In this section, we revisit some discussions
between a narrative and a game, showing the trade-offs among them to convey the need to achieve
participants’ common goal.
During the last decade, there was an intense debate over narratology versus ludology (Frasca,
2003). The main point in the debate was how games convey narratives. In digital games, a player
chooses his/her way by himself/herself. A player then creates his/her own narrative while playing
the game, and a scenario writer must meet the challenge of writing a well-defined narrative. In a
game, a player sometimes determines the conclusion of the narrative. However, when a narrative
is used to increase a player’s activism, he/she must follow the narrative as defined by the writer.
One of the game’s essential properties is the agency property; however, it is difficult for a
traditional narrative to offer this property in a predefined narrative because it is difficult for a
player to become one of the characters presented in the narrative (Frasca, 2003). Currently, a
participant can behave in a way that violates the narrative, in which case other participants cannot
follow that narrative. A puppet master is introduced in an alternate reality game (ARG)
(McGonigal, 2011) (Szulborski, 2005) or a game master is introduced in a tabletop role-playing
game (TRPG) such as Dungeons & Dragons 66 for this reason - to coordinate all of the
participants so that they can follow the defined narrative. Another approach is to offer a
meta-story in which a player feels the agency property, although the property is only an illusion
(Azuma, 2007). We believe that this is an interesting approach to solving the problem of
incorporating a fictional narrative into crowdsourcing for collective action.
66
http://dnd.wizards.com/
104 |
One of the important tensions between a narrative and a game is that each approach uses a
different way of offering people a flow condition. During flow, people typically experience deep
enjoyment, creativity, and total involvement with life (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). While playing a
game, people’s physical action is a source of a flow condition, and offering an extreme flow
condition is one of the typical goals of well-designed games. However, people focus more on
thinking and understanding a narrative while reading it. To understand an ideology behind a
narrative, a digital game may not be an ideal medium because human actions sometimes obstruct
people’s deep thought. More specifically, during flow, people think only about strategies to
achieve a game’s goal instead of about the philosophy behind the game. In a typical game, the
focus is to offer the agency property to offer deep experiences on participants to the game (Jull,
2005). However, if we want to include a deep narrative to make participants understand why they
must be activists to achieve a goal, they must stop their actions and have time either to think about
or to understand the reason deeply, which may obstruct the flow in game play. Transmedia
storytelling offers a promising approach to solve the issue by integrating different media that
focus on respective two aspects.
5.7.4. Practical Issues
Lancers67, which is similar to oDesk68, is a popular crowdsourcing infrastructure in Japan. People
can submit any work to outsource their work to others, who may have more skills. This type of
crowdsourcing presents the possibility of dramatically changing our working style (Howe, 2008).
However, observing a variety of the reputations posted on Web teaches us several potential
pitfalls of crowdsourcing when its scope is expanded to support more complex tasks. For example,
one serious claim described on the Web is the specification of a task as very vague so that it is
difficult to estimate the real cost of performing the task. Another claim relates to the price of
performing task. Typical users requesting a new task set a low price, which usually is too low for
most of the people who would perform it. More specifically, to make our approach more practical,
a micro-task specification must be investigated.
Human beings are wildly irrational (Kahneman, 2011) (McGonigal, 2013). For example, the
time-discounting effect encompasses any reasons for caring less about a future consequence,
including factors that diminish the expected benefit generated by a future consequence. Such
inter-temporal choices involve decisions about trade-offs among costs and benefits that occur at
different times, which affect not only an individual’s health, wealth, and happiness but also the
economic prosperity of collective human like a nation. These factors have strong influences on
human behavior and obstruct the achievement of desirable goals to solve collective action
problems. As described in (McGonigal, 2013), the willpower instinct focuses on self-control,
motivation, procrastination, and how to overcome challenges to create desirable habits. Providing
proper influence is a first step for human coordination, but we still must investigate these above
factors to engage in practical crowdsourcing.
67
http://www.lancers.jp/
68
https://www.odesk.com/
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5.7.5. Ethical Issues
In the current discussion, we did not consider malicious people who want to cheat other persons,
most are basically polite. In this chapter, our focus is to use various techniques for influencing
human behavior to navigate crowdsourcing activities, not exclusively monetary rewards. Our
society has developed many useful techniques to protect us from malicious uses of real money,
but it may be dangerous if malicious people can easily influence others. In particular, our
approach focuses on navigating collective human behavior and the possibility of either
controlling people towards an inclined and extreme opinion or making them panic should be
carefully considered. In particular, our thinking easily tends to be biased (Kahneman, 2011) and
to be unconsciously socially influenced (Cialdini, 1987). To expand the scope of crowdsourcing,
the issues should be carefully investigated as future research.
The currently available technologies are not yet adequately mature enough to fully realize the
scenarios described in Section 5.6 because it is difficult to offer completely immersive
experiences that allow participants to be motivated to join Collectivist Crowdsourcing activities.
Future technological progress will seamlessly blend gameful digital rhetoric in the real world. At
that time, a participant may not be aware of the boundary between reality and fiction. However,
this seamless blending will create new ethical issues. Additionally, this approach offers a way to
consider our future society. For example, what should our government do? What is our desirable
lifestyle? What is our future work style? These issues must be tackled to permit our approach to
be used as a dependable dairy infrastructure.
5.8. Conclusion and Future Directions
The chapter investigated how to design collective human behavior in crowdsourcing. The first
contribution of the chapter was to present seven insights, including how to design human
motivation for coordinating and gamifying collective human behavior, which is extracted from
our experiences with our three case studies. The second contribution is to propose the
Rhetoric-based Design Framework, in which the framework offers five types of rhetoric to
design gameful digital rhetoric for influencing and motivating human behavior. Next, we
presented Collectivist Crowdsourcing, which shows how to design and analyze community-based
mobile crowdsourcing with the Rhetoric-based Design Framework. We developed two scenarios
to enhance the basic design with our rhetoric, and discussed their potential pitfalls. The
discussions contain much useful know-how to expand the scope of future crowdsourcing. We
believe that crowdsourcing will be evolved as important information infrastructures to make our
daily life more meaningful and sustainable.
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Chapter 6 Value-based Design Framework
6.1. Introduction
This chapter focuses on the intelligent artifacts enhanced by virtuality and fictionality to
influence human attitude and behavior69. The first topic is to present the Value-based Design
Framework which enhances the GamiValue Model proposed in Chapter 2 to navigate human
behavior in the real world. The framework consists of six types of values and each value is
extracted based on multidisciplinary literature surveys and our experience with three case studies:
Augmented TCG, Augmented Go, and Virtual Aquarium. We have already introduced
Augmented TCG in Chapter 4, so we show an overview of Augmented Go and Virtual Aquarium
in this chapter. We describe that each value matches with various theories in the area of
psychology, sociology, cultural studies and so on. The second topic is how to apply the
Value-based Design Framework to analyze the values of digital-physical hybrid artifacts. We
show design implications to apply the Value-based Design Framework to analyze and enhance
intelligent artifacts. Our experience suggests that incorporating virtuality and fictionality is a
promising direction for designing intelligent artifacts to influence people’s behavior.
6.2. Digital-Physical Hybrid Gameful Artifacts
Currently, products’ quality is not the most important reason for many of us to buy the products.
For example, new furniture and fashion goods attract us every year, but they do not become
commodities sold at cheaper prices over time. Focusing on creating advances in customer value
can make competition irrelevant by opening entirely new markets (Mauborgne & Kim, 2005).
Additionally, a significant value offering for users distinguishes breakthrough products from their
competitive followers (Cagan & Vogel, 2002). In particular, prices for such high-value products
69
This chapter is based on the following paper:
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Todorka Alexandrova: “Enhancing Values through Virtuality for Intelligent
Artifacts that Influence Human Attitude and Behavior,” International Journal of Multimedia tools and applications,
Sep. 2014.
108 |
are kept high by offering a sense of preciousness. Digital technologies have been effective in
making digital objects common commodities and, consequently, lowering their prices. These
technologies are also effective for adding value to products or services by incorporating virtuality.
Embodied interaction technologies make it possible to enhance our physical artifacts with
virtuality. The various displays and projectors already embedded into artifacts allow us to attach
an information layer to them. The information layer shows dynamically generated visual
expressions representing virtual objects and creatures that provoke a user to associate additional
values with the artifacts and that enables him/her to consider the artifacts to be more attractive
(Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013) (Yamabe & Nakajima, 2013). Typically, projecting some
information on a physical artifact or adding a display to show visual expressions offers
computational visual forms on the existing artifacts. We call the information layer that
incorporates virtuality into physical artifacts virtual forms. Technologies now have become
mature enough to realize virtual forms. Sensors retrieve information about the real world, and
virtual forms reflect what happens in the real world, offering more values to a user. For example,
AwareMirror (Fujinami, et al., 2005) adds an information layer to a traditional mirror. The
information layer helps a user’s decision making or influences his/her attitude and behavior. It is
also important to maintain the functionality of the existing artifacts even when virtual forms are
introduced. Using virtual forms is a promising way to enhance the artifacts that surround us and to
make our daily life richer and more enjoyable because increasing daily pleasure is one of the most
important social issues to be considered in our society.
The focus of this chapter is to design and analysis of intelligent artifacts augmented with virtual
forms that influence human behavior by incorporating virtuality in virtual forms. Some concepts
from games have proven useful in designing for non-entertainment purposes and to alter human
attitude and behavior, as described in Chapter 1. The concept is to use games’ power to
encourage human activities in daily life and business. These games’ power have been developed
effective virtuality to influence people and we suggest some ways to develop intelligent artifacts
that harmoniously integrate virtual forms into them by enhancing their values.
We call physical intelligent artifacts enhanced with virtual forms that influence human behavior
and offer ludic interaction with people through virtual forms “DPHG artifacts”, where “DPHG”
stands for “Digital-Physical Hybrid Gameful.” Mona Lisa Bookshelf (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta,
2013), Augmented Calligraphy (Yamabe & Nakajima, 2013) and Sentient Cradle (Kawsar, et al.,
2005) are examples of DPHG artifacts. Mona Lisa Bookshelf reflects the current situation of a
bookshelf as a Mona Lisa picture. Augmented Caligraphy adds playful visual and sound feedback
to a paper for calligraphy. Sentient Cradle notifies a receipt of a phone call as the movement of a
doll. Although DPHG artifacts offer a variety of promising directions, how to harmoniously
design a virtualized real world with DPHG artifacts remains an important and challenging issue.
As shown in (Andenne, et al., 2009) (Dunne & Raby, 2013), the authors claim that a better
framework can be developed through experience-developing case studies. To suggest some clues
for solving this problem, we develop three case studies and introduce a framework for the design
and analysis of DPHG artifacts. We also present some useful design implications from our
experiences with them that enhance their values through virtuality.
| 109
We present two issues for developing DPHG artifacts. The first issue is to propose the
Value-based Design Framework, an design and analysis tool for developing better DPHG
artifacts. Using values has recently been recognized as an important design approach for
developing desirable information services (Boztepe, 2007) (Cockton, 2006) (Friedman, et al.,
2006). We extracted six values from our experience with developing three case studies and show
evidence of the effectiveness of values from psychology, sociology, cultural studies and so on.
Values are especially useful when multiple persons analyze DPHG artifacts. As shown in the
analysis presented in Section 6.5, values can be considered to be frames for discussing and
gathering opinions from different users; these opinions will be able to be effectively used to
enhance DPHG artifacts to satisfy more users because different people with different
personalities may have different preferences, as shown in (Sakamoto, et al., 2013).
The second issue is adding fictionality to DPHG artifacts. Fictionality represents something that
cannot exist in the real world but that enables virtual forms to express more intuitive meaning than
can something that exists in the real world. Fictionality facilitates embedding ideological
messages in virtual forms to influence human attitude and behavior (Sakamoto, et al., 2013)
(Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014)because more vivid and exaggerated expressions that are
physically impossible can be used. From our experience with adding fictionality in our case study,
we suggest that a transmedia storytelling is a promising infrastructure for seamlessly integrating
fictionality into DPHG artifacts. We also present some design implications for incorporating
fictionality into the real world and how the proposed values are used for developing DPHG
artifacts that influence human behavior and how ideological messages are included.
6.3. Case Studies of DPHG Artifacts Incorporating Virtual Forms
This section presents an overviews of our case studies of DPHG artifacts that incorporate virtual
forms to make them more attractive. We develop the Value-based Design Framework based on
our experience with three case studies: Augmented TCG, Augmented Go, and Virtual Aquarium.
We have already introduced Augmented TCG in Chapter 4, so we show an overview of
Augmented Go and Virtual Aquarium in this section.
6.3.1. Playful Augmented Training System: Augmented Go70
Go is a traditional board game for two players. The goal is to occupy a larger area of the board
than the other player. Black and white stones are used to control the territory; a board with a grid
of 19x19 lines is used as the game field. The rules of Go are relatively simple, but the underlying
strategies are extremely complex and rich. As in chess and reversi, numerous strategies have been
invented to reduce the complexity, but studying these strategies requires the player to actually
understand the strategic concepts. Thus, it takes a long time for a beginner to play well with an
experienced player and to feel pleasure during the play. Augmented Go, which is a playful
70
This section summarizes the paper entitled “Playful Training with Augmented Reality Games: Case Studies toward
Reality-Oriented System Design” (Yamabe & Nakajima, 2013)
110 |
augm
mented trainin
ng systems, supports
s
seveeral gaming modes to plaay a game (Iw
wata, et al., 2011).
2
The ggoal of Augm
mented Go iss to offer useeful informattion to beginn
ners withoutt extra interaactions
and inntrusive dev
vices, as show
wn in Figure 6.1. A virtual form in Augmented G
Go is superim
mposed
onto the real Go board. Proaactive feedbaack informattion is offered visually bby superimp
posing
guidaance informaation onto th
he Go board via projecto
or. A Web caamera connec
ected to a personal
compputer is used to detect thee position of each Go ston
ne.
Figure 6.1
6
An Oveerview of Au
ugmented Go System
The D
DPHG artifa
fact supports several gam
ming modes. As shown in
i Figure 6.22 (a), playerrs can
interaact with the DPHG
D
artifa
fact by placinng Go stoness on a menu that is projeected onto a board.
b
Here,, we briefly explain
e
somee of the modees and how players
p
interaact with Auggmented Go.
Figure 6.2
6
Proactive Informattion Feedba
ack in the Au
ugmented G
Go System
Norm
mal Play mo
ode: The norrmal play m
mode is the basic form off the Go auggmentation. In
I this
modee, two playerrs play Go as
a usual, butt useful information is projected
p
on the board to
o help
beginnners recogniize the situattion and makke better deccisions. The rules
r
of Go aare simple, but
b the
vast nnumber of possible
p
mov
ves in each turn makes it hard for beginners too make deciisions.
Moreeover, on thee large 19x19 board, begginners tend
d to concentrrate on locallized fighting
g in a
narroow region an
nd lose the big
b picture. It is difficu
ult to recognize invaded areas becau
use an
invassion process progresses gradually
g
as nnew stones are
a put on thee board. Reccognizing thee links
betweeen the Go sttones is impo
ortant to cho osing good offense
o
and defense
d
strateegies, but doing so
| 111
requires some skill. Besides, th
he normal pllay mode visu
ualizes the sttrength of link
nks between the
t Go
stonees. As shown
n in Figure 6..2 (b), same--colored ston
nes are conneected with linnes. If a dang
gerous
situattion occurs somewhere on the board, an alert appeears to warn the players tto avoid losin
ng the
area. The sequencce of stone moves
m
is also rrecorded in the
t database, which faciliitates replaying the
gamee for self-training. Replay
ying allows uus to review and
a analyze the play by llater projectin
ng the
stonees on the board.
Tsum
mego mode: Tsumego is a type of exeercise where the player iss given a gam
me board situ
uation.
The aaim is to find
d the best seq
quence of stoone placemen
nts in a given
n board situat
ation. In this mode,
m
the poositions of th
he stones are visualized oon the board. Players can try differentt moves by placing
stonees on the boaard, with resu
ults and com
mments explaaining important points ddisplayed as visual
feedbback, as show
wn in Figuree 6.2 (c). Thhe Tsumego mode preparres questionss for a player with
differrent skill levels, and the level
l
of diffiiculty can be selected in the
t menu, ass shown in Figure
F
6.2 (dd).
6.3.2.
6
Persuasive Amb
bient Mirror: Virtuall Aquarium
m71
Virtuaal Aquarium
m is a persuasive ambient mirror that has
h the objecttive of improoving users’ dental
hygieene by promo
oting correctt tooth brushiing habits (N
Nakajima & Lehdonvirta,
L
, 2013). It is set up
in thee lavatory, wh
here it turns a mirror intoo a simulated aquarium as shown in Fiigure 6.3. A virtual
v
form in Virtual Aq
quarium represents an aqquarium locaated in the laavatory, and tthe form refllects a
user’ss tooth brusshing behaviior. Fish liviing in the aquarium
a
aree affected byy the users’ tooth
brushhing activity. If users brussh their teethh properly, the fish prospeer and procreeate. If not, th
he fish
becom
me unhealthy
y and may ev
ven perish.
Figuree 6.3
71
An O
Overview of Virtual Aqu
uarium
Thiis section sum
mmarizes the paper entitledd “Designing Motivation Ussing Persuasivve Ambient Mirrors”
M
(Naakajima & Lehddonvirta, 2013))
112 |
In thiis DPHG arttifact, we usee a 3-axis acccelerometer sensor
s
that is attached to eeach toothbrrush in
a hoousehold. A user brush
hes his/her teeth in frront of the virtual aquuarium usin
ng the
sensoor-equipped toothbrush.
t
Tooth
T
brushinng patterns arre recognized
d by analyzinng the acceleeration
data. The toothbru
ush is able to
o “observe” ppassively ho
ow the user brushes his/heer teeth; this is the
only interaction needed
n
to usee this DPHG
G artifact.
As shhown in Figu
ure 6.4 (a) and
d (b), when a user beginss to brush his//her teeth, a sscrubber insiide the
aquarrium starts cleaning
c
the algae off th
the aquarium
m’s wall. At the same tiime, a set of
o fish
assocciated with th
he user starts moving in the aquarium
m in a playfful manner. W
When the user has
brushhed his/her teeeth for a su
ufficient periiod, the scru
ubber finishees cleaning aand the fish dance
becom
mes even mo
ore elegant. When
W
the useer finishes bru
ushing, the fish
f end theirr dance and reesume
their normal activities. Both the activitiees of the fissh and the movement
m
off the scrubber are
desiggned to give the user hintts regarding the correct method
m
of to
ooth brushingg. However, if the
user does not bru
ush his/her teeth
t
sufficieently, the aq
quarium beco
omes dirty aand the fish in the
aquarrium become sick. The feedback innformation is
i returned immediately
i
according to
t the
moveement of the user’s toothb
brush.
Figu
ure 6.4
Pro
oactive Inforrmation Feeedback in Viirtual Aquarrium
The hhealth of the fish is visibly
y affected byy how clean th
he aquarium is. If the useer neglects to brush
his/heer teeth prop
perly, the heaalth of the fissh worsens. In
I contrast, faithful
f
brushhing may ressult in
the fish laying egg
gs, as shown in Figure 6.44 (c). At firstt, the eggs aree not very likkely to hatch.. If the
user ccontinues to brush consisstently for a number of days,
d
the incu
ubation ratio increases an
nd the
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eggs are hatched, as shown in Figure 6.4 (d). This way, the long-term accumulated feedback
gives clues to the correct behavior and attempts to maintain motivation over a longer period.
When designing this DPHG artifact, we considered the association between a user’s healthy
lifestyle and the cleanliness of the aquarium. Our design takes into account the fact that people
usually feel empathy for virtual creatures (Reeves & Nass, 1996). In our daily life, a mirror
reflects our appearance and allows us to know whether we look good or not, whether our makeup
and clothes fit or not and so on; it has the power to make what is invisible about us visible. Virtual
Aquarium is a new type of mirror that reflects a user’s current state, encourages him/her to change
his/her behavior and motivates desirable lifestyle.
6.4. Value-based Design Framework for Analyzing DPHG Artifacts
In this section, we extract six values based on our experience with the design and use of the three
case studies. The framework containing the values is called the Value-based Design Framework.
We mainly focus on the experience that provides us some understanding of how to integrate
virtual forms into physical artifacts; we increase the artifacts’ values without losing the user’s
reality, even when the artifacts incorporate virtuality. This section also presents some evidence
from psychology, sociology and cultural studies to validate the effectiveness of the proposed
values.
6.4.1.
Semiotics of Virtual Forms
The meaning of the virtual forms should be easily understood by a user. Designing them is the
process of defining the meaning of artifacts (Krippendorff, 2005). The meaning should be
understood by a user with little additional training or information; i.e., the meaning should be
defined in our daily culture and should not be ambiguous because ambiguity may lead a user to an
unexpected interpretation of the virtual form (Suri, 2005). When additional instructions on the
usage of the virtual forms are needed, they should be sufficiently simple that the user can
understand them completely with little effort. It is unwise to assume that the user will read a
manual. One solution to this problem is to use metaphors. Understanding a metaphor relies on the
user’s prior knowledge. If the user has been acquainted with similar information in the past, the
user can learn the meaning of a new virtual form through usage of an appropriate metaphor. A
metaphor does not require too much information to make a better decision. For example, in
Virtual Aquarium, the cleanliness of the aquarium is a metaphor for the cleanliness of the user’s
teeth. Additionally, Augmented TCG’s special effects surrounding the battlefield become
metaphors to show the will and strength of the virtual characters drawn on the trading cards.
Another solution is to use affordance. In Augmented Go, a player chooses a command to the
system by putting a Go stone on a circle projected on the Go board. In this case, accurately
identifying commands is important because a user cannot distinguish misunderstanding of the
offered affordance from an inability to recognize commands. The feedforward information
offered to a user teaches how he/she should behave with artifacts (Djajadiningrat, et al., 2002)
(Lockton, et al., 2010). If the feedforward information can offer the correct meaning of the
artifacts, then the user can use them correctly.
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Users, however, sometimes misunderstand the meaning of the virtual forms, and this is one of the
dangers of relying on metaphors and affordance. Users may find unintended meanings in a virtual
form. For example, if a supposedly unattractive picture is used to discourage undesirable behavior,
that picture may actually have the opposite effect on an avant-garde or ironic art consumer. The
way a picture is understood by users strongly depends on the cultures and personalities of the
users. Therefore, it is not easy for a designer to attach a single meaning to a specific expression for
all people. The interpretation of the expression could be left to the user. This open interpretation
(Sengers & Gaver, 2006) allows the user to feel pleasure or positive surprise on one hand, but on
the other hand, it is not easy to predict the effect of the interpretation by the user in a controllable
way.
Presentation of the information according to a user’s current attitude and behavior is a key issue
for representing the values described in Section 6.4.2. The information may appear in an ambient
way. For example, as shown in this section, a metaphor is a useful tool for that purpose. Visual
information representing a metaphor should be tangibly manipulated to present more detailed
information (Ishii & Ullmer, 1997). One solution is to offer a visual expression that offers an
affordance presenting more detailed information by opening the visual expression. The solution
was proposed in AwareMirror (Fujinami, et al., 2005) for maintaining the balance between
ambient abstract information and textual concrete information in intelligent daily artifacts. After a
user chooses a visual expression, detailed and concrete information appears on a visual form for
the user to make a better decision. This style of information design is effective in showing
information when designing DPHG artifacts for naturally integrating information into the
artifacts. A skillful user chooses several necessary abstract pieces of information and opens the
information to show information that is more detailed.
6.4.2. Six Values Extracted from Three Case Studies
The six values introduced in this section are evolved from the pleasure framework proposed in
(Jordan, 2002) and the incentive framework presented in (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013). We
enhanced these frameworks based on our experience with the case studies and from the semiotic
aspect (Krippendorff, 2005) to focus on the meaning of DPHG artifacts when virtuality is
introduced.
Empathic Value: Using an empathetic form is an effective way to evoke a user’s emotions.
Empathy is a strong social incentive to feel values on a virtual form. Empathy engages the user to
feel close to the empathetic form. Virtual pets are a typical example of an empathic form; they are
very popular in many information services. Social robot pets also make our daily life happier. The
pets evoke the user’s empathetic emotion and encourage him/her to change undesirable behavior
caused by negative emotions. The emotional impact is very effective in making the user keep
his/her desirable habits. One interesting theoretical result is the media equation (Reeves & Nass,
1996). A user feels empathy for even non-living things such as a personal computer. This result
shows that there is a possibility of using various expressions or products that do not represent
living or animated characters. When the user considers that something expressed by information
services has a personality, the user feels empathy. The product attachment theory (Mugge, et al.,
2007) explains why people like customized things more than uncustomized things. If the
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personality fits the user’s personality or he/she feels altruism toward the personality, he/she feels a
close relationship with customized things. Therefore, designing a good and appropriate
personality is an important topic when designing DPHG artifacts. In Virtual Aquarium, fish in the
virtual aquarium evoke the user’s emotion. In this case, an important design issue is to
synchronize the current situation of the virtual fish with the user’s tooth brushing practice. In
Augmented TCG, the virtual character representing the opponent player has a strong impact on the
player’s feelings during the game play. If a player has a good feeling about the virtual character,
the player tends to enjoy the game sincerely, even if he/she does not know the real opponent well.
Physical artifacts tend to be used for a longer time if the user feels empathy for them (Mugge, et
al., 2007). However, it is not easy to offer empathetic experiences to users. One promising way to
solve the problem is to make it possible for a user to customize his/her own experience. For
example, decorating a mobile phone is very typical for Japanese people, making it unique and
differentiating it from others’ phones. It is also very typical for people to customize their avatars
in online games by changing their avatars’ accessories, clothes, shoes, and hairstyles, even if
doing so involves paying extra money.
Persuasive Value: An effective and easy way to alter a user’s behavior is to offer proper feedback
information according to the user’s current situation (Fogg, 2002). When the user’s behavior is
the desirable one, a positive expression is returned as feedback, but if he/she behaves in an
undesired manner, a negative expression is returned as feedback. However, the feedback
information needs to be synchronized with the users’ real world situation to make them feel a
sense of reality. For example, in Virtual Aquarium, the cleanness of a user’s teeth is synchronized
with the cleanliness of the aquarium.
The transtheoretical model defines a five-stage process involving the progress to change a user’s
undesirable behavior (Prochaska & Velicer, 1997). The model is useful to incorporate the
persuasive value in DPHG artifacts and to construct a user’s intrinsic motivation by noticing the
importance of the ideological value incorporated in DPHG artifacts. The returned feedback
information needs to be changed according to the current stage of the user’s thinking, skills and
knowledge. In earlier stages, the user prefers emotional reinforcement not to give up his/her
current efforts. On the other hand, for the user who is in a nearly final stage, enough information
to make a better decision through rational thinking is more suitable. Designing emotional
incentives is an important aspect of offering the persuasive value on a virtual form. Positive
stimuli are effective in early stages, but in later stages, negative stimuli are desirable because
thinking rationally is difficult when users are in a positive mood; they tend to think more
rationally when they are in a negative mood (Schwarz & Clore, 1996).
Virtual Aquarium provides positive stimuli when the user’s current behavior is desirable, but a
negative stimulus is returned when he/she behaves undesirably. One important finding is that a
negative stimulus alone is not effective because the user becomes rational, and he/she considers
the effectiveness of his/her behavior (Nakajima & Lehdonvirta, 2013). He/she needs enough
information to think about the importance of the activity and its goal in a rational way. When
rational decision-making is important, it is desirable not to evoke a user’s positive emotion too
much. It may lead to heuristic thinking that leads to a wrong decision. Similarly, in Augmented Go,
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the projected information on the real Go board is useful to make a better decision, but it does not
offer an emotional stimulus to encourage a beginner to play the game by encouraging a user’s
rational thinking. This fact is important when designing a DPHG artifact for a game. A game
usually evokes a user’s deep emotion, but it may not be better to win the game without rational
thinking.
A beginner may not have an interest in continuing to use DPHG artifacts over a period of time. In
particular, if the activity to use the DPHG artifact requires additional effort, it is not easy to
continue the activity until better habits are built because curiosity does not motivate as much as
does the exertion of extra effort demotivates. Even when offering enough stimuli, a user may get
bored after the same stimulus is received over time because the stimulus itself cannot be
strengthened infinitely. This is one reason why most people quickly give up many interesting
activities. Thus, it is important to offer extra motivation like joy, comfort or reward in the early
stages of an endeavor. For example, Virtual Aquarium offers a positive emotional stimulus to a
user to continue to brush his/her teeth. Similarly, Augmented TCG offers special effects on the
trading cards to encourage joyful play.
In the next stage, self-efficacy is the key to success. A user feels self-efficacy when he/she has
enough confidence to continue the target activity. The confidence comes from the evidence that
he/she has the ability to do the activity well; therefore, the user needs to be offered information
showing such evidence. To move to a later stage, the user needs to perceive self-efficacy to
increase the intrinsic motivation. However, because positive thinking is necessary to grow the
user’s self-efficacy (Fredrickson, 2009), it is essential not to offer too many negative stimuli to
maintain a user’s positive thinking and to offer enough information to think rationally enough to
notice the importance of the ideological messages incorporated in the DPHG artifacts.
Informative Value: The informative value is useful for offering information to a user for him/her
to make a better decision. Proper decision-making support is very important (Kahneman, 2011)
(Thaler & Sunstein, 2009); thus, the informative value should be incorporated in various future
DPHG artifacts using virtual forms. In Augmented Go, extra information is projected on the
physical GO board. The user can still use normal stones and a board without attaching any
artificial objects such as visual tags. Additionally, the user does not need to be equipped with
special devices such as a head-mounted display. Projecting information directly on the GO board
is useful for avoiding the fragmentation of a user’s attention. While doing Tsumego, a user needs
to look at a book. This forces users to look at the GO board and a book alternately, preventing
them from concentrating on learning the strategies of the GO play.
For designing the informative value, it is important to consider how much information is
necessary to make better decisions (Todd, 2007). If hidden information becomes explicitly visible
for a user, his/her decision-making will become more rational, counteracting biases that may
creep into his/her decision-making processes. For attaching the informative value, how to offer
the nudge, which becomes hints to make a user’s rational decisions, is an important design
decision (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009). If proper information is not given, a user may become more
confused; in such a case, making a rational decision is difficult.
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For example, if there are too many choices, a user tends not to choose at all (Schwartz, 2003). A
large amount of information also requires heavy cognitive effort, and so it is important not to give
too much information when asking for a decision. Additionally, too much information is neither
effective nor helpful for assisting a user to think rationally. In some cases, heuristics are
dangerous and lead to mistakes in decision-making (Kahneman, 2011); the bias in heuristic
thinking may cause the user to make a wrong decision. Heuristics, however, are necessary to
make better decisions from among many choices within a reasonable time; the amount of
information should be carefully designed for better decision making.
Smart artifacts (Fujinami & Nakajima, 2005) (Kawsar, et al., 2005) have been developed to
embed computing technologies into daily artifacts such as chairs and clothes. The key technical
issue for developing this technology is the ability to sense immersively our daily environment by
using multiple smart artifacts and to offer context-aware information to people (Kawsar, et al.,
2008). The smart artifacts are deployed everywhere in our environment and connected by a
network. Tangible bits (Ishii & Ullmer, 1997) and slow technologies (Hallnäs & Redström, 2001)
are technologies that materialize information in the virtual world. In particular, slow technologies
that offer information are naturally harmonized in the real world. These approaches are
appropriate to offer the informative value to the DPHG artifacts because the information is
seamlessly integrated into intelligent artifacts.
Economic Value: Not surprisingly, we also found that economic values are a powerful technique
for motivating people to influence their attitude and behavior. An economic value is a tangible
reward that users consider valuable, but it is not necessarily actual money or goods. In online
games, millions of players work hard to obtain rare and valuable virtual goods, and these players
even trade these goods for real money at a rate of three billion dollars per year (Lehdonvirta &
Ernkvist, 2011).
Lehdonvirta proposed three attributes that make virtual items valuable in a game (Lehdonvirta,
2009). The first attribute is a functional attribute consisting of two categories: performance and
functionality. Performance is the skill to play a game well, and functionality of the equipment
increases the possibility of winning the game. The second attribute is the hedonic attribute. This
attribute consists of six categories: visual appearance and sounds, background fiction, provenance,
customizability, cultural references, and branding. The hedonic attribute offers value to satisfy a
user’s emotional desire. The third attribute is the social attribute. This attribute consists of one
category: rarity. This value is strongly associated with the ability to distinguish a group of owners
from non-owners. The above attributes are made effective by providing the economic value to
virtual forms by making the items with the attributes shown in the forms exchangeable with other
people.
Adding the economic value in our case studies is a very important issue. In Virtual Aquarium, we
can buy fish and plants for the aquarium. If a user becomes sick, he/she may not brush his/her
teeth properly; this would make the fish ill. The user may feel helplessness and hopelessness
about using Virtual Aquarium if there is no way to solve such problems. If a user can use virtual
currency and buy medicine for the fish, it will motivate him/her to continue using Virtual
Aquarium. In Augmented Go, it is useful for a user to buy more Tsumego patterns to improve
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his/her skills or to buy new software to analyze his/her current play in detail and to advise him/her
better ways to play in future Go games. In Augmented TCG, a player can buy a new trading card
and strengthen his/her current card deck. It is also possible to buy a new virtual character and a
new pattern to add special effects to the virtual trading cards.
There are different virtual currency systems in many online services. In each service, a different
virtual currency is defined. For example, as described in Section 3.2.2, aging money that
gradually reduces in value if a user keeps it in his/her wallet is adopted to encourage human
activities in social media. One of the most interesting issues is the exchange of the virtual and real
currencies. The exchange rate between the virtual and real currencies may change according to
the value of the virtual currency. This means that the value of the virtual currency decreases if
trust in the virtual currency decreases (Lehdonvirta, 2009). We believe that the economic value
will change the understanding and the attitude toward the virtual and real currency and will be
useful for the design of a money system that uses virtual currency in a more effective way.
Although the economic value is a powerful tool for motivating desirable behavior, it may lead to
unpredictable results if not used carefully (Kahneman, 2011). One additional effect that could be
utilized is reciprocity, or the desire to reciprocate gifts and favors received from others. Virtual
gifts are frequently exchanged in online games, strengthening the relationships between users. If
the virtual gifts are attractive, the owner feel strong sense of ownership, which increases the
economic value.
Aesthetic Value: Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and
taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. Aesthetics is an important factor for
making daily artifacts more attractive. For example, Japanese traditional folk craft represents the
aesthetic value (Hara, 2011), and this value is always very important to improving our quality of
life. In the proposed framework, our discussion is based on a pragmatic approach to aesthetics
represented by Dewey (Dewey, 2005). Dewey insists that art and its aesthetic aspect cannot be
understood without complete appreciation of their social and historical factors. For example, the
light is not aesthetic in itself but rather the aesthetic light is a consequence of the social and
historical appreciation of the material, and the forms. The meaning is constructed socially, thus
in the social and historical perspective, the meaning is augmented and changed. Human ability
to engage in an aesthetic experience is based on their social context, manifested in a personal
intellectual and physical experience. The approach is suitable for our conceptualization to
discuss values by multiple participants.
In Virtual Aquarium, because an aquarium is installed in the lavatory at home, it should not spoil
the appearance of the lavatory. In particular, if DPHG artifacts are used in our daily life, the
aesthetic value becomes essential for acceptance of the artifacts in our daily environment. Virtual
forms offer a new possibility for developing intelligent artifacts because their appearance can be
dynamically changed according to the current situation. Future clothes will contain types of
virtual forms and change their appearance (Dunne, 2010). Chalayan72, a fashion designer, has
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explored the issue of harmonizing art and fashion by embedding information technologies,
including retractable skirts, half-dome lighted hats and a literal showstopper of a dress. Bogost
claims that procedural rhetoric offers a powerful persuasion effect (Bogost, et al., 2010). Thus,
the approach of embedding procedurality into the aesthetic value can also be used to increase the
persuasive value rather than solely the aesthetic value. Dunne and Raby have developed aesthetic
electrical products and has shown how technologies can enhance DPHG artifacts in the future
(Dunne & Raby, 2013).
From the point of view of interaction design, virtual forms will enhance the interactivity of
physical intelligent artifacts. The aesthetic value also plays an important role when designing
interaction (Petersen, et al., 2004). In Augmented Go and Augmented TCG, the interaction
between human and virtual forms needs to be playful to enhance the player’s experience. The
playful aspects are strongly related to the aesthetic interaction offered in the DPHG artifacts. The
tangible aspects of the DPHG artifacts are also important to increasing the aesthetic value in the
interaction between humans and the DPHG artifacts because people usually impute more values
to authentic artifacts than to virtual artifacts. For example, in Augmented Go, the sound when
putting a Go stone on the real Go board enhances its aesthetic interaction. Additionally, in
Augmented TCG, the tangibility of trading cards increases a desire to collect cards because a sense
of the ownership of the cards encourages people to preserve the cards more carefully (Sakamoto,
et al., 2013). This aspect increases the aesthetic interaction with the trading cards.
Ideological Value: What is here referred to as the ideological value is the notion of influencing
users’ behavior through influencing their attitudes and values; in other words, educating the users
on a deeper level. Attitudes and values influence users’ behavior in the long term. The ideological
value makes it possible to motivate the user by himself/herself. A user with higher ideological
value has a belief called self-efficacy that makes him/her believe that he is able to achieve his/her
goal. In our current case studies, we choose simple metaphors that could easily be understood by
the user, but the metaphors have a shallow effect on the understanding of the importance of
maintaining a desirable lifestyle. The ideological value is brought about by intellectual
stimulation. For maintaining desirable behavior, it is important that the user is aware of the
importance of the desirable behavior. The association between the effect of desirable behavior and
the virtual form offered to the user as feedback is effective intellectual stimulation.
The virtual form that has the ideological value may also include a user’s dreams or expectations
for the future. In particular, an art form is a useful style to express human’s hopes or expectations
in an ambient way. A virtual character may speak some words that remind a player of his/her
future hopes or expectations. This may be useful to help a player mature through the game play.
Additionally, virtual forms can be drawn surrounding virtual trading cards or a virtual character,
and they may include information about the importance of recent serious social problems such as
sustainability and human well-being. This makes it possible to learn about these important issues
during game play by incorporating these social problems in the game design. Additionally, a
special effect in Augmented TCG can represent the wish of a character in a trading card; this effect
can heavily influence a player’s current motivation. Using an art form is a useful tool to give the
meaning to virtual forms. We believe that artistic ways of thinking will help create
digital-physical hybrid designs that offer more stimulating experiences while prompting
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consiideration of the
t importan
nce of a desirrable future. For examplee, contemporrary conceptu
ual art
uses ccomplex mettaphors to prrovoke deep rreflections on
o issues such
h as sustainab
ability and peeace in
the w
world.
The iideological messages
m
can
n be used to alter human behavior (S
Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014).
2
Howeever, only in
ncorporating the ideologiical messagees does not effectively innfluence peop
ple. In
particcular, to influ
uence peoplee to tackle serrious social problems,
p
ficctional storiees are incorpo
orated
into tthe real world
d. Many Japaanese fictionnal animation
n and game sttories typical
ally contain serious
ideoloogical messaages that mak
ke our daily llife more desirable. It is promising to uuse these stories in
non-eentertainmen
nt services orr in intelligeent artifacts. Additionally
y, a user’s inntrinsic motiv
vation
shoulld be guided toward his/h
her behavior changes.
6.4.3.
6
Valu
ue-based Deesign Fram
mework for Increasing
g Human Motivation
M
In thhis section, we introducce the Valuee-based Dessign Framew
work to show
w a guidelin
ne for
desiggning DPHG artifacts. Figure 6.5 show
ws an overviiew of the Va
alue-based D
Design Framework
includding the prop
posed six vallues to increaase human motivation,
m
which
w
navigattes people towards
humaan well-being
g.
Figure 6.5
Valu
ue-based Deesign Frameework
The V
Value-based Design Fram
mework show
wn in Figuree 6.5 is based
d on the transstheoretical model,
m
whichh offers a tecchnique to in
ncrease pervaasiveness, ass described in
n Section 6.44.2. We divid
de the
six vaalues into tw
wo groups. Th
he first groupp consists off four values: empathetic vvalue, inform
mative
valuee, aesthetic value, econo
omic value. These fourr values especially conttribute to prrovide
internnalized extriinsic motivaation and enncouraging behavior
b
chaange at an eearly stage in the
transttheoretical model.
m
If peo
ople know thhat they get these positiv
ve values thrrough the tarrgeted
behavvior, they staart to want to
o behave desiirably in ordeer to feel theese values.
| 121
On the other hand, the persuasive value and the ideological value in the second group are placed
at higher level in Value-based Design Framework in Figure 6.5. The ideological value makes a
person’s dreams and expectations explicit and teaches him/her how changing his/her behavior
realizes his/her dream and how the behavior change is important for him/her. Additionally, the
persuasive value leads the person to believe that he/she can perform the ideological activities in
the real world. These two values are useful to encourage people to alter his/her behavior in the
later stage of the transtheoretical model. For the people who can feel the persuasive value and
the ideological value, the activity itself is meaningful and valuable. These values increase
people’s feelings of autonomy and competence, which increase people’s motivation to change
their behavior. Then, they do the activities based on their intrinsic motivation; it also helps them
to feel self-efficacy, positive thinking, happiness and human well-being.
6.4.4. Diverse Values and Participatory Design
Each stakeholder defines his/her own frame to feel values about products and services based on
his/her requirements. This is why participatory design is important for capturing different
stakeholders’ requirements. Additionally, each stakeholder has a different personality; he/she
defines his/her frame based on that personality. As shown in (Mugge, et al., 2007), a user who has
a different personality usually chooses a different favorite value to make himself/herself
experience products and services more empathetically. Thus, values discussed in this chapter are
useful for defining a frame to characterize activities with DPHG artifacts. A user of can recognize
how he/she feels each of the proposed values depending on the current frame associated with a
DPHG artifact. The values could be changed by incrementally adding virtual forms to some
DPHG artifacts. Thus, a participatory design approach to dynamically adding and changing
virtual forms on DPHG artifacts based on each user’s personality or requirements offers the
possibility of assigning various values to products and services in a more systematic way without
heavily modifying the infrastructure. However, the possibility is increased that the products and
services are satisfy many people with different personalities.
6.5. Improving Augmented TCG with Value-based Design Framework
In this section, we present an improvement of Augmented TCG described in Chapter 4 based on
the Value-based Design Framework. The six values can be used to analyze the pitfalls of the
current design and to suggest improvements in the design for satisfying more people. One
important advantage of using the Value-based Design Framework is to offer different frames to
analyze the design based on the six values. We can collect a variety of opinions from the analysis
and the use of them to expand the current design space. This section shows an example of
applying the proposed framework for analyzing the possible design space of DPHG artifacts.
As we have already explained in section 4.2.2, we adopt the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG in Augmented TCG.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has a number of sources of pleasure in addition to playing the game,
including completing collections of cards, structuring decks, communicating with other players,
trading, battling and forming associations with the Yu-Gi-Oh! television animation and comics.
As described in Chapter 4, Yu-Gi-Oh! animation shows some ideological messages such as
122 |
friendship and justice; this is a good case study to discuss human behavior change through the
ideological value.
We improve the analyses described in Section 4.4. with the Value-based Design Framework. In
the experiment, we recruited six participants (five males and one female) who had more than
three years’ experience with the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and they knew the characters in the animation
stories very well. They were 21-22 years old university students. During the experiments, each
participant plays a different duel against an expert player who is the author of this dissertation, has
more than ten years’ experience with the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and has several thousand Yu-Gi-Oh!
trading cards for analyzing their respective values. We observed the participant’s duel and
conducted interviews with him/her after the duel based on the contextual inquiry method (Beyer
& Holtzblatt, 1999). All of the experiments were recorded, and all dialogs in the experiment were
transcribed to facilitate analysis of the dialogs. We improve the analysis in terms of six frames
provided by the Value-based Design Framework.
Empathetic Value: In the experiment in Section 4.4.1 and Section 4.4.2, we use a popular
empathetic virtual character as an opponent player. Participants played a duel with virtual
characters: Yugi or Kaiba from the Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story and Link from The Legend of
Zelda. As described in the original design, the behavior of the virtual character is synchronized
with the opponent player. The results of the experiment to evaluate the improvement were
completely different depending on whether the participants liked the character or not. If the
participants were not interested in Link, they usually did not care about the presence of Link, but if
Link was their favorite character, then they found playing the game against Link more enjoyable.
One of the male participants also told us, “If the character is a pretty girl, I may be more excited to
play the game.” Additionally, a female participant told us, “I feel that Link is my boyfriend, so
playing against him increases my pleasure and positivity.” Most of participants like to play
against Link, but it is desirable to choose other favorite popular virtual characters for participants
to encourage their motivation to play the game.
We compared the case when the participant directly saw his/her human opponent with when a
virtual character ware used to represent the opponent in Section 4.4.3. There were some opinions,
such as “If I know the opponent player well, then the real person view is more preferable and
increases the reality of the game.” or “When the opponent player is a stranger, using a virtual
character is preferable because I don’t feel comfortable either showing myself or seeing the
opponents.” From these answers, we found that there is a difference between the case when a
participant knows the opponent player well and the case when the opponent player is a stranger.
Whether a player feels empathy for a real person or a virtual character depends on the situation
and the player’s personality. If the participant knows the opponent well, then the real person view
is more preferable, but, if the opponent is a stranger, then using a virtual character is a better
choice. When we use virtual characters, enhancing the reality of the virtual characters is
essential for the successful results, as we explain in Chapter 7. The virtual character representing
a player provokes his/her empathy and motivates him/her to play and enjoy the game more if that
is one of the characters used in player’s favorite games or animations. The use of a player’s
favorite virtual characters has a possibility to provide the empathetic value.
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Persuasive Value: In the experiment in Section 4.4.4, a small display shows a virtual character,
Dead Master that is illustrated on one of the cards in the player’s deck and that encourages the
player to win according to the duel’s current situation. After the experiment, one of the
participants said, “It is desirable that the card depicting Dead Master does not lose to the attack of
the opponent player.” However, another player who was not interested in the character told us, “It
is more enjoyable if the participant’s favorite character encourages him.” One of the other
participants said, “I feel that the character does not encourage me enough using only gestures. It
is better that the character talks or advises me.” He also told us, “It is desirable that the character
behaves like a cheerleader.” Additionally, another participant told us, “The encouragement
should be like the one in the animation story.” Most participants said, “The presence of the
character increases the pleasure, but it is hard to consider winning the game just from that
encouragement.”
These participants’ comments showed that they were quite aware that the character depicted on
one of their cards appeared on the small display without being informed in advance about this
feature of the system, but the character’s encouragement needs to be stronger and to be changed
according to the situation in each participant’s play. In trading card games, trading cards are
collected by each player by expending significant effort. Therefore, the player feels that his/her
cards are very precious, and empathy with the characters depicted on the cards is easily initiated.
As described in Section 2.4.2, people’s special human/character can create a large positive effect.
Therefore, encouragement by such a special character becomes a strong incentive for a player to
win the game, which lead players to feel strong persuasive value.
Informative Value: In the experiment in Section 4.4.5, detailed information about the card that
the opponent player currently uses is shown on a small display next to a player. One participant
said, “If more hints to choose a card in my deck are shown, it is helpful to make a better decision.”
Another participant told us, “If the textual information in a card is represented as visual
information, a player’s cognitive overload is decreased and [this] makes it possible to make a
better decision.” Additionally, one of participants said, “If the card shown in a small display
expresses special effects, the effects make me more exciting.”
From the experiment, we found that the usefulness of the approach depends on the players.
Players who usually want to win a dual and know the trading cards very well can recall the
detailed information of the cards merely by looking at the image of the trading cards. For these
players, special effects or hints to teach them how to duel better are more appropriate. On the
other hand, players who know only their own cards well but do not know other players’ cards feel
that showing the projected cards on the small display is very useful for them to play their duel
better. Therefore, the offered information as the informative value needs to be customized
according to players’ situations for increasing a player’s activities in his/her play.
Information about the strength level shown in the card is hard to see during the game, and so
showing detailed information about the cards near a player is useful to support better decision
making and strategy choices by the player. The informative value also encourages a player not to
give up the game. In a typical setting of a duel, it might be hard to clearly see and understand the
characters on cards that are placed in a duel field and thus more difficult for a player to make a
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correct decision. In particular, if the opponent player’s cards are projected on the table, the low
resolution of the projected cards becomes a serious issue. That is why, in our setup, we show the
card drawn by the opponent on a small display near a player.
Aesthetic Value: This value is already considered in the original design of Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. Here,
we discuss how the original design satisfies the values. Collecting cards and constructing decks
are important elements that increase the pleasure of playing trading card games for its player
(Sakamoto, et al., 2013). From the interviews with the participants, we found that players usually
have two main motivations to collect cards. The first motivation is the will to collect beautiful and
rare cards, and the second motivation is to collect cards that are important for the player’s strategy
to play the game. In Japan, there are still many types of trading card games, and the rare cards are
sold at online auctions for high prices. Some trading cards depict characters from animation
stories. In this case, the same character is depicted on several different cards, and the aesthetics of
the cards are important for collecting the cards; thus, very serious players may collect all the cards
depicting their favorite characters.
The natural interaction is also related to the aesthetic value. The aesthetic interaction can be
achieved when a player feels the interaction is natural (Petersen, et al., 2004). They did not feel a
sense of incongruity regarding the projection of the opponent player’s trading cards, and extra
instructions are not necessary for using Augmented TCG. They also enjoyed playing against a
virtual character without feeling a sense of incongruity.
From the interviews with the participants, we found that using virtual cards represented in a
computer version of trading card game such as the one on the Nintendo DS significantly degrades
the pleasure a player experiences when playing a game. The above discussion shows that the
tangibility of trading cards and the augmented reality approach in Augmented TCG contributes to
maintaining the aesthetic value and increasing a player’s motivation in the game.
Economic Value: In Augmented TCG, a player can use the physical paper cards in his/her play.
On the other hand, in the online version of trading card games, cards are digitally represented in a
virtual world. The player cannot touch the cards in the virtual world directly, and so he/she does
not feel a strong sense of ownership of the cards. Using the physical paper cards is essential for
increasing the sense of ownership and thus increasing the motivation to collect more favored
cards and enjoy the game more. In particular, the rarity of the cards becomes a strong incentive to
collect and own the favored cards. Rarity is an important economic value to make users feel
empathy for virtual items (Lehdonvirta, 2009). The value makes it meaningful to collect trading
cards because the owner of the rare card has a feeling that the card is unique. This means that the
economic value increases the motivation of a player because he/she believe that his/her cards are
valuable.
From the interviews with the participants, we found that two issues are important in terms of the
economic value. The first issue is that selling new trading cards is essential to encourage the
collection of more cards. If there are no new cards, a player may forget to interact with his/her
own cards. This finally would make him/her bored with collecting cards and playing the trading
card game. The second issue is the tangibility of the cards. It is not easy to feel a sense of
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ownership for digital cards because bits cannot presently replace atoms. The reality of digital
items is an important aspect of increasing the economic value of virtual forms. The above
discussion shows that the original design to emphasize the tangibility of trading cards contributes
to maintaining the economic value.
Ideological Value: In the experiment in Section 4.4.1, participants can choose one of two virtual
characters: Yugi or Kaiba. After the play, we interviewed the participants about their impressions
of the virtual character representing their opponent. One of them said, “I could feel I am playing
against Yugi, but the Yugi used in the experiment does not offer enough reality.” The movement of
the character was sometimes not like the real movement of Yugi as in the animation story. He also
said, “I will definitely enjoy the game against Yugi more and would like to win the game if the
movement is more realistic.” Another participant said, “The face expression of the character is
poor and it is a very important issue when playing a game against a real person.” Additionally,
one of the players told us, “The voice should be the same as the actor’s voice of the character in
the animation story.” If the opponent player was a female, some participants felt strange because
both Yugi and Kaiba were male characters. These comments suggest that the reality is an
important metric to incorporate the story into DPHG artifacts.
As described before, these characters represent some ideological concepts such as friendship and
justice in their background story. All the participants in the experiment could easily recall the
Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story during their play. The Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story contains some
ideological messages and playing against Yugi or Kaiba reminds players of the importance of
such ideological factors because the players know the stories behind the characters. The
ideological value from the Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story teaches a player the importance of
friendship for really enjoying the game. Besides, the value leads to self-efficacy, the improvement
of a player’s gaming skills with his/her friends’ cooperation. However, the current story may not
be powerful enough to remind players of its ideological ideas during their play because the
growth of the main hero due to the competition and cooperation among friends is rather implicit in
the story. The story is, however, able to increase positive thinking when playing the game and to
increase self-efficacy enough to win the game. We believe that the effect is valuable to influence
human behavior. In our daily life, people may not feel enough self-efficacy to change undesirable
behavior because our daily life becomes more and more complicated, and we do not have enough
time to consider the importance of desirable behavior. We also need to consider how the
representation form of the stories affects the conveying of the ideological ideas in the near future.
In Japan, the same story is represented in different forms such as animation, comics, games and so
on. These aspects of the current popular fictional stories suggest a new way to incorporate
fictionality in the real world as described in the next section.
6.6. Incorporating Fictionality through Transmedia Storytelling
As described above, the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has a close relationship with the animation story. This
offers an interesting discussion regarding use of the proposed values. From our experience with
the experiment, we suggest that incorporating fictionality into the real world through transmedia
storytelling is a promising approach.
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6.6.1. Fictional Stories and Ideological Value
The story already plays an important role in product advertisements because it increases the
appeal of the target product (Mattila, 2000). Using fictionality to incorporate stories makes our
experience richer because the stories can translate the meaning of DPHG artifacts more easily.
Fictional stories are particularly useful tools for enhancing our daily experience to increase our
buying impulse, as we explain in Chapter 7. Fictional stories can represent stories that do not
exist in the real world or stories from the future. The stories can flexibly offer us a broad range of
information using non-existent artifacts such as magic or alternate history. It is easy to embed
ideological messages in these stories and make it possible for them to teach about various social
issues. They are also useful for teaching how to use various daily artifacts and to encourage us to
acquire a desirable habit.
We incorporate virtual characters appearing in animation and game stories into Augmented TCG
to increase values that a player feels. Our experience with incorporating fictionality in Augmented
TCG shows a positive effect on a player because the fictional story used to improve Augmented
TCG defines the meaning of values added to virtuality introduced by virtual forms. The fictional
stories contain ideological messages that make us aware of important social issues in daily, real
life (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014) (Sakamoto, et al., 2014). The effect offers an interesting
future possibility to enhance DPHG artifacts.
6.6.2. Incorporating Fictional Stories through Transmedia Storytelling
Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a story or story experience across multiple
media or platforms (Dena, 2010) (Ruppel, 2012). It allows fictional stories to be fragmented into
several different media distributed in the real world. In particular, virtual forms are considered a
desirable infrastructure to incorporate fictional stories represented as transmedia storytelling into
the real world. Alternate reality games are becoming popular to represent transmedia storytelling
where stories are delivered across multiple media (McGonigal, 2011) (Szulborski, 2005).
Enhancing games played in the real world such as trading card games with fictional stories is a
promising direction for designing a new form of transmedia.
One of important insight is that there is a possibility for using a virtual character as a metaphor
that recalls the story of the character in the player’s mind during the game play. In this way, the
story may convey a leitmotif containing ideological concepts such as the importance of friendship,
honesty, justice, thoughtfulness and so on (Sakamoto, et al., 2013) (Sakamoto & Nakajima,
2014). This approach would have the power to alter the player’s behavior. When playing with a
virtual character from animation or a game story, the player also tries to mimic the character’s
behavior in the story. This can be a very useful and successful approach to teach players how to
improve their gaming skills. If players follow the skillful character’s way of playing in the story,
then they can learn new skills and techniques from that character’s experience in the story.
In the current Augmented TCG, the Yu-Gi-Oh! animation story is incorporated, but the animation
story is not explicitly shown during the play. A player needs to recall the story by himself/herself
during his/her game play. Tighter integration of the game play and the animation story offers the
possibility of designing new transmedia storytelling. For example, as shown in the experience on
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the persuasive value, the current approach is weak in encouraging a player. He/she needs a reason
to play a duel. Additionally, as shown in the experiment on the ideological value, a player needs
more information to be reminded of the embedded ideological messages. Virtual forms can
present a part of a story inside as transmedia storytelling and give information during play to help
a player understand well the persuasive value and the ideological value embedded in Augmented
TCG. Besides, a virtual character in a fictional world appears in the real world. In the near future,
3D holographic displays may realize the approach in a better way 73. Thus, tight integration
between a fictional story and the real world becomes possible by showing a part of a story in a
small display near a player as the informative value in Augmented TCG. This approach makes a
stronger association between a story in the fictional world and the real world through a virtual
character than does the current approach, and the boundary between the two worlds becomes
more blurred.
In digital games, players enjoy fictional worlds through real world interaction (Jull, 2005). Game
studies scholars introduced the term magic circle, where a player plays a game inside a magic
circle that is not recognized in the real world. However, incorporating fictional worlds in the real
world needs to be indistinct both inside and outside of the magic circle. Virtual forms will be
interfaces between real and fictional worlds, and we believe that transmedia storytelling is a
promising way to design those interfaces. Additionally, several techniques for designing
pervasive games can be used to incorporate transmedia storytelling in the real world by blurring
the boundaries between real and fictional worlds in terms of time, space and social (Montola, et
al., 2009). However, if the boundary between the real world and fictional world blurs, rules in the
fictional world should be obeyed as are rules in the real world; this may significantly decrease
pleasure in the fictional world. For example, typical ethical constraints in the real world may need
to be satisfied even in the fictional world.
6.6.3. Achieving Reality when Incorporating Fictional Stories
Considering how to obtain and maintain the reality of DPHG artifacts is a very important issue.
Even if fictional stories are incorporated, the virtual forms should convey their reality to users. In
particular, if a fictional story is embedded in DPHG artifacts, the reality in the story shown on the
virtual forms is essential. We propose several design patterns to discuss the reality in the
incorporated fictionality in Chapter 7. If a user is involved in a fictional story that uses DPHG
artifacts, his/her belief that a part of the story exists in the real world is essential. In particular, if a
typical artifact used in the story appears in the real world and the user remind of the story by using
the artifacts, the artifact is a promising source of media for enjoying the story. For example, in live
action role-playing (Montola, et al., 2009), a player plays a specific role from a fictional story.
He/she wears special clothes to represent the role and uses physical artifacts that the person in the
role typically uses. DPHG artifacts enable us to influence the story when we wear the clothes and
use the artifacts. This influence increases the player’s immersion in the fictional story.
73
In Japan, for example, a virtual idol sings in a concert and appears in the real world by using a film screen:
http://5pb.jp/mikupa/. The approach achieves the effect to live the virtual idol in the real world.
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From the experiments described in Section 6.5, we have also found that the reality of the
characters, such as facial expressions, movement and behavior, is essential to increase the
enjoyment of the game. Reality is an important criterion to evaluate a design. In our case, the
virtual character’s behavior should be consistent with the character’s behavior in the animation
story; this is important for feeling the reality in the game. For example, cards that are not used by
the character in the animation also should not be used in the game, and the movement of the
virtual character should be consistent with its typical movement in the animation. The number of
cards owned by the character should be consistent with the real game situation as well. However,
too realistic expressions may cause the uncanny valley problem if we perceive that the achieved
reality is not completely realistic (Mori, 1970).
There are three issues to be considered in terms of the reality in this case. First, a proper reason
why items and characters exist in our world is needed to increase the reality of a user’s experience.
In Augmented TCG, the appearance of Yugi and Kaiba as opponent players is not so unrealistic
when playing Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. Second, the behavior of items and characters should be consistent
with their behavior in the fictional world. In particular, if a user is familiar with the fictional story,
from our experience with Augmented TCG, this issue is very important. Third, the virtual form
should be natural, similar to traditional real materials. However, the virtual form may exaggerate
the effect in the real world, which might make the DPHG artifact with the virtual form even more
exciting and attractive than the original one. A feeling of reality is important so that a user
continues to use a DPHG artifact.
There is also an alternative way to increase the reality of the fictional world: adding interaction in
the real world. If there is an interaction between a user and a fictional story, he/she can create
more engagement in the story and the interactivity increases a user’s autonomy that enhances
his/her intrinsic motivation. This is why we usually have more engagement in gaming than
watching animations. Users feel the reality of the fictional story because their intervention has a
strong influence on the story. If the reality is lost, a user’s experience is just like watching a story
that is unrelated to the user’s daily life. Then, the relationship with the real world is also lost, and
the user’s engagement is decreased.
The fictional story offered with a DPHG artifact makes it possible to influence a user’s behavior.
A fictional story represented as transmedia storytelling can first teach us how the DPHG artifact
is effective in our daily life. Then, the ideological message in the story also makes the user believe
that changing his/her behavior is essential to achieve an ideological goal that will lead to
overcoming some serious social problems. Finally, the positivity in the story increases the user’s
self-efficacy to overcome the problems and a user’s intrinsic motivation is established. The
results of positive psychology teach us that positive thinking plays a very important role in
increasing our self-efficacy to solve difficult problems (Fredrickson, 2009).
6.7. Conclusion and Future Directions
This chapter presented case studies of DPHG artifacts that add virtual forms to enhance physical
intelligent artifacts. From our experience with the design and analysis of the case studies, we
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proposed the Value-based Design Framework and extracted six values from experience with the
case studies. The framework enables a designer to help design and analyze experience to make
interaction with intelligent artifacts more ludic. We analyzed the enhancement of Augmented
TCG with the six values in the Value-based Design Framework as an example, showing how to
apply the framework to improve the design through participants’ collected opinions. Finally, we
presented an approach to incorporating fictionality through transmedia storytelling from
experience by enhancing Augmented TCG with the proposed values.
One important advantage to use the Value-based Design Framework is offer different frames
based on the proposed six values to analyze the current design of intelligent artifacts based on
participatory design. The chapter presented design implications that would be useful for the
development of future intelligent artifacts that incorporate virtuality through virtual forms. Since
this kind of multidisciplinary research is not that popular, we expect that the insights from this
chapter would activate discussions and possibilities in the area of the multidisciplinary research
which is important for making our everyday life more meaningful and valuable. In the next step,
we need to validate the proposed values by designing more case studies and further showing the
effectiveness of incorporating virtuality and fictionality for increasing the effect of ideological
messages.
The design implications presented in the chapter are also helpful, relating to the design of various
information services or products that make us feel more valuable. The insights presented in this
chapter should assist in the development of future digital-physical hybrid worlds, which will
make future smart cities more valuable and gameful (Sakamoto, et al., 2014). The aspect is
important because the traditional approach typically focuses on efficiency issues such as energy
management or traffic management in our daily life. Our approach allows us to consider how to
make our daily lifestyle more valuable and happier by incorporating virtuality and fictionality into
the real world.
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Chapter 7 Design Patterns of Reality
7.1. Introduction
This chapter presents some design patterns to keep reality when incorporating gameful digital
rhetoric into the real world74. How strongly we believe in the reality of a fictional story within a
virtual form from a semiotic aspect is an important factor when we incorporate gameful digital
rhetoric into the real world. The proposed design patterns cover three aspects. The first aspect is
to exploit visual reality. The second aspect is to exploit ideological messages in fictional stories.
The third aspect is to compose multiple fictional stories. This chapter also shows a case study to
motivate and gamify to join the Haiku contest by increasing the awareness of the importance of
the contest, and show the effectiveness of the proposed design patterns.
7.2. Background
In our daily life, fictional stories play an important role in offering rich user experiences. Theme
parks, which consist of entertainment attractions, rides, and other events in a single location,
exist for the enjoyment of large numbers of people. More elaborate than a simple city park or
playground, a theme park usually provides attractions associated with popular fictional stories
and it is a typical example of how to integrate fictional stories into real-world activities.
Disneyland75 is a typical, and the most famous, theme park. Many Disney characters appear at
Disneyland. Each attraction at the park is immersively constructed based on a Disney story.
Because those stories are very popular, when we are at Disneyland we feel that its characters
exist in the real world, that we can meet those characters and that we can enjoy being with them
during our visit (Imagineers, 2010). Fictional stories also could potentially enrich user
74
This chapter is based on the following paper:
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Gamifying Intelligent Daily Environments through Introducing Fictionality”,
International Journal of Hybrid Information Technology,” Vol.7, No.4, pp. 259-276, Jul. 2014.
75
http://www.tokyodisneyresort.jp/en/
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experiences during travel, at museums, and in advertisements. Although fictional stories are
good tools for enriching users’ experiences with products and services, those users need to feel
that the objects, characters and events that appear in the stories - but do not exist in the real
world - are still realistic.
Seichi junrei, as we shown in Section 4.5 is a typical geek culture activity in Japan, particularly
related to Japanese animation, games, and comics in which people visit a local region from
animation, manga and games. Typical animation fans in Japan arrive at a specific location in the
local regions, and take pictures with the same screen/angle as it appears in the animation and
upload them to their blogs. The most important aspect of seichi junrei is that something is
brought from the fictional story to the real world. The fans create new stories using these
pictures and the virtual characters from the fictional stories and share them within their
community. The local region also plans to attract people who like the story to visit the region to
enjoy some extra stories of the original stories as the local region’s promotion. This
phenomenon is a very interesting example of harmonizing the real world and the fictional
world.
Recently, a new opera entitled The End76 opened in Japan. In the opera, one lead actress is a
virtual, fictional singer named Hatsune Miku, who is very popular in Japan. The scenes and
performances in the opera are completely generated by computers. This opera has expanded the
traditional concept of opera by using Hatsune Miku. Her existence is realistic to them. In fact,
her concerts are very popular; in them, with the use of augmented reality technologies, she both
sings and dances77.
Fictional stories already play an important role in product advertisements because they increase
the appeal of the advertised product (Mattila, 2000), as we described above. Incorporating
fictionality into stories enriches our experiences because stories can more easily translate and
abstract real-world meanings in a manner that is easily and attractively understood. Fictional
stories can flexibly offer us a broad range of information using non-existent artifacts such as
magic and mysterious creatures. It is also easy to embed ideological messages in fictional
stories, thus making it possible to teach about the importance of various social issues.
Specifically, in Japan, animations, video games, and comics are very popular. Even adults are
very familiar with their stories, because those stories represent the essence of our life. There are
also several infrastructures emerging that create new stories from already-existing stories about
characters such as NicoNico Douga. Exporting these emergent contents is one of the biggest
tasks performed by Cool Japan78, Japan’s national branding strategy.
There are many serious social problems that we need to tackle and we need a new approach to
increase the efficacy with which we can attack those problems. Incorporating fictionality into
76
http://theend-official.com/
77
http://5pb.jp/mikupa/
78
https://www.ana-cooljapan.com/
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the real world makes it possible for a person who is struggling with a problem to play a role,
because the story makes us believe in the importance of tackling social problems, making it
possible to increase our positive thinking and become activists. Because a typical fictional story
describes brave heroes, dignified heroines and mysterious magicians whose strong self-efficacy
enables them to achieve difficult goals, when we play these roles in the real world, our behavior
are altered and our own self-efficacy increases. By expressing their messages through various
artifacts that surround us, fictional stories can be embodied into the real world. Our daily life is
becoming increasingly complex, and we need to manage significant amounts of information
every day. Thus, it is difficult to convey important ideological messages without presenting a
large amount of additional information. For example, education is a traditional, heavily
weighted method for teaching the importance of ideological messages that take a long time to
learn. We need a new approach to alter behavior without the need to assess a large amount of
information.
A virtual form, as described in Chapter 6, is an abstraction that enhances existing products and
services by adding an information layer to virtualize them. Virtual forms offer the potential to
integrate fictionality into products and services to offer immersive experiences. These virtual
forms show dynamically generated visual expressions containing information that both
provokes a person to feel that the artifacts have some additional value and enables him/her to
consider the activities that use the artifacts as more attractive. For example, Augmented TCG
shows an empathetic virtual character whose behavior reflects an opponent’s gaming behavior
and Virtual Aquarium presents a computer-generated aquarium in which the fishes’ behavior is
affected by a person’s tooth-brushing behavior, as described in Section 4.3 and Section 6.3.2.
These artifacts incorporate fictionality to increase a person’s empathetic experiences. In (Frasca,
2001), two properties, agency and immersion, are essential for developing more persuasive
expressions. Virtual forms offer the agency property through interactivity with artifacts. In
addition, sensing our environments and presenting feedback information in a pervasive manner
enables virtual forms to react according to a person’s current situation. This provides the
property of immersion, because a person feels that expressions shown on virtual forms are a part
of his/her world.
To embody fictionality in the real world, some insights into how pervasive games or alternate
reality games blur the real and fictional worlds will be key for achieving better integration of
those worlds. Originally, pervasive games were developed for fun such as treasure hunts.
However, a recent trend in pervasive games, such as World Without Oil79, allows players to try to
solve serious, real-world social problems. Because designing activism-related games provides a
new possibility to create a more desirable lifestyle by altering our attitudes and behavior
(Fuad-Luke, 2013), pervasive games provide a promising approach to changing our world
through activism. Alternative reality games are a promising approach for conveying messages to
players using multiple channels. Fictional stories are embedded into a game that is played in the
real world. It uses multiple channels and the channels offered in the game are used to exploit the
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http://worldwithoutoil.org/
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game’s fictional story. For example, in Perplex City80, trading cards are used to introduce the
characters and story. Web sites, emails, phone calls, and SMS messages are then cooperatively
used to solve riddles in the mystery story. Because the media is tightly integrated with our daily
activities, we feel that the fictional story is realistic. For example, social media such as
Facebook and Twitter have become very popular. Thus, fictional stories that are embedded in
social media increase the feeling that the stories are occurring in the real world.
One of the most important factors in embodying fictionality in the real world is role-playing, in
which a person plays a fictional role in the real world without losing his/her grasp on reality.
This type of role-playing is called pervasive role-playing. A person’s fictional experience
becomes tangible if he/she feels that the embodied fictionality is realistic. Reality is the most
important criterion for success in pervasive role-playing. As described in (Montola, et al., 2009),
the most important factor in pervasive game design is to break the magic circle in terms of space,
time, and the social world, when people play fictional roles different from their roles in daily
life. The boundary that the magic circle creates between the fact and fiction should be taken into
account when embodying fictionality in the real world.
Because virtual forms can present a part of a fictional story by showing expressions, a person
who pervasively plays a role to achieve his/her goal can easily remember the story (Sakamoto,
et al., 2013). In addition, as a part of the story, virtual forms can return appropriate feedback to
alter a person’s attitude and behavior at any places. This means that virtual forms are desirable
tools to incorporate fictional stories into the real world through the use of pervasive games, and
a person can play a role in the story through expressing its properties of agency and immersion
clearly (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014) (Sakamoto, et al., 2014). However, it is not easy to
seamlessly incorporate fictionality into the real world. How strongly we believe in the reality of
a fictional story within a virtual form is an important factor. Therefore, we need design patterns,
similar to those that have been proposed in the architecture field by Ishikawa and Silverstein
(Ishikawa & Silverstein, 1977) to develop persuasive virtual forms in a systematic fashion.
In this chapter, we do not discuss design patterns as a way to cause a person to lose his/her
belief in reality by seamlessly blending the fictional and real worlds to make the magic circle
vague in terms of space, time and the social world. Rather, we extract design patterns to keep
reality from three aspects. The first aspect extracts design patterns to increase a sense of visual
reality of fictional elements. The second aspect is to exploit ideological messages in fictional
stories, because we believe that using ideological messages in fictional stories is essential to
increase the persuasiveness of virtual forms. The third aspect is to compose multiple fictional
stories. Although different persons prefer different stories, these stories must be combined into
one when multiple persons participate to achieve the same goal. In our approach, we are not
concerned with the ontology of fictionality presented on virtual forms, but we rather focus on
semiotic aspects of fictionality (Eco, 2009). This means that we discuss the meaning of
fictionality so it does not matter whether incorporated fictionality really exists or not.
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http://perplexcitywiki.com/wiki/Main_Page
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7.3. Extracting Design Patterns
Our analysis and extracting design patterns are based on the above conceptualization because
most of fictional stories contain non-existing objects, and we feel a sense of the reality on the
non-existing objects when their meanings are clear and understandable, and there are plausible
reasons that these objects exists in the stories.
We convened three focus groups to extract useful design patterns for designing virtual forms
that incorporate fictional stories into the existing artifact in the real world. Each focus group
involved twenty participants and a discussion that lasted for a few hours. The participants were
university students who were 21-24 years old. All of them were Japanese and were very familiar
with recent Japanese animation, games and product promotions. After watching the movies or
playing the games described in the following sections, the participants discussed whether the
movies and games gave them a sense of reality and which major elements provided that sense of
reality. We chose the movies and games according to the main theme of each focus group.
Finally, we extracted design patterns from the discussions in the focus groups.
In Section 7.3.1, we discuss the design patterns that allow a user to feel the reality of fictional
stories when the stories are used for product and service promotions. It is essential that a user
feels that the products exist in the real world and they are very attractive. In Section 7.3.2, we
present design patterns for using ideological messages embodied in a fictional story to increase
its persuasiveness related to human behavior changes in the real world. In Section 7.3.3, design
patterns for composing multiple fictional stories consistently are presented with the goal of
supporting each person in playing his/her favorite role, or possibly different roles.
7.3.1. Design Patterns to Exploit Visual Reality
Animated movies are very useful tools because they make it easy to offer fictional worlds and
characters. With animation, we can offer empathetic fictional creatures and marvelous futuristic
worlds that are attractive to the viewer. It is easy to embed ideological messages that represent
human dreams and expectations into animated stories. In addition, the typical Japanese
animated stories are full of positive thinking, so the stories can be enjoyable while increasing
our self-efficacy and helping us to overcome difficult problems.
Currently, typical product promotions use empathetic characters that appear in popular animated
stories as tools to increase the attractiveness. For example, Pokémon characters are widely used
to promote foods for kids, such as a retort-packed curry food and bread. This animated movie is
very popular with most Japanese children, so a promotion broadcast within the animated
television movie is effective way to make these products appealing to these children. Although
the promotion may increase the buying impulse of children, it does not convince them that the
products are attractive. Thus, the products will be forgotten when they become adults.
In this section, we present four design patterns for promoting commercial products by using
fictional stories. The design patterns were extracted from discussions in the first focus group,
while watching several animated movies for product promotions.
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I-I: Offer vivid visual impact or surprise attracts us to the products.
Pepsi NEX uses Cyborg 009 for their product promotion81, and Tiger & Bunny82 uses several
Japanese company logos, such as Softbank83 and Bandai84 to promote their company brands. In
the Pepsi NEX promotion, the cyborg heroes move very quickly, which becomes a metaphor for
the Pepsi NEX’s sharp taste. Additionally, a pretty heroine creates an empathetic feeling for the
products. In the animated story of Tiger & Bunny, justice and heroics are commercialized
commodities. Some people choose to become costumed superheroes, and each is sponsored by
an actual major company, which is featured as an advertisement on the heroes’ uniforms. These
superheroes are perceived as “cool” and become metaphors implying that the companies are
also “cool”. These vivid expressions of an unusual daily life surprise people, which generate
strong and memorable impressions of the target products.
I-II: Offer a non-fiction story that makes us believe the promotion.
TAISEI Corporation85 promotes its brand image using an animated movie86. In the movie, a
woman is working on the construction of the Bosporus tunnel. The non-fiction story explains
that her work contributes to an amazing construction that will appear in the world map. The
movie demonstrates that the company has achieved this amazing work, so the viewer for the
movie can own the positive feelings about the company through the amazingly realistic scenes of
the tunnel. The promotion is very useful because most of us do not know that the TAISEI
Corporation has built these amazing constructions all over the world.
I-III: Offer a reality that makes us believe the fictional story in the promotion.
DOCOMO’s promotion, Xi AVANT87, shows a vision of the future mobile phone; this promotional
movie uses several realistic landscape scenes of present-day Barcelona. The reality of the
landscape scene offers a feeling that the vision in the fictional story will be realized in the near
future real world. Besides, The Tokyo Disney Resort’s promotion88 reminds each person of a
real memory from when she previously visited the Tokyo Disney Resort. So the story shows that
she will enjoy visiting Tokyo Disney Resort even when she becomes old. Therefore, we believe
that the happy memories from the Tokyo Disney Resort will be inherited by our children.
81
http://009.ph9.jp/pepsi-nex/
82
http://tigerbunny.wikia.com/wiki/Tiger_%26_Bunny_Wiki
83
http://mb.softbank.jp/en/
84
http://www.bandai.co.jp/e/
85
http://www.taisei.co.jp/english/
86
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKoCl-3E0Vw
87
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP5nAkG5lME
88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clFq7xwxV-Q
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I-IV: Offer empathy that attracts us to the products in the promotion.
It is typical to use animated characters to create empathy in promotion videos. As described
previously, Pokémon characters are used to promote various commercial products for kids.
Additionally, the Japan Racing Association uses characters and giant humanoids in Evangelion,
which is a very popular animated movie that is liked by many young Japanese adults89. The
purpose of the promotion is to promote horse racing to young adults.
Animated stories are preferred across generations in Japan, but each animation covers only a
specific target generation. Thus, an animation that is of interest to a specific generation can be
used to appeal to a different generation who may not have a strong interest in the target products.
The first focus group also analyzed four promotional movies that use the original animated
stories. The movies are both successful and unsuccessful at promoting products and company
brands. We consider how the movies fit the design patterns explained in this subsection.
The first is the promotion movie for Meiji fruits gummi candy. The story is named Megumi and
Taiyo Tweet Love Story90. In the story, a heroine Megumi eats a grape gummi candy when
something needs to be considered deeply. The scene fits to design pattern I-I. When using a
fictional story, it is not easy how the audiences feel the reality on the story in accordance with
design pattern I-II. Tweet Love Story uses a social media, Twitter, to make us feel the reality of
the story. The audience can talk with the story’s hero Taiyo via Twitter. Taiyo gives us answers
when we gave him some advices on how to get closer to Megumi. Megumi and Taiyo also talk
with each other on Twitter so everyone can know their conversation. The audiences’ advices
have strong impacts on the conversation between Megumi and Taiyo. This means that the story
changes its ending according to our advices to Taiyo and the fact feels us that the story is
realistic in our world.
Taiyo is working at a vineyard, and there are some scenes showing that grapes are healthy and
delicious. This gives enough information showing the product’s excellence in accordance with
design pattern I-III. Finally, the story chooses a character designer whose characters are recently
very popular in many media. Thus, the audience easily feels the empathy on the characters even
though the story and its characters are original. Then, design pattern I-IV is satisfied.
The second is a promotional movie named Mercedes-Benz Next A-Class91, which promotes
Mercedes-Benz’s new A-Class cars. In the story, the promoted car is depicted in a near-future
world. The speed of the car is nicely shown in the movie, fitting with design pattern I-I.
Additionally, the movie shows that the car offers very high performance, which fits design
pattern I-II. In the animated movie, the presentation of the car is very realistic. Additionally, the
story is about finding a legendary ramen noodle shop. Ramen is a Japanese noodle dish, which is
of Chinese origin. Finding a nice ramen noodle shop is a very popular activity for young
89
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toEcz4inet8
90
http://www.meiji.co.jp/sweets/candy_gum/fruits_gummi/part1/
91
http://next-a-class.com/
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Japanese adults. Thus, the story is particularly realistic for the young adults who are the target
users for the A-Class cars, which fits design pattern I-III. Finally, the movie adopts a character
from Evangelion92, and most young males know and like Evangelion. Evangelion is one of the
most popular animations in Japan, and its characters are well known. The people who like
Evangelion’s characters also like the characters in Next A-Class, which fits design pattern I-IV.
The third promotional movie is for Subaru93, which is a Japanese automobile company. This
promotional movie is named Wish Upon the Pleiades94. This promotion is very interesting
because there are very few connections to Subaru in the movie. The name of the main heroine is
Subaru, but the movie does not show any cars in the story. However, the characters in the story
and the story itself are vividly attractive to many Japanese traditional animation fans. The story
is based on a magic girls’ story, and many scenes in the movie are very typical of a magic girls’
animated movie. Thus, the movie creates empathy with many animation fans, and the characters
in the movie have become very famous in the avid animation communities.
The movie makes the name Subaru famous, although the company name may not be popular
among young adults. The company has also opened several public festival events using the
characters. Many young adults who are interested in the characters visit the events and learn
more about the company. The original story follows only design pattern I-I and I-IV, but design
pattern I-II and I-III, which are not satisfied in the story, are compensated by the reality offered
in real world attractions in festival events. This strategy shows a possibility for using transmedia
storytelling for effective promotions in the future.
The fourth movie is Toyota’s Peace Eco Smile95, which promotes its brand using an original
animated story. In the movie, a young male person who comes from outer space tries to learn
about products and rules in our world. In particular, the story uses a love story to explain that
the technologies developed by Toyota are very eco-friendly. However, the characters in the story
are not empathetic enough because the characters are very new to most people and the story is
not long enough to allow viewers to develop empathy for the characters. The story does not give
us enough information to understand that Toyota’s technologies are superior. In addition, the
background scenes are not realistic enough, although there are a few impressive visual
expressions as metaphors showing Toyota’s excellence. Thus, the promotion does not fit the
proposed design patterns and has not been successfully accepted by most viewers.
The above design patterns indicate that a sense of reality of real products is increased even when
they appear in fictional scenes. The design patterns are essential to make fictional scenes more
realistic.
92
http://www.evangelion.co.jp/
93
http://www.subaru-global.com/
94
http://sbr-gx.jp/
95
http://www.toytoyota.com/pes/
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7.3.2. Design Patterns to Exploit Ideological Messages in Fictional Stories
Virtual characters are widely used in our daily life. For example, famous Disney characters such
as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck provoke empathetic feelings easily, anytime and anywhere.
In addition, Pokémon and Hello Kitty96 are now found all over the world (Allison, 2006). In
animation and games, each virtual character has its own personality and story, which can be
used as a medium to convey special information and messages. If people are familiar with the
fictional story behind an animation or a game, then the story’s characters will easily recall the
story’s leitmotif without requiring much additional information beyond action or interaction
among the characters.
In contemporary Japanese society, several posters for public service announcements have
incorporated virtual characters from recent popular animation stories. For example, K-ON! has
been used for promoting a national survey in Japan97. In the story of K-ON!, high school girls try
to realize their dreams with cooperative efforts among them. This becomes a persuasive
message conveying the idea that everyone’s participation is important for the national survey.
Also, NFGD (The National Federation of all Japan Guide Dog Training Institutions)98, which
promotes guide-dog training, has created two posters using popular characters from Puella Magi
Madoka Magica99. The girl in one of the posters is rebellious, but very considerate of her friends.
The girl used in the other poster is very close to her friend, and thinks and cares about her friend
even when they are far apart. Many young girls admire these two characters. Thus, the posters
contain the implicit, strong, and persuasive message that a person can imitate these magic girls
by becoming a puppy walker. This example shows the effectiveness of using virtual characters
with established background stories to attract people. Moreover, the example provides good
evidence that virtual characters can be used to convey ideological messages in a story that might
play a significant role in changing attitudes. In Japan, most young people have enjoyed
animation and game stories for a long time, and they are very familiar with popular animation
and game characters. We believe that this awareness is a good prerequisite for using virtual
characters to enhance emotional feelings and successfully convey ideological messages with the
goal of persuading people to change their behavior.
The second focus group discussed how two stories in well-known animation movies that were
not originally intended to promote products could be used for the purpose and debated how they
could be used to do so. The extracted design patterns show how stories’ ideological messages
can be used to alter the behavior of a person related to his/her willingness to buy a product.
Many Japanese animation stories use ideological messages about issues such as environmental
protection or world peace to increase dramatic tension. Additionally, because stories provide
numerous representations of the positivity in our future, they increase our self-efficacy with
96
http://www.sanrio.co.jp/english/
97
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdAkKZKEfGU
98
http://www.gd-rengokai.jp/
99
http://www.nkoku.jp/pos
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respect to accepting and understanding their messages. This aspect of the use of stories is very
important because it usually takes a very long time for us to understand the importance of a
message and to arrive at the belief that a story’s message must come true. If we know these
stories well already, the scenes or characters in the movies become metaphors for the story’s
messages and remind us of their importance without having to take the time to teach.
If an actual, serious social problem such as sustainability can play a primary role in a fictional
story, then design patterns are useful for encouraging people to critically think about the
problem in the real world. The self-efficacy of a person, who plays a role in the story to
overcome the problem in the real world and to have a strong positive feeling about embarking
on a mission to attack that problem, also grows. Findings in the field of positive psychology
have offered scientific evidence that positivity increases success in life (Fredrickson, 2009).
The first movie was Celebi; A Timeless Encounter100. The ideological message in the story was
that we should not selfishly violate forests and lakes. Celebi is one of the Pokémon characters;
he is a god who protects a forest. A selfish person caught Celebi and used the character’s power
to destroy a forest and lake. Finally, Satoshi101, who is a brave Pokémon trainer, reminded Celebi
that he was their friend and that they had had joyful times together with the blessing of the
forest and lake. In the end, the forest and lake were finally recovered. The story showed that
protecting forests and lakes is essential to maintaining our ecological system.
After watching the movie, the second focus group discussed what types of products could be
promoted using characters or scenes from the movie. Some of the participants believed that
cleaning products would be appropriate for such a promotion, because the recovery of a forest
and lake could be a metaphor for making something clean. The focus group also discussed
whether the movie could be used to promote eco-friendly products such as low-power
televisions. However, most of the focus group participants said that it would be difficult to find
a metaphor in the movie that could promote eco-friendly products.
From the discussions, we gained the insight that one key issue is whether a movie provides a
good metaphor for a target product. We usually remember the characters in a movie easily, as
discussed in the focus group. In animated movies in particular, the main characters usually have
very clear characteristics with strong appeal, and thus, they become good metaphors.
The second movie was Re: Cyborg 009102. The ideological message of this story was that a
miracle that solves difficult social problems would occur if we strongly wish for peace every
day. Because of evil life in our minds, each person has the ability to start a chain of destruction.
However, if we wish to stop the chain, a miracle will change our world and solve difficult social
problems.
100
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_4Ever
101
His name is Ash Ketchum in English.
102
http://009.re-cyb.org/
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The second focus group discussed whether fair trade products are appropriate for promotion
using the scenes of Re: Cyborg 009, because justice is a key ideological message in the movie.
Fair trade emphasizes social justice over profits and is about better prices, decent working
conditions, local sustainability, and fair trade terms for farmers and workers in the developing
world. Fair trade may close the large economic gap between developed and undeveloped
countries. Of course, because fair trade was not well-known by all of the participants in the
focus group, we needed to explain it during our discussions. In addition, the scenes in the movie
were not direct metaphors for fair trade products. The participants in the focus group needed to
think deeply about how fair trade was related to the movie’s ideological message.
From our analysis of the second focus group’s discussions, we extracted the following design
patterns for incorporating ideological messages so that people will believe that those messages
are also essential in the real world.
II-I: Express the story’s ideological message clearly.
The most important issue is that people need to easily understand the story’s ideological
messages without need for additional explanation presented in other media such as books. In
addition, a vivid or exaggerated presentation of the ideological message is essential to ensure
that people retain a deep memory of that message.
II-II: Make the participant play a role in the story.
A viewer should be involved in the story to increase his/her sense of the story’s reality. In the
above examples, because a participant merely watches a movie, it is hard for him/her to have a
strong feeling that story is a part of his/her real world. Therefore, interaction with the story
should be explicitly incorporated into virtual objects.
II-III: The person’s behavior should be consistent with the story’s ideological goal.
When a person plays a role in a story, he/she behaves according to the characteristics of that
role. His/her behavior should be consistent with the goal of the story’s ideological messages. In
the above examples, target products did not directly appear in the stories. Therefore, a person
needs to create his/her own story in which he/she uses the target products; the actions that take
place in his/her story must be consistent with the goals of the fictional stories.
II-IV: Offer a metaphor to remind the viewer of the story’s ideological message.
A good cue is necessary to remind a person of the story. As described in this chapter, in many
advertisements, a character from the story becomes a cue to remind people of the story, and that
character also becomes a metaphor to remind people of the story’s ideological message. In
addition, empathetic products may be used as a metaphor. In other words, the story should offer
impressive characters or products that become metaphors to remind people of its ideological
message.
The ideological message typically contains some educational aspects. When applying design
pattern II-I, it is essential not to lose the entertainment even if the ideological messages are
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clearly incorporated. Design pattern II-II indicates that the agency and immersion properties
offered by virtual forms are essential to maintain a feeling of reality. Additionally, design
pattern II-III is important because inconsistency between a person’s behavior and the story’s
goal may cause a misunderstanding of the message. Similarly, when using a character as a
metaphor, design pattern II-IV requires care. If the character’s role is not consistent with the
story’s ideological message, it may cause a misunderstanding of that message, too.
7.3.3. Design Patterns to Compose Multiple Fictional Stories
In the near future, it will be essential to mix multiple stories when integrating a fictional story
into the real world; it is unlikely that the use of just one story will attract diverse people,
because everybody has a different personality (Sakamoto, et al., 2013). In particular, each
person has his/her own favorite story and likes to play a role in that story according to his/her
personality and past experiences. However, even though each person might have a different
personality, everybody still must think deeply about serious social problems in the real world.
Therefore, it will be important to mix together multiple stories that diverse audiences enjoy.
There are currently many cases of mixing multiple, existing stories. Avengers103, an American
superhero movie that came out in 2012, is an example of a story that consists of multiple stories
mixed together. In Japan, some movies for children contain stories that their parents will like, so
that the parents will both enjoy the movie and be encouraged to take their children to see it104.
Once a digital game player begins to love the particular content in an animation or a game,
his/her feelings about other activities in real life in various situations are affected. For example,
if a player likes a kind of game, he/she may feel a sense of closeness to a service that includes
some content related to that game. However, to attract people to a particular type of media, it is
not enough to simply introduce a character from a story that originated with a different type of
media. For example, a video game named E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial105, which was inspired by
the popular American science-fiction movie E.T., is one example of such a failure. The goal of
the game is to find parts of a communication device to contact E.T.’s companions in the mother
star, and then to put them together, thereby enabling E.T. to return to the mother star to find the
parts. In this game, E.T. falls into many pits. One player of the game said “I’ve seen the movie,
and I don’t remember E.T. falling into one pit, much less 100!106” This comment shows that
there is no consistency between the original movie and the subsequent game. Furthermore, this
lack of consistency significantly decreases the feeling of the game’s reality. When a story is
reused in a new form of media, the story in the new media must be consistent with the original
story so that the reality of the original media is maintained.
103
http://marvel.com/avengers_movie/
104
e.g. Kamen Rider OOO movies wonderful shogun and 21 core medals: http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/ooo-gokai/
105
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_%28video_game%29
106
http://videogamecritic.net/2600de.htm
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In the third focus group, we discussed design patterns that mix existing stories by analyzing a
popular game named Super Smash Brothers107, which includes characters and scenes from other
popular games. The Super Smash Brothers series, published by Nintendo, is a battle-based
action game in which many players can join the game simultaneously. Many famous Nintendo
characters such as Mario from Super Mario Brothers and Pikachu from Pokémon, appear in the
game, and a player can choose his/her favorite character and control it to participate in the battle.
Although each character has a different background story, it is natural that they battle with each
other on the same stage in the Super Smash Brothers world. The game offers players new,
exciting experiences in the Super Smash Brothers world. Additionally, the game provides
players with an increased opportunity to learn about other game titles. In fact, a significantly
large number of players have developed an interest in the other game titles mixed into Super
Smash Brothers, with which they were previously unfamiliar.
The analysis of the game that emerged from the discussions in the third focus group led us to
extract the following design patterns for realizing a natural cross-story game.
III-I: Retain characters’ traits from the original stories.
In Super Smash Brothers, the existing characteristics of each character are extremely clear and
it is easy for players to perceive them. These characteristics are not only visual; the motion and
effect of each character’s waza 108 should be the same as in the original games. If each
character’s presence becomes unfamiliar because multiple characters have been mixed together,
the game loses its attractiveness to existing fans as a result of having mixed multiple stories.
III-II: Use background scenes from the original stories.
Any worlds used in a game that mixes multiple stories should be the same as in each original
story. Some games use battle stages, including gimmicks or items, which can easily remind
players of the original games. For example, when a person who has played Pokémon plays
Super Smash Brothers, the stage related to Pokémon reminds him/her of some scenes from the
Pokémon story. This familiarity increases the player’s nostalgia, which leads him/her to feel the
value of playing a game that includes the Pokémon story. The background scene of each stage
can work as a metaphor to strongly engage the player.
III-III: Keep the characters’ goals from their original stories.
In a game, each character has his/her own goal that must also achieved by its player. When
multiple stories originating from existing games are mixed together, the goal of a character in
the new, mixed story should be consistent with his/her goal in the story of the original game.
The main theme of Super Smash Brothers is a battle among well-known, attractive characters.
Thus, all games mixed into the Super Smash Brothers story contain, to a greater or lesser
107
http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/index.html
108
Waza are skills and moves unique to a certain fighter or fighting style.
144 |
degree, competitive factors. For example, Mario battles against an opponent during his
adventure, and Pikachu uses thunder power to help a partner against his opponent. Winning the
battle is one of the important goals in these games. Thus, it is easy to maintain the consistency
of a character’s goal in both Super Smash Brothers and the characters’ original stories. The
consistency of each character’s goal in both a mixed story and an original story plays an
important role in maintaining the reality of the new game’s mixed story.
III-IV: Have a reason to gather the characters from the original stories.
There is an original story behind Super Smash Brothers. The story is that “each character’s
figure in a toy box starts to move by magic.” Usually, when many characters from different
backgrounds appear in the same world together, it does not feel natural to enthusiastic players
of the existing games. In particular, it is a little bit strange when characters appear in the world
of a different game. However, in the real world, it is not strange for many characters’ figures to
coexist in a toy box.
Every person has “my stories” that are the person’s own stories, where he/she plays an
important role. The design patterns can be used to compose “my stories” and original fictional
stories not to violate a sense of reality of the original fictional stories. A new fictional role is
defined for the person in “my stories”, and the person plays the role in the stories. The stories
are different from the original stories, but the basic atmosphere should be the same in these
stories. Also, “my stories” are closely related to the real world. Thus, the person feels that he/she
is involved in the fictional story if the design patterns described in the section are satisfied.
Our approach is also useful for analyzing a story that mixes multiple existing stories. For
example, McDonald’s109 sells Happy Meals110, which include toys featuring characters from
various stories. Currently, there is no interaction among the characters from different stories.
However, our approach offers a promising way to enhance the consumer experience by
consistently mixing stories with multiple characters.
7.4. Gamifying Haiku Contest with Proposed Design Patterns
The Life and Blood Donation Haiku Contest111 created public posters that featured Pokémon
characters. The ideological messages of the Pokémon story contain mutual help, friendship, a
fatal encounter, and irreplaceable life. The posters included certain keywords to present these
messages. Thus, contest applicants were reminded of the importance of those messages by their
memories of enjoying the Pokémon story. In this section, we discuss how the design patterns
described in the previous section can enhance event promotion by using virtual forms.
109
http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/home.html
110
http://www.happymeal.com/en_US/index.html
111
https://www.ken-haiku2012.jp/
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First, we consider whether to replace a static poster with an interactive poster incorporating
virtual forms that dynamically express the Pokémon story. The interactive poster offers a
game-like interaction with a person to increase the persuasiveness in a manner similar to that
employed by advergames (Smith & Just, 2009). For example, people feel a sense of reality if
movies offer some cues that satisfy design patterns.
We consider how to use these design patterns presented in Section 7.3.1. Pursuant to design
pattern I-I, some expressions in virtual forms should offer strong impressions to the person who
plays a role in the story. For example, the person’s Pokémon could grow and use special skills
that show special effects. To satisfy design pattern I-II, a landscape that is familiar to the person
could be presented. For example, we already have considered both singing Haiku, which is a
Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, and helping blood donation, and the landscape that
presented these activities has a strong connection to the real world. Thus, design pattern I-III is
satisfied. Most Pokémon are empathetic virtual characters, so the Pokémon example also
satisfies design pattern I-IV.
Next, we consider the design patterns described in Section 7.3.2. Because Pokémon story
contains clear ideological messages as described above, the design pattern II-I is already
satisfied. One of the most important attractive features of virtual forms is enable us to interact
with people. To satisfy design pattern II-II, the interactive poster offers a type of a game that
explains both Haiku and the importance of blood donation. In the game, a Pokémon trainer who
is also a Haiku poet teaches a person, who also interacts with the poster, to write a good Haiku.
That person also plays the role of a Pokémon trainer, and they meet another Pokémon trainer
who helps with blood donation activities. Formulating their common goal can satisfy the design
pattern II-III. The goal of the story is mutual help and friendship. The person helps the Pokémon
trainers of a Haiku poet and a blood donation volunteer to achieve their dreams. The Pokémon
story is a typical hero’s journey tale (Campbell, 2008), and Pokémon trainers help each other to
mature and to become self-actualized. By helping the other trainers to achieve mental growth,
the person also becomes interested in both singing Haiku and blood donation. Finally, to satisfy
design pattern II-IV, the trainers’ Pokémon, or a typical landscape in the story, can be presented
on the interactive poster as a metaphor to remind viewers of the message of Pokémon story by
expressing it in virtual forms.
We need to consider the design patterns described in Section 7.3.3 because each person prefers a
different story. Satisfying design patterns III-I and III-II is easy because characters’ behavior or
landscape scenes in one story can be easily maintained in the other story. For satisfying design
patterns III-III, the ideological messages of multiple stories should be consistent. According to
design pattern III-IV, it is necessary to have one meta-story to evidence that multiple stories can
coexist. In Japan, many people have gamified animation, comic and game cultures. As shown in
(Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014), it is a type of a game to create a meta-story for people who
participate in social network cultures such as NicoNico Douga and Pixiv112. Therefore, one
112
http://www.pixiv.net/
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promising approach is to rely on geek and creative communities to create a meta-story, because
these communities have found that a consistent world in which multiple stories coexist results in
the emergent evolution of content culture by creating a new story through the reinterpretation of
existing stories. This phenomenon is typical in Japanese culture among animation and game
fans, which supports advanced content culture.
We developed a simple paper prototype to realize the above example, and conducted a simple
Wizard of Oz (Kelley, 1984) based on the prototype using five participants who were Japanese
university students. Some of the participants said, “It was an interesting approach to advertise a
Haiku contest. The interactivity offered by the interactive poster gave me a deeper impression
than the traditional poster”, “I like Pokémon, so it was great fun for me to play the interactive
poster, and I could understand the importance of blood donation” and “Virtual forms that are
pervasively embodied in our daily environments offer an immersive experience of feeling that
the fictional story was more realistic. Additionally, the interactivity increased the sense of reality
by playing a role in the story.” In addition, one of the participants said, “I like to create a new
story from existing stories. The story needs to define an ideal situation for me by considering a
new interpretation of existing stories. The stories’ meta-story offered a consistent world that was
comfortable for me, and it was fun for me to create the meta-story on a social network.” In the
next step, we develop a more complete working prototype and a larger user study to validate our
approach.
7.5. Conclusion and Future Directions
The discussions described in this chapter present several important design patterns to keep
reality when incorporating gameful digital rhetoric with fictionality into the real world. There are
two promising future directions to enhance our approach. The first direction is to use transmedia
storytelling to define the meaning of a visual object expressed in a virtual form by using
information that has been expressed in other media. The second direction is to offer stronger
persuasiveness to satisfy the design patterns described in the chapter. A concept named
procedural rhetoric is a promising way to discuss the issue in a more formal way.
Using fictional stories in transmedia storytelling is a promising approach for enhancing virtual
forms, as we described in Section 6.6. Transmedia storytelling allows a fictional story to be
harmonized with the real world by fragmenting the story into multiple media presented at
various locations in everyday life. In this case, virtual forms are installed everywhere to embed
the fictional stories in the real word. The virtual form becomes a layer to enhance the real world
through transmedia storytelling. The story embedded in the virtual forms virtualizes our real
world and offers additional enrichment. This approach offers the potential to enhance daily life
experiences, and the stories that are immersively embedded in our world encourage us to solve
various social problems anytime and anywhere. However, to successfully integrate fictional
stories, people will need to feel that those stories are realistic. Past studies show that achieving
reality is an important design criterion for successful integration when incorporating virtuality
and fictionality in the real world (Sakamoto, et al., 2014) (Sakamoto & Nakajima, 2014). If a
person does not feel the reality of the fictional stories, he/she will feel that any additional values
| 147
offered by virtual forms do not exist in the real world. The direction is also useful to discuss
how fictional stories can be translated for use in the context of different cultures (Sakamoto &
Nakajima, 2014).
We strongly believe that complete photorealistic and tangible immersion makes embodied
fictionality seem realistic. As described in Section 7.3, we have presented several analyses
showing that complete photorealistic and tangible immersion is not always necessary for
simulating reality when fictionality is embodied in the real world. However, there are some
other examples to show that it is easy to lose touch with reality in a fictional story. Even the
advanced technologies of the present do not allow us to embody fictionality into the real world
with complete photorealistic and tangible immersion. Therefore, it is important to research how
collecting and increasing design patterns make people feel the reality of embodied fictionality.
Currently, one of the leading theories for how the computational visual form persuades people is
Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007). Bogost has explained that among
persuasion strategies embodied in media such as movies and books, procedural rhetoric offers
the most powerful persuasion effects. Virtual forms are an underlying infrastructure to offer
procedural rhetoric. Digital games usually offer fictional worlds that are separate from the real
world, but virtual forms are immersively embodied in the real world, and fictional experiences
are tightly integrated into our daily, typical experiences. This means that virtual forms, which
are incorporated various kinds of gameful digital rhetoric, become effective tools to influence
people’s behavior to alter their lifestyle in a way that is more meaningful and valuable. For
designing effective gameful digital rhetoric and virtual forms, it is important to discuss how the
design patterns extracted in this chapter should be integrated into future information services.
148 |
| 149
Chapter 8 Conclusion and Future Directions
8.1. Conclusion
8.1.1. Dissertation Summary
The objective of our research is to navigate people towards human well-being by enhancing the
meaning of the real world with information technologies. Especially, we use digital games’
power to make the navigation process meaningful and valuable because digital games have the
power to provide all of the factors to realize human well-being. For future computer science area,
we need new methodology for designing and developing meaningful and valuable information
services with maintaining human well-being.
In this dissertation, we defined gameful digital rhetoric, which includes rhetoric and value as a
design abstraction, which considers games’ power in terms of both the rhetorical and emotional
aspects. Gameful digital rhetoric persuades and inspires human behavior and influences emotion
through digitally mediated virtual objects incorporated into the real world using information
technologies. Gameful digital rhetoric contributes to complements the existing game-related
researches to navigate people towards human well-being by enhancing the meaning of the real
world.
Through the overall dissertation, we showed the usefulness of gameful digital rhetoric through
multidisciplinary literature surveys, our experiences in designing and developing information
services, and their experiments and analyses dealing with gameful digital rhetoric. In Chapter 2,
we proposed two models, GamiRhetoric Model and GamiValue Model. The GamiRhetoric Model
defines six frames of rhetoric to examine how to enhance meaning of virtual object and the
GamiValue Model defines eight frames to attach value to virtual objects. Additionally, we
enhanced these models to apply to navigate people in the real world and created the
Rhetoric-based Design Framework and the Value-based Design Framework. We described that
each rhetoric and value matches with various theories in the area of psychology, sociology,
cultural studies and so on. We introduced case studies named Micro-Crowdfunding and
Augmented TCG in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and we enhanced these case studies with gameful
digital rhetoric. We investigated how to improve navigating collective human behavior in
150 |
Microo-Crowdfund
ding system by applyingg the Rhetoriic-based Dessign Framew
work in Chap
pter 5.
We allso focused on
o enhancing
g the Augmennted TCG sy
ystem to influ
uence humann behavior th
hrough
virtuaality and ficttionality by using
u
the Vallue-based Deesign Framew
work. Chapteer 7 presentss some
desiggn patterns to keep reality when we incorpo
orate gamefful digital rrhetoric inclluding
fictioonality into th
he real world
d. As a wholle, our researrch provided
d useful guideelines to deaal with
incorrporating sem
miotic factors with infoormation tecchnologies as
a a form oof gameful digital
d
rhetooric.
8.1.2.
8
Com
mbining Rheetoric and Value to Navigate Hu
uman Behav
vior
In thiis section, we
w summarizee the relationnship betweeen the Rhetoric-based Deesign Frameework,
the Value-based Design Framework
Fr
aand human behavior. The Rhetorric-based Design
D
Fram
mework is co
onsists of fiv
ve types of rhhetoric: curious rhetoric, narrative rrhetoric, colllective
rhetooric, social rhetoric and
d economic rhetoric, ass we mentiioned in Seection 5.5.2. The
Valuee-based Design Framew
work containns six types of values: empathetic
e
vvalue, inform
mative
valuee, aesthetic value,
v
econom
mic value, peersuasive vallue and ideollogical valuee, as we menttioned
in Section 6.4.
Figure 8.1
Gameeful Digital R
Rhetoric and
d Human Behavior Navvigation
Figurre 8.1 showss a guideline for navigatinng human beehavior with
h gameful diggital rhetoricc. The
naviggation proceess to change human behavior caan be divid
ded in somee stages such as
transttheoretical model
m
presen
nted by Proochaska and Velicer (Pro
ochaska & V
Velicer, 1997). In
(Sakaamoto & Nak
kajima, 2014
4), navigatioon stages are divided into
o four stages : notice, thin
nk, act
and m
maintain. It is
i comparativ
vely easy forr people to notice
n
what th
he desirable behavior forr them
is, buut it is diffiicult to main
ntain desirabble behaviorr. When people join som
me activitiess, they
graduually change their behaviior.
The rrhetoric in th
he Rhetoric-b
based Desiggn Frameworrk works as a basic bridgge between notice
n
and m
maintain. The rhetoric beecomes a siggn for peoplee to notice so
omething andd tell the meeaning
| 151
of desirable behavior sometimes explicitly and at other time implicitly, which lead people to
think about the meaning. For example, people can think about what the required activities to
achieve their goal are, how to obtain desirable result from their activities, and why they have to
change their current behavior by understanding the meaning of the rhetoric. The rhetoric
working as a basic mechanism tells the meaning extrinsically, then, it becomes extrinsic
motivation. If people can find out the meaning of the targeted behavior, they act based on the
navigation process provided by the rhetoric. In addition, if the rhetoric has some dynamics to
indicate the repeating of their activities or keeping their behavior, the navigation process lead
people to maintain these activities or behavior.
The rhetoric is useful for general navigation because rhetoric can tell people the meaning of the
targeted behavior; however, as we stated in Chapter 1, “understanding the meaning” of the
targeted behavior is not always equal to “valuable”. Adding values is useful to make the
extrinsic motivation internalized and it also increases human intrinsic motivation to change
human behavior. In (Ryan & Deci, 2000), Ryan and Deci introduce different types of human
motivation and provide taxonomy of them. They state that internalized extrinsic motivation is
the autonomous form of extrinsic motivation, which leads people to become self-determined.
Besides, they argue that intrinsic motivation is referred as the doing of an activity for its
inherent satisfactions.
As described in Section 6.4.3, we divided the six values in the Value-based Design Framework
into two groups. The four values, empathetic value, informative value, aesthetic value, economic
value especially contribute to provide internalized extrinsic motivation. If people know that they
get these positive values by acting with the targeted behavior, they start to want to act in order to
feel these values. We explained that the persuasive value and the ideological value are placed at
higher level in the Value-based Design Framework and these two values are useful to encourage
people to change their behavior at the later stages of the navigation process of their behavior
change. For the people who can feel the persuasive value and the ideological value, the activity
itself is meaningful and valuable. These values increase people’s feelings of autonomy and
competence, which increase people’s motivation to change their behavior. Then, they do the
activities based on their intrinsic motivation; it also helps them to maintain their desirable
behavior. These values increase people’s happiness, excitement, satisfaction and comfort, and
stimulate their positive emotion through pleasure, personal significance and virtue (Desmet &
Pohlmeyer, 2013).
The values can be added to respective rhetoric to influence human attitude and behavior. It
means that we can design a variety of gameful digital rhetoric. Diverse people take part in
collective action and each person whose personality and cultural background are different may
have different frame to feel values. The same benefit may not motivate some other people
because of the differences of their preference. Therefore, it is desirable to offer a variety of
gameful digital rhetoric in one gamified services. If each rhetoric contains different values and
the multiple rhetoric are embedded in the real world, the respective gameful digital rhetoric
attract diverse people. It is important to encourage diverse people in the case of navigating
collective human behavior.
152 |
8.2. Future Directions
8.2.1. “From Rhetoric to Value” or “from Value to Rhetoric”
In this dissertation, we focused on gamified services which focus mainly on the rhetorical intent,
such as educating or inspiring users to do some targeted activities because we aim at navigating
human behavior in the real world. In addition to improve information services with a clear
intent, such as encouraging tooth brushing or exercises, we can use the rhetoric and the value to
design digital games for entertainment. Regarding the gamified services with a clear intent, it is
appropriate to focus on considering which rhetoric suits best the intent of the gamified service.
With the games for entertainment, it is useful to focus on a variety of values because it is
important to provide positive emotions in the case of entertainment. However, there are
similarities and differences between rhetoric-focused design and value-focused design.
Therefore, we need more improved design guidelines to enhance our frameworks.
8.2.2. Infrastructures for Harmonizing Real World and Virtual World
This dissertation provided a framework for navigating collective human behavior through
gameful digital rhetoric. In addition to the framework, we need some infrastructures to
incorporate gameful digital rhetoric seamlessly into the real world. For instance, an
infrastructure like improved Collectivist Crowdsourcing, which supports people to perform
micro-tasks to achieve their common goal as described in Chapter 5, contributes to navigate
collective human behavior through gameful digital rhetoric. Besides, an infrastructure
systematically incorporating virtuality and fictionality into the real world helps to blur the
boundary between the real world and the virtual world. Besides, it is useful to create specific
design patterns to develop infrastructures for harmonizing the real world and the virtual world.
We show some design patterns to keep reality when incorporating gameful digital rhetoric into
the real world in Chapter 7. Developing concrete software design patterns by improving our
design patterns provided in Chapter 7 also contributes to future information services.
8.3. Gamified Real: Enhance World with Gameful Digital Rhetoric
A digital game contains various rhetoric and values. We extracted these rhetoric and values as a
form of gameful digital rhetoric. There are also various rhetoric and values in the real world.
For example, the relationships among a lot of people countervail the social rhetoric, and the
circulation of real money is a kind of the economic rhetoric.
Information technologies have enhanced the real world. Regarding collective human behavior,
crowdsourcing exploits our social power and enhances our human abilities and possibilities by
adding new relationships between people who are located in different places. If we integrate the
real world and the virtual world more seamlessly by incorporating gameful digital rhetoric, we
can enhance the world more. By incorporating gameful digital rhetoric into the real world, we
can achieve meaningful and valuable navigation towards human well-being. Figure 8.2 shows
our future vision.
| 153
Figure
F
8.2
Vision of Gamified
G
Rea
al
Well--designed digital games include not only basic game elements but also a lot of aessthetic
factorrs such as fantastic
f
storry and magnnificent scen
ne. We argu
ue that thesee aesthetic factors
f
includding virtuality and fiction
nality are aut
uthentic gamees power. Th
he splendid ov
overall game world
with virtuality an
nd fictionalitty attracts a llot of peoplee. Our researrch focuses oon the gamees’ full
poweer and contrib
butes to applly them to thhe real world
d as a form of
o gameful diigital rhetoriic. We
believve that: by incorporating
i
g games’ fulll power into
o the real wo
orld, we can enjoy mean
ningful
and vvaluable “Ga
amified Real””.
154 |
| 155
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Publication List
Journal Papers
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Todorka Alexandrova: “Enhancing Values through
Virtuality for Intelligent Artifacts that Influence Human Attitude and Behavior,”
International Journal of Multimedia Tools and Applications, Sep. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Gamifying Intelligent Daily Environments through
Introducing Fictionality,” International Journal of Hybrid Information Technology,” Vol.7,
No.4, pp. 259-276, Jul. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Todorka Alexandrova, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Introducing Virtuality to
Enhance Game-related Physical Artifacts,” International Journal of Smart Home, Vol.8,
No.2, pp.137-152, Mar. 2014.
International Conferences (Peer Reviewed)
Full Paper
Mizuki Sakamoto and Tatsuo Nakajima: “A Community-based Crowdsourcing Service for
Achieving a Sustainable Society through Micro-Level Crowdfunding,” In Proc. of The
Internet, Policy & Politics Conferences 2014, Sep. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Hairihan Tong, Yefeng Liu, Tatsuo Nakajima, and Sayaka Akioka:
“Designing Incentives for Community-Based Mobile Crowdsourcing Service Architecture,”
In Proc. of 25th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, pp.
17-33, Sep. 2014. (Selected as a Special Issue)
Mizuki Sakamoto, Akihito Yoshii, Tatsuo Nakajima, Kohki Ikeuchi, Tomoaki Otsuka, Koh
Okada, Fumiko Ishizawa, Akihiro Kobayashi: “Human Interaction Issues in a
Digital-Physical Hybrid World,” In Proc. of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on
Cyber-Physical Systems, Networks, and Applications, Aug. 2014.
168 |
Mizuki Sakamoto and Tatsuo Nakajima: “The GamiMedia Model: Gamifying Content
Culture,” In Proc. of the 6th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Design, pp. 786-797,
Jun. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Gamifying Social Media to Encourage Social
Activities with Digital-Physical Hybrid Role-Playing,” In Proc. of the 6th International
Conference on Social Computing and Social Media, pp. 581-591, Jun. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “A Methodology for Gamifying Smart Cities:
Navigating Human Behavior and Attitude,” In Proc. of the 2nd International Conference on
Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, pp. 593-604, Jun. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “A Better Integration of Fictional Stories into the Real
World for Gamifying Daily Life,” In Proc. of 1st International Symposium on Simulation &
Serious Games 2014, pp. 148-153, May. 2014.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Micro-Crowdfunding: Achieving a Sustainable
Society through Economic and Social Incentives in Micro-Level Crowdfunding,” In Proc. of
the 12th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Article No. 29,
Dec. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Sayaka Akioka: “Designing Enhanced Daily Artifacts
based on the Analysis of Product Promotions using Fictional Animation Stories,” In Proc. of
the 2013 International Conference on Active Media Technology, pp.266-277, Oct. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Augmenting Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game as
Persuasive Transmedia Storytelling,” In Proc. of 15th International Conference on
Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 587-596, Jul. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Todorka Alexandrova, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Analyzing the Effects of
Virtualizing and Augmenting Trading Card Game based on the Player's Personality,” In Proc.
of the 6th International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, pp.
348-357, Feb. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Todorka Alexandrova, Tatsuo Nakajima: “Augmenting Remote Trading
Card Play with Virtual Characters used in Animation and Game Stories - Towards
Persuasive and Ambient Transmedia Storytelling -,” In Proc. of the 6th International
Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions, pp. 168-177, Feb. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Tetsuo Yamabe, Todorka Alexandrova: “Incorporating
Virtual forms into Traditional Things to Increase Their Values,” In Proc. of the 5th
International Conference on Human-Centric Computing, pp. 17-24, Sep. 2012.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Todorka Alexandrova: “Digital-Physical Hybrid
Design: Harmonizing the Real World and the Virtual World,” In Proc. of 7th International
Conference on the Design & Semantics of Form & Movement, pp. 211-222, Apr. 2012.
| 169
Connsynn Chye, Mizuki Sakamoto, and Tatsuo Nakajima: “An Exergame for Encouraging
Martial Arts,” In Proc. of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
Applications and Services, pp. 221-232, Jun. 2014.
Tatsuo Nakajima, Tetsuo Yamabe, Mizuki Sakamoto: “Proactive Ambient Social Media for
Supporting Human Decision Making,” In Proc. of the 8th international conference on
Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, pp.25-39, Sep. 2011.
Short Paper
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Yefeng Liu, Todorka Alexandrova: “Design and
Evaluation of Micro-Crowdfunding: Encouraging Sustainable Behavior in Micro-Level
Crowdfunding,” In Proc. of the 2013 International Conference on Academic MindTrek, 2013,
pp. 162-165, Oct. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Eiji Tokunaga, Todorka Alexandrova: “Augmenting
Trading Card Game with Empathetic Virtual Characters,” In Proc. of the 5th International
Conference on Human-Centric Computing, pp. 51-58, Sep. 2012.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Tetsuo Yamabe, and Todorka Alexandrova:
“Harmonizing Virtual forms into Traditional Artifacts to Increase Their Values,” In Proc. of
the 3rd International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence, pp. 207-211, Mar. 2012.
Tatsuo Nakajima, Tetsuo Yamabe, Todorka Alexandrova, Mizuki Sakamoto:
“Digital-Physical Hybrid Design: Enhancing Real Worlds with Augmented Reality,” IEEE
International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing and Applications, pp.1-6, Dec. 2011.
Poster Paper
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Sayaka Akioka: “Promoting Consumer Products with
Fictional Stories,” In Proc. of 15th International Conference on Human-Computer
Interaction, pp.719-723, Jul. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima: “An Analysis of Composing Multiple Fictional Stories
and Its Future Possibility,” In Proc. of 15th International Conference on Human-Computer
Interaction, pp. 555-559, Jul. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Yefeng Liu, Todorka Alexandrova: “Achieving
Sustainable Society through Micro-level Crowdfunding,” In Proc. of the ACM SIGCHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp.1443-1448, Apr. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima and Todorka Alexandrova: “Augmenting Trading Card
Game: Playing against Virtual Characters used in Fictional Stories,” In Proceedings of the
9th Advances in Computer Entertainment Conference, pp. 549-552, Nov. 2012.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, and Todorka Alexandrova: “Value-Based Design for
Gamifying Daily Activities,” 11th International Conference on Entertainment Computing,
ICEC 2012, pp. 421-424, Sep. 2012.
170 |
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Eiji Tokunaga, Hiroaki Kimura, Todorka Alexandrova:
“Augmenting Remote Trading Card Play,” In Proc. of ACM International Conference on
Designing Interactive Systems, Jun. 2012.
Koh Okada, Fumiko Ishizawa, Akihiro Kobayashi, Akihito Yoshii, Mizuki Sakamoto and
Tatsuo Nakajima: “Virtual Drum: Ubiquitous and Playful Drum Playing,” In Proc. of IEEE
3rd Global Conference on Consumer Electronics, Oct. 2014.
Kohki Ikeuchi, Tomoaki Otsuka, Akihito Yoshii, Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima:
“KinecDrone: Enhancing Somatic Sensation to Fly in the Sky with Kinect and AR.Drone,”
In Proc. of the 5th Augmented Human International Conference, Article No. 53, Mar. 2014.
Domestic Conferences (Peer Reviewed)
Gamified Real
2014
pp. 63-66
2014
8
Hairihan Tong
2014
2013
2012
2015
2013
2013
3
8
3
2014
Awards
Mizuki Sakamoto, Todorka Alexandrova, Tatsuo Nakajima: Best Paper Award,
“Augmenting Remote Trading Card Play with Virtual Characters used in Animation and
Game Stories,” The 6th International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human
Interactions, Feb. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto, Todorka Alexandrova, Tatsuo Nakajima: Best Paper Award, “Analyzing
the Effects of Virtualizing and Augmenting Trading Card Game based on the Player's
Personality,” The 6th International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human
Interactions, Feb. 2013.
Mizuki Sakamoto: Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Asia Scholar's Award, Sep.
2012.
| 171
Mizuki Sakamoto, Tatsuo Nakajima, Tetsuo Yamabe, Todorka Alexandrova: Best Paper
Award, “Incorporating Virtual forms into Traditional Things to Increase Their Values,” The
5th International Conference on Human-Centric Computing, Sep. 2012.
“Gamified Real
”
2014 2014
8
“Micro-Crowdfunding: Achieving a Sustainable
Society through Economic and Social Incentives in Micro-Level Crowdfunding
”2014
3
Others
Commentary
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Vol. 55 No.9
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CPS
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pp.934 - 938, 2014
9
Lecture
“Gamified Real - Improving our Quality of Life with Game's Power ”
2014
75
2013
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3
Research Grant
DC2
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