Gamification for Self-Tracking: From World of Warcraft to the Design of Personal Informatics Systems
summary
Four-year reflexive ethnography in World of Warcraft (2012–2016) with daily diaries, hundreds of chat interviews and 36 formal interviews finds that players turn numeric stats into meaningful, collectible items that evoke memories and action. Design prescriptions that proved plausible: embody personal data as data-as-objects with names and uses, provide a flexible plugin model offering quick views for novices and simulation tools for experts, and foster small mentorship guilds for knowledge transfer; trackers’ six-month dropout problem motivates these specific interventions.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction to gamification
- 1:52Limitations of gamification
- 3:19Research on World of Warcraft players
- 5:27Digital objects as meaningful data
- 8:49Self-experimentation in gameplay
- 11:18Communities of practice in gaming
- 13:12Key takeaways for personal informatics
- 14:19Design insights from video games
- 15:27Q&A session
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