Engineering motivation requirements in business information systems.

Abstract

Digital Motivation refers to the use of software-based solutions to change, boost or maintain people’s attitude and behaviour towards certain tasks, policies and regulations. Gamification, persuasive technology, and entertainment computing are example strands of such paradigm. Digital Motivation exhibits unique properties which necessitate reconsidering its design methods. This stems from the intense human factor which may make it destructive, pressuring, and a reason for negative work ethics. The emerging literature on the topic includes engineering approaches for Digital Motivation. However, their main focus is on specifying its operation, e.g., the design of rewards and levels. This thesis conducts a series of empirical studies and proposes a novel modelling framework which enables capturing Digital Motivation as an integral part of the organisational and social structure of a business. This modelling framework provides a tool which utilises the generated models to perform analysis that informs the design, introduction, and management of Digital Motivation. The modelling and analysis framework is evaluated via case studies involving novice software system analysts, expert software system analysts, and managers of a business information system. The results of the evaluation illustrate that the modelling language has a good capability to elicit and analyse motivation requirements of stakeholders of a business information system.