Commercial Concept for Gamification-based Product in Discussion Forum

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Metropolia University of Applied Sciences Master of Engineering

Information Technology Master’s Thesis

11 November 2020

Tiia Mannermaa

Commercial Concept for Gamification-

based Product in Discussion Forum

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PREFACE

This thesis was carried out during the spring, summer, and autumn 2020, and the work was commissioned by A-lehdet Oy. The work was supervised by the Head of Master’s program in Information Technology Ville Jääskeläinen from Metropolia University of Ap- plied Sciences and by the Editor in Chief Päivi Lehtomurto from A-lehdet Oy. This topic was important to me because I got to be involved in designing and conceptualizing an interesting new feature that utilizes gamification on the Demi.fi online service.

Helsinki, 11 November 2020 Tiia Mannermaa

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Author Title

Number of Pages Date

Tiia Mannermaa

Commercial Concept for Gamification-based Product in Discus- sion Forum

50 pages

11 November 2020

Degree Master of Engineering

Degree Programme Information Technology

Instructors Päivi Lehtomurto, Editor in Chief, Demi

Ville Jääskeläinen, Principal Lecturer, Metropolia

Gamification is the application of game dynamics and mechanics to solve problems and engage users in non-game contexts. Furthermore, it can be defined as a set of activities and processes to engage and reward users by using or applying characteristics of game elements, such as points, levels, badges, ranks, virtual goods, or other motivational mechanics.

Gamification invokes people’s basic instinct to be attracted to fun, competitive or rewarding actions, similar to what we experience while playing games. The addictive elements of gamification can be utilized to engage and activate users in a variety of online environments, such as discussion forums.

The main objective of the thesis was to design a new engagement-driven commercial product for the Demi.fi web service since the profitability of display advertising – which is one of the main sources of revenue for the service – is declining and traditional native content advertising as a commercial product cannot reach the young audience. The goal was to find new digital Business to Business (B2B) monetization models for Demi.fi and combine the needs of an active online community with the needs of B2B clients to ensure commercial viability. In addition to the commercial perspective, the product is intended to serve journal- istic and community atmosphere-related needs. The editorial staff of Demi is interested in researching gamification as a journalist's tool as part of the #nuoretmyös-project. The requirements for the new feature were collected with various stakeholder interviews as well as with user surveys that included the users of Demi.fi. The research focused on the Finnish users of Demi.fi, where the target audience was generation Z, which refers to the generation born between 1995 and 2010.

The thesis work resulted in a commercial concept called Demi Spirit Challenge. It is a com- mercialized challenge, which can be offered and sold to a commercial partner and created for Demi.fi. The challenges consist of different tasks that logged in users can perform, and by completing the challenges users can achieve various rewards. The results of the thesis demonstrate that the opportunity to complete Demi Spirit Challenges on Demi.fi increased users' desire to use the service. The work was carried out during the spring, summer, and autumn 2020.

Keywords Gamification, engagement, generation Z, discussion forum

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Tekijä Otsikko Sivumäärä Aika

Tiia Mannermaa

Pelillistämiseen pohjautuvan tuotteen kaupallinen konsepti kes- kustelufoorumilla

50 sivua 11.11.2020

Tutkinto Insinööri (YAMK)

Tutkinto-ohjelma Tietotekniikka

Ohjaajat Päätoimittaja Päivi Lehtomurto Yliopettaja Ville Jääskeläinen

Pelillistämisessä hyödynnetään peliajattelua ja pelien dynamiikkaa ja mekaniikkaa ongel- mien ratkaisemiseen sekä käyttäjien sitouttamiseen ei-pelillisessä ympäristössä. Pelillistä- minen voidaan myös määritellä joukoksi erilaisia toimintoja ja prosesseja käyttäjien aktivoimiseksi ja palkitsemiseksi käyttämällä tai soveltamalla pelien elementtien ominaisuuksia, kuten pisteitä, tasoja, kunniamerkkejä tai muita virtuaalitavaroita. Pelillistäminen vetoaa ih- misen vaistoon olla kiinnostunut hauskasta, kilpailullisesta ja palkitsevasta toiminnasta, sa- malla tavalla mitä koemme pelejä pelatessa. Pelillistämisen koukuttavia elementtejä voidaan hyödyntää käyttäjien sitouttamiseksi ja aktivoimiseksi monissa erilaisissa verkkoympäris- töissä, kuten keskustelupalstoilla.

Työn tavoitteena oli konseptoida uusi sitouttamislähtöinen kaupallinen tuote Demi.fi verkkopalvelulle, koska palvelun displaymainontaan perustuva ansaintalogiikka, joka on palvelun pääasiallinen tulonlähde, on laskussa ja perinteiset natiiviartikkelit kaupallisena tuotteena eivät tavoita nuorta kohderyhmää. Tavoitteena oli löytää uusia digitaalisia B2B-ansaintamal- leja Demi.fi verkkopalvelulle ja yhdistää aktiivisen verkkoyhteisön ja B2B-asiakkaiden tar- peet niin, että se olisi liiketoiminnallisesti kannattavaa. Kaupallisen näkökulman lisäksi tuot- teella on tarkoitus palvella toimituksellisia tarpeita, kuten journalistisia tai yhteisön ilmapiiriin liittyviä. Demin toimitus on kiinnostunut tutkimaan pelillistämistä journalistin työkaluna osana

#nuoretmyös-hanketta. Uudelle ominaisuudelle asetetut vaatimukset kerättiin haastattelui- den muodossa sidosryhmien kanssa ja Demi.fi-sivuston käyttäjille tehdyissä käyttäjäky- selyissä. Tutkimus kohdistui Demi.fi-sivuston suomalaisiin käyttäjiin. Palvelun kohderyhmä on sukupolvi Z, joka viittaa vuosien 1995-2010 aikana syntyneeseen sukupolveen.

Työn tuloksena syntyi kaupallinen konsepti Demi Spirit Challenge, joka on kaupallistettava haaste, joka voidaan tarjota ja myydä kaupalliselle kumppanille ja joka voidaan luoda Demi.fi verkkopalveluun. Haasteet koostuvat erilaisista tehtävistä, joita käyttäjät voivat suorittaa ja suorittamalla koko haasteen käyttäjät voivat ansaita erilaisia palkintoja. Tutkimustyön tulok- set osoittivat, että mahdollisuus suorittaa Demi Spirit haasteita Demi.fi-sivustossa, lisäsi käyttäjien halukkuutta käyttää palvelua. Opinnäytetyö toteutettiin kevään, kesän ja syksyn 2020 aikana.

Avainsanat Pelillistäminen, sitouttaminen, Z-sukupolvi, keskustelufoorumi

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Contents

Preface Abstract Tiivistelmä

List of Abbreviations

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Generation Z 2

1.2 A-lehdet Oy and Demi Brand 2

1.3 Target and Scope of Study 3

1.4 Structure of Thesis 4

2 Current State Analysis 5

2.1 #Nuoretmyös 5

2.2 Commercial Products on Demi.fi 6

3 Gamification 10

3.1 PBL (Points, Badges, and Leaderboards) 11

3.2 Motivators of Gamification 12

3.3 Gamification in Discussion Forums 14

3.3.1 Jodel 15

3.3.2 Reddit 16

3.3.3 Stack Overflow 16

4 Method and Material 18

4.1 Expert Interviews 18

4.2 Beta Testing 19

5 Results and Analysis 21

5.1 Results of Beta Test 21

5.2 Demi.fi – Technical Environment 27

5.3 Demi Spirit 27

5.4 Demi Spirit Challenge 28

5.5 Demi Spirit Challenge – Motivators of Gamification 31 5.6 Demi Spirit Challenge – Technical Implementation 33

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6.1 Discussions 36

6.2 Conclusions 36

6.3 Further development 38

References

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List of Abbreviations

API Application Programming Interface ARPU Average Revenue Per User

B2B Business to Business

eCPM Effective Cost Per Mille. The amount an advertiser pays a website per one thousand visitors who see its advertisement.

FIAM Finnish Internet Audience Measurement FOMO Fear Of Missing Out

Parallax Inline ad which shows a piece of background during a scroll action. As the viewer scrolls through the content, the ad is fully revealed.

PBL Points, Badges, and Leaderboards phpBB PHP Bulletin Board

POC Proof Of Concept SPA Single Page Application SSO Single Sign-On

UGC User-Generated Content

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1 Introduction

Gamification is the application of game dynamics and mechanics to solve problems and engage users in non-game contexts [1]. Furthermore, it can be defined as a set of activities and processes to engage and reward users by using or applying characteristics of game elements, such as points, levels, badges, ranks, virtual goods, or other motivational mechanics. Gamification invokes peoples’ basic instinct to be attracted to fun, competitive, or rewarding actions, similar to what we experience while playing games. Gam- ification has been a trending topic for a few years already [2] and for a good reason, because if the gamification application is implemented successfully based on end-user requirements it can drive real business goals and revenues. Moreover, gamification can be used to drive a change in user behavior without the use of external incentives such as monetary rewards or penalties and studies have shown that gamification can have a significant effect on motivation and engagement in non-game contexts [3]. The addictive elements of gamification can be utilized to engage and activate users in a variety of online environments, such as discussion forums.

The main objective of the thesis was to design a new engagement-driven commercial product for Demi.fi web service since the profitability of display advertising – which is one of the main sources of revenue for the service – is declining and traditional native content advertising as a commercial product cannot reach the young audience, also referred as generation Z, which is the target audience of Demi.fi. The goal was to find new digital Business to Business (B2B) monetization models for Demi.fi and combine the needs of an active online community with the needs of B2B clients to ensure commercial viability.

The problem is going to be solved by designing a new reproducible commercial concept for the service. The works hypothesis was that the implementation of a new gamified feature would increase the desire of users to use the service, as well as their activity in it and commitment towards it. In addition, it can bring in new revenue regardless of how many users use the service or how many page views they generate in general. In other words, the revenue of the service would not be so dependent on the number of users.

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1.1 Generation Z

Generation Z refers to the generation born between 1995 and 2010 [4, 5]. Generation Z is the first generation born into the digital world [6]. Therefore, they are digital natives and have no memories of the pre-internet age [4]. Moreover, generation Z is radically different from previous generations in terms of values, attitudes, and consumption habits [7]. While millennials tend to favor text and image-driven social media platforms, generation Z consumes videos that are produced on social media services such as YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok [4, 8]. To reach young people of this generation, it is important to reach them through two-way conversations, instead of just selling to them through a one-way marketing message. An authentic digital and social presence is as important as digital experiences in which generation Z can engage [6]. To deliver the message to the young audience it is important to sell experiences, not products. Gener- ation Z wants to know how the product or service will benefit them and what experience it will provide [9]. Video content is key with this target audience and a Google survey from 2018 revealed that generation Z uses YouTube as their first platform when they want to entertain themselves. Furthermore, they use YouTube for expanding their knowledge and to gain or improve a new skill [10].

1.2 A-lehdet Oy and Demi Brand

A-lehdet Oy is a family-owned Finnish media house that publishes about twenty print magazines and maintains and develops five online consumer services, such as Demi.fi, Lily.fi, and Meilläkotona.fi. With its brands, A-lehdet reaches over one million Finns every week and tells engaging stories of world events, trends, and interesting people. A-lehdet Group consists of A-lehdet, which specializes in the media business, Finnish Design Shop, a leading online store of Nordic design, Genero, a pioneer in growth marketing and Keskisen Kello, the largest online retailer of watches and jewelry in Finland. [11].

Demi is one of the brands of A-lehdet Oy, and it reaches a weekly total of 190,000 young women, which is about 50 % of its target group [12]. The brand was founded in 1998 and the Editor in Chief is Päivi Lehtomurto. The main target group of the brand is teenagers aged 13-19 and Demi's topics include studying, hobbies, ecology, relationships, well- being, beauty, books, and recipes. Demi brand has a monthly print magazine, online community Demi.fi, school year calendar, and a few social media channels, such as In- stagram and YouTube and more recently also TikTok [13].

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Demi.fi is the largest and most active online service and anonymous forum for teenagers in Finland. The largest user group of the service is women aged 15-24 but some portion of the users are boys and other genders. Discussions on Demi.fi provide ideas and ad- vice on all possible topics [14]. Participating in the discussions requires registration on the service, and non-registered users can only read the discussions. The service is designed with a mobile-first design philosophy and 70-80 % of the users use the service with a mobile device. Popular themes include personal relationships, health, sexuality, trends, and studying. On the Demi.fi front page, the threads are listed from newest to oldest, and users can choose between the latest and hottest threads if they want to or- ganize the threads. There are nine different discussion areas and more than 150 topics on the service. Each registered user has their own Oma Demi profile, where the user can fill in their information such as profile picture, background image, and some additional written information about themselves. Users also see their notifications and statis- tics about their activities on the profile page. Furthermore, the service features editorial articles, and users have the opportunity to participate in making Demi in various ways such as sending their love story, biggest blunder, or weirdest habit through the service to the editorial staff.

Through an anonymous forum, young people seek peer support, community spirit, and answers to their questions. Generation Z wants to get involved and make a difference, and at Demi.fi, young people are eager to participate and respond to various queries and surveys [8]. During week 2 of 2020, there were approximately 124 000 weekly visitors on Demi.fi. In addition to that, approximately 1300 new threads were started, and 12 500 new replies were sent. Over the same period, there were approximately 700 000 pageviews made and the average session duration was 06:14 minutes [15]. According to the Finnish Internet Audience Measurement (FIAM), Demi.fi was Finland’s 62^nd most popular website in December 2019 [16].

1.3 Target and Scope of Study

The used method to obtain the target of this study is described in this section. The main objective of the thesis was to design a new commercial engagement-driven product or feature for the Demi.fi web service and find new digital B2B monetization models and combine the needs of an active online community with the needs of B2B clients to ensure commercial viability. The requirements for the new feature were collected with various stakeholder interviews as well as with user surveys that included the users of Demi.fi.

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The research focused on the Finnish users of the Demi.fi web service, in which the target audience was generation Z and mainly girls. Generation Z refers to the generation born between 1995 and 2010. The study has been made during the spring, summer, and autumn 2020. The answers from the beta test participants were collected during the beta test between the 5th and 8th of May 2020 and all the stakeholder interviews were held during spring and summer 2020.

1.4 Structure of Thesis

The thesis has been divided into six sections. The first section introduces the context, the business challenge, and the thesis objective. In the second chapter, the current state of the service and other commercial products is covered. The third chapter explains the theoretical background of gamification and focus will be mainly on gamification in discussion forums and on social media platforms and this chapter has the aim of providing background to the empirical study. The fourth chapter describes the research method, outlines the methodological choices of this study, and describes the selection of the test group, the design, and implementation of the test, and the analysis of the results. The fifth chapter covers the results and analysis of the work. The sixth chapter will conclude the research, covering all the further development opportunities for the designed feature and discussion and conclusions about the topic.

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2 Current State Analysis

This section introduces the current state of commercial products on Demi.fi. Currently, the only way to determine user value on Demi.fi is via the Google Data Studio dashboard, which illustrates the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) [17]. ARPU is defined as the total revenue divided by the number of users and it demonstrates how much, on average, one visitor generates money for the service. The term is used primarily by consumer communications, digital media, and networking companies [18]. On the Demi.fi dashboard, users are divided into three categories: casual readers, loyal readers, and brand lovers [19]. The casual reader is defined to be a new visitor, a loyal reader is a returning visitor, and a brand lover has over 10 sessions over 30 days. [19]. The information about users in the Google Data Studio dashboard is not on a user basis and therefore it cannot determine the actual user value.

2.1 #Nuoretmyös

On November 5, 2019, the Media Research Foundation awarded Demi EUR 82,500 for research funding for the project “#nuoretmyös – How does the generation Z redefine journalism and challenge mainstream media?”. The #nuoretmyös project aims to increase understanding of how young people see and define the media and how they can be part of the media field. The project aims to strengthen the voice of young people in the social debate and thereby make journalism relevant to their target audience. The result is providing the media with useful tools to deepen their relationship with young people. The Media Research Foundation believes that the project will generate new op- erating models for the industry [20]. As a part of the project, there will be some subpro- jects, one of which will focus on designing new features for the Demi.fi web service.

In August 2019 there was a survey held to the users on Demi.fi and 253 respondents participated in it. The purpose of the survey was to find out which new features users are the most interested in having developed to Demi.fi and there were five different options to choose from. One question about the new features was “Which of the following features would you like to have on Demi.fi in the future? Choose the most important option.”.

The option “Opportunity to earn points through activity and nice behavior” was the third most popular out of them all [21]. When respondents were filtered to people under 20 the result was as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1. Answers to Questback survey on Demi.f i.

Other options offered in the survey, which can be seen in Figure 1 were “the ability to send voice messages in threads”, “opportunity to share pictures in threads”, “opportunity to share videos in threads”, and “the ability to write private messages to other users”.

The respondents are filtered by age because the main target group of the demi brand is teenagers aged 13-19. There were 179 answers to this question and the percentage for the option of activity points of the total was 14,0 %. When there was no filtering of the respondents, there were 239 answers to it and the percentage for this option was 14,2

%. Moreover, there was an open question regarding the new features “Justify why did you choose this feature, how would it improve the use of the Demi.fi and how would you use it?”. One of the answers to this question was “There has recently been a lot of bullying and mockery of other users on Demi.fi. In my opinion, collecting activity points could guide the behavior to better direction” [21]. This reveals some hints that the users of Demi.fi would like to have some system in the service, which would guide users to follow the rules and reduce bullying in the service.

2.2 Commercial Products on Demi.fi

Currently, there are a few different commercial products on Demi.fi. The first one is a commercial online survey which is conducted on Demi.fi. With the help of a survey, the commercial partner reaches a young target group and is able to gather opinions about, for example, their product or service. The commercial partner gets to participate in the

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setting of questions and has access to the actual research results after the survey. [13].

The second one is a sponsored conversation on Demi.fi. In a sponsored conversation, the commercial partner can communicate directly with the young target group. For example, they can find out the opinions of the target group or create their community around a product or service. This product is best suited for situations where commercial partners want to better understand their target audience. The discussion will shed light on the attitudes of young people and anonymity allows young people to express their opinions honestly. Furthermore, this product is best suited for situations where commercial partners want to increase awareness of their product or service. Participating in the conversations on Demi.fi also offers them visibility into the most popular conversations. In the forum, they can be present regularly and have a real dialogue with their audience. At the same time, they connect those who are interested in the same thing and can create a community around their brand. [13].

The third commercial product on Demi.fi is native content advertising also called native articles which can be implemented in different categories on Demi.fi. Native articles provide the opportunity to use full-screen images and a way to create easy-to-read and appealing text to their target audience. [13]. However, native articles are not necessarily the best way to reach the young target group. Especially when the main content of the service is User-Generated Content (UGC) and most of the traffic on the service is specifically focused on the conversations. During 2020, native articles on Demi.fi generated approximately 7,300 page views by October.

The fourth product is a display-based theme or category sponsorship, with which commercial partners can gain visibility for their product or service in the right context. Fur- thermore, display advertising enables eye-catching implementations, which can be, for example, full-page interstitial, video interstitial, in-stream advertising, parallax ad, or cus- tomized option. Theme sponsorship enables specific targeting for the content since there are over 150 themes on Demi.fi [13]. A large portion of the total revenue, which has been about 37 % this year, comes from display advertising, and its profitability is declining.

Adaptive display ads are used in discussions and body text on Demi.fi and this means that the ads are downloaded only to users who read the content slowly enough. That is, if the user scrolls the page quickly, the ads will not load. This is to improve the ad's viewability, but also at the same time, it decreases the number of downloaded ads. The

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display ad revenue is based entirely on the number of ad downloads users make. Be- cause the site's effective Cost Per Mille (eCPM) has remained at almost the same level throughout the review period, i.e. it has not contributed to the decrease in display revenue, but specifically the number of impressions. Figure 2 illustrates that the total amount of impressions has declined drastically from July 2017 to the end of 2019. Overall, the number of impressions has decreased by a total of 61.12 % over this period.

Figure 2. Total monthly impressions between July 2017 and December 2019 on Demi.f i.

Figure 3 illustrates that the total monthly revenue on Demi.fi has declined drastically from July 2017 to the end of 2019. The revenue has decreased by a total of 64.42 % over this period. This means that it is vital to create new business other than based on purely user traffic.

July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019

Total impressions

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Figure 3. Total monthly revenue between July 2017 and December 2019 on Demi.f i.

About 90 % of the site’s user traffic is organic, which means it comes from Google or other search engines. For this reason, the site is very vulnerable to changes in search engine traffic. Core updates made by Google in 2019 affected the organic traffic remark- ably and it was the main reason for the dropping traffic on Demi.fi. The search engine traffic dropped 69 % from January 2019 to June 2019 [22]. As a result of these events, ideas for developing new sources of income have become topical.

July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019

Total CPM, CPC, CPD and vCPM revenue (€)

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3 Gamification

This chapter first introduces the theoretical background and history of gamification and at a later stage will delve into more detail about gamification in discussion forums. Gam- ification in its current form has been around for about ten years, but its history goes a little further. The popularity of the field began to grow in late 2010 [3] and was based on the idea of using game elements in non-game contexts to achieve different goals and at the same time increasing engagement and motivation. The year 1912 is perceived as the first appearance of gamification when the American Cracker Jack popcorn brand started adding a surprise to each of their product packagings. While this is not gamification in its modern state, the birth of gamification can be thought of as an activity of this style that has taken advantage of some fun and collectible surprise [23]. In 1990 when computers began to become more common also more advanced gamification applications and games such as Math Blaster were introduced. In the years leading up to the end of the millennium, the power of gamification was slowly gaining recognition and in 2007 the first modern gamification platform Bunchball was founded. It was the first technology platform for organizations to boost engagement and to create a gamification process using gamified elements such as points, badges, and levels [23].

In 2010 gamification became a popular term and this is due to the increased use of and interest in the internet. In 2011 the first gamification summit was held in San Francisco, and the same year Oxford dictionary added gamification to its word of the year shortlist and defined the word ‘gamification’ as ‘the application of concepts and techniques from games to other areas of activity’. According to M2 Research in 2011, global revenue from gamification marketing, consulting, and software reached nearly $100 million [23].

From 2018 to this day gamification is everywhere and nearly all mobile applications include gamification in some manner [24]. Dr. Marigo Raftopoulos states that “in the future gamification will be a strategic management tool rather than a set of gameful design features or a technology solution. Gamification will be about how we think, how we col- laborate, and how we co-create a different way of learning, working, and building community.” [25]. Taco Potze, the CEO of Open social, challenges the idea of common or classic gamification in his article “Gamification is Dead: A Proposal for Gamification 3.0”.

He wonders whether traditional ways are no longer effective in the long run and could there be a better alternative on the horizon. What real value does it offer when users

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collect different badges in different services they use. For example, is it really of any use to them if they have received, for instance, a senior photographer badge at TripAdvisor?

He would like such services to reward their users with something better and more con- crete than just a new badge or nickname. Potze’s proposal for gamification 3.0 is to create an open standard where tokens are stored on the blockchain and by using tokens it is adding real value to the points. In this proposal, community members could earn these tokens, they could store them in their wallets, and they could bring them along to other services. These tokens could be accepted as payment for access to other communities, or anything that creates a sustainable token economy and community [26].

3.1 PBL (Points, Badges, and Leaderboards)

Three common game-like elements of gamification are points, badges, and leaderboards and these are some of the most effective game elements. These elements encourage user engagement through extrinsic motivation which means an external reward. Let's consider the value and nature of each element.

Points

Points are a way to reward the users, [3] give feedback, track their progress, determine win states, or unlock new things. By earning points, users can also achieve desirable goals or increase wanted behavior. Some companies reward their employees by awarding points according to their performance. The earned points could be redeemed for different prizes. A similar system is followed in schools where students receive credits for their completed course studies [27].

Badges

Badges are also a form of feedback and a way of awarding for accomplishments. They are representations of achievements and simple symbols that demonstrate the user’s capability to do something. Badges can be used to raise social status and they make the user feel important and skilled [28]. Visible badges can also be used to verify another user’s qualifications and abilities.

Leaderboards

Leaderboards are a very effortless way to create competition among users, it is a popular concept because most people enjoy the thrill of competition. In this way, users are motivated to use the service and consume more time for competing with each other [28].

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When designing leaderboards, it is crucial to ensure that they encourage user behavior instead of forcing users to abandon given goals [3].

3.2 Motivators of Gamification

Gamification in itself does not automatically create value – adding game elements some- where does not automatically result in it being fun and exciting. Due to that, gamification should not start with designing the game elements, but how it motivates. Motivation can be divided into internal and external motivational factors. Internal motivation is defined by an internal desire to do things for pleasure and external motivation is to do things solely because of their outcome [3]. Furthermore, it should be taken into considerations that different game design elements can trigger different motivational outcomes. Accord- ing to Yu-kai Chou, who is the creator of the Octalysis Framework and the founder and the CEO of the Octalysis Group, there are eight core drivers motivating users to do everything in gamification [29]. Let’s go through these eight core drivers, what they mean, and examples of how they can be utilized in gamification.

Meaning

Meaning is the core driver, where users are motivated because they feel they are doing something greater than themselves and something which the user has been chosen for.

When everything around this drive is planned well the user can also feel like they are part of something big and important. For example, a user who devotes a great deal of time to maintaining a discussion forum or helping to create things for the entire community. A prime example is Wikipedia or some open source projects [30].

Accomplishment

Accomplishment is the core driver of making progress, developing skills, and finally over- coming challenges. Having the challenge is important because an award or badge without a challenge is not meaningful. Moreover, this core driver is the easiest to design and where most of the PBLs mostly focus on. Furthermore, short-term achievements are important on the road to the ultimate goal to keep the user motivated along the way [31].

Empowerment

Empowerment is the internal driver of engaging in a creative process where users have to solve problems and figure things out themselves. People are by nature creative be- ings, but besides expressing creativity, users need to be able to see the results of their

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innovations and receive feedback. For example, crafting or playing with Legos are already in themselves fun pastimes and there is no need to continuously add more content to keep the activity fresh and engaging [32].

Ownership

Ownership is the drive that is based on the principle where users are motivated when they feel like they own something – virtual goods, for example. This is also the primary drive that makes people want to accumulate wealth. If users feel like they have invested a lot of time in something they will generally start to feel more ownership towards it. [33].

Scarcity

Scarcity is the drive where users want something simply because they cannot have it.

For example, something is available only for a certain amount of time, or something being constantly out of stock. This is connected to the natural tendency of people to want things they cannot have [34].

Unpredictability

Unpredictability is a drive of wanting to find out what will happen next. This is why someone would want to finish a book or a movie. This core drive is the main factor behind gambling addiction. Studies have shown that people are more excited when they don’t know for sure they will win, but the excitement arises from the thrill of whether they will win or not [35].

Avoidance

This core drive is based on the avoidance of something bad or negative happening to the user. For example, opportunities that are available only a certain amount of time have a strong utilization of this core drive because it causes users to think that if they do not act immediately, they would lose the opportunity to act [36].

Social Influence

According to the Octalysis Framework “This drive incorporates all the social elements that drive people, including mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, as well as competition and envy.” For example, if users see a product that reminds them of their childhood or is some other way nostalgic, it would likely increase the odds of

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buying the product. Social relatedness can be positively influenced by avatars, a meaningful story, and teammates [37]. Social factors could influence users' behavior through social norms. Moreover, social behavior can differ across cultures [3].

3.3 Gamification in Discussion Forums

Early web-based discussion forums date back to 1994, but their popularity began to grow in the early 20th century with the release of open-source software such as PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB). These platforms were the first step towards the Internet, where people interacted with each other instead of just unilaterally retrieving information [26]. Moreo- ver, when people were interacting, they shared who they are online and created virtual identities for themselves and it was important to be recognized for their contributions online. As mentioned earlier the feel of achievement is a strong driver for humans, and as an example of how users were recognized for their contributions back then, users were able to display their number of created posts or they could earn a certain status based on the number of posts or replies they had. Maintaining that certain status became an important pursuit and it was a reason to stay active on the service [26].

Gamification elements are commonly used in discussion forums to increase user engagement on the service. These are the six of the most common gamification elements used in online communities:

• the ability to earn points

• the ability to earn badges

• leaderboards

• the ability to rank or level up

• the ability to select a custom avatar and username

• the ability to earn rewards.

These techniques work simply because gamification can create a sense of competition among users. Social media communities, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., have gamification elements embedded into their platforms. For example, the number of followers or friends is a gamification element of the service. It is basically a popularity contest between users [38]. The addictiveness of the services created by the algorithms forms one of the goals on social media platforms, they want the users to use more screen

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time on the service and it is an on-going competition between the service providers all the time. The ability to earn badges is one of the most common and one of the simplest, yet effective, gamification elements. Badges assign a visual representation to a level that has been achieved by a user. Since badges are earned by accomplishments, they are something users desire to obtain. Badges can be earned, for example, automatically based on the number of followers or amount of comments or posts and they can also be issued by administrators or other users. Rank is awarded to a user when they achieve a certain level of activity.

Surely there are trolls or users who are not following the community rules or who are not too kind to other users in just about any online community. However, such behavior can be reduced by gamification. Behavior and actions that are accepted and desired in the service should be rewarded and those that are not desired should be punished. Com- munity moderation can be considered a good way to keep unwanted behavior to a min- imum. When allowing the community members to decide on the worthiness of the content it motivates the users to engage in meaningful ways and rewards those actions [38].

3.3.1 Jodel

Jodel mobile application is described to be the world's hyperlocal community and in addition to this fine description, Jodel is an anonymous mobile messaging application. The application’s hyper location means that users can only see conversations that take place a few kilometers from their location. The basic idea of it is to write anonymous messages for people around them to see. The messages are visible to other users within a radius of 10 kilometers. The exception to this is conversations in the user's hometown. A Jodel user can specify a city as their home location. In this case, the user can read the conversations in that location even when they are elsewhere themselves. Users can post messages, images, and videos, collect karma points, pin content they want to follow, and join channels for more specific content. It was first launched in 2014 and the first stable version was launched in 2016. Its original target audience was university students, but its use has expanded later to other user groups as well. Jodel can be considered as a prime example and reference to the Demi.fi community because there are some similar- ities between them. They are both anonymous communication services and on both of them, users have a nickname for themselves, in Jodel, they are called ‘Jodelers’, and on Demi.fi users refer to themselves as ‘Demittäjät’ or ‘Demut’. On Demi.fi this is purely an

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invention of the users themselves and it demonstrates the commitment and ownership to the service.

Gamification logics used in Jodel are mostly based on collecting the Karma, which means points users earn when they post or comment on something and when their content gets upvotes. When their content is downvoted by other users the Karma gets deducted. Based on the amount of Karma points, users can receive different statuses such as the ability to moderate the content with other community moderators. Jodel’s guidelines prohibit disclosure of personal information, bullying, hate speech, promotion of vio- lence, spam, and advertising. If some content is against the rules it can be downvoted and also reported so that the community moderators can check if it is allowed content or not [39]. The inspiration for collecting activity points came originally from Jodel and the Karma logic when user feedback on new potential features was asked through a user survey earlier in August 2019.

3.3.2 Reddit

Reddit is an online community and a collection of forums where registered users can share news and other content like images or comment on other user’s posts. It was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. All the content in it is organized by the subject into user-created boards called subreddits. Subreddits can be found on every possible topic. These contents are voted up or down by other users and content with more upvotes appears towards the top of their subreddit. Reddit’s Karma score is similar to Jodel and is a prime example of the gamification used in the service. Users can accumulate the Karma score by commenting on a post when the user’s content is upvoted or by submitting a post to a subreddit [40]. By all these gamified elements and logics to increase engagement, Reddit transformed a basic forum into one of the top 10 most visited web services in the world [41].

3.3.3 Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow was founded in 2008 and is a web service and public platform for developers who want to learn and share programming knowledge with others [42]. Registered users can share their code, answer questions, and ask questions about programming.

One of the gamification logics used in the service is based on the reputation users can earn and see the progress of it on their profile page. Based on the amount of reputation

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users can unlock different features on the service. The more reputation users earn, the more privilege they gain, and the more tools they will have access to on the service [43].

Reputation can be earned by answering other user’s questions. Furthermore, users can earn badges from various performances and they can be seen on the profile page. Users can upvote questions and answers they liked and downvote those they did not like. The user’s reputation will increase or decrease based on the vote. Useful and most upvoted answers are boosted to be easily accessed by other users searching answers to the same question.

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4 Method and Material

This chapter introduces the research method of the thesis and reviews the research re- alization. Useful basic information was obtained from the user survey conducted in the autumn of 2019, which was conducted for the users on Demi.fi. Next, based on various preliminary data, a literature study was conducted, and information was gathered from several sources. When the study had been taken a little further, beta testing could be carried out. The decision of using a beta test to evaluate the new feature was made in the early spring of 2020. In addition to the beta test, several expert interviews were conducted during the research to support its progress, as well as to gather requirements and other vital information.

4.1 Expert Interviews

The expert interviews were held during late 2019 and 2020. The expert interviews are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Table of expert interviews.

Participants Purpose of the interview Date

Essi Rundgren – Social media strategist, A-lehdet Oy

Päivi Lehtomurto – Editor in Chief

at Demi, A-lehdet Oy Expert interview 5 December 2019 Essi Rundgren – Social media

strategist, A-lehdet Oy

at Demi, A-lehdet Oy Expert interview 23 January 2020 Essi Rundgren – Social media

at Demi, A-lehdet Oy Expert interview 27 February 2020 Antti Karvanen – Design Director,

Genero Oy

Henri Tukiainen – Senior Devel- oper, Momocode Oy

Designing of the layouts for the f eature

5 March 2020 Essi Rundgren – Social media

Päivi Lehtomurto – Editor in Chief at Demi, A-lehdet Oy

Planning the charity chal-

lenge f or the beta test 27 March 2020

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Essi Rundgren – Social media strategist, A-lehdet Oy

at Demi, A-lehdet Oy Expert interview 7 May 2020

Henri Tukiainen – Senior Devel-

oper, Momocode Oy Expert interview 10 October 2020

4.2 Beta Testing

Beta testing refers to the testing of an unfinished product, in which the testing group consists of real users. The role of the testers is to provide direct feedback on the usability and functionality of the product and report any software bugs that the product may con- tain. Beta testing helps in decision making to invest further in the future product. Beta testing allows testers to familiarize themselves with the product and gain influence over its content before its actual release. Beta testers frequently find bugs in the software that the software developers have not detected themselves. After beta testing, a new version of the software will be released, or run a new beta test [44]. Selecting the test group is one part of the entire beta testing process. Testers should be selected according to certain criteria. Testers need to be interested in the product being tested, i.e. professionals in the field, future professionals, or potential users. By choosing the test group correctly, unnecessary and impractical answers can be avoided or at least minimized. Testers should match the characteristics of real users [44].

The beta test of the new gamification feature for Demi.fi was carried out between the 5th and 8th of May 2020. The beta test was performed on the Proof Of Concept (POC) version of the feature to test the functionality of the Demi Spirit Challenge concept before the actual fully-functional version was created. The advantage of this pre-run beta test was that users' attitudes towards the new feature could be tested in a rather light way before the final decision on developing the feature was made. Demi.fi users participating in the beta test were selected from eighty volunteers collected from the website by Quest- back form. Eventually, fifty participants were selected to be participating in the beta test.

The feedback was collected from the participants both in free-form threads created to the test environment and in a final survey done by Questback form.

In the beta test, the participants were able to complete a charity challenge named #demutjeesaa, created together with the editorial staff of Demi using the new Demi Spirit

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Challenge feature. The challenge included ten tasks aimed at increasing user activity on the site, engaging with the Demi brand, and supporting the visibility of content produced by Demi, such as YouTube videos and Instagram posts. The purpose of the challenge was to gather a charity for a pre-selected foundation and if 45 users would complete the entire challenge, Demi would donate money to a children’s mental health organization.

In addition to that, all the users participated in winning a cosmetic prize. The purpose of the challenge was to investigate how different types of tasks would perform and how motivating the prizes were.

Tasks included in the challenge:

• This month, the charity challenge focuses on mental health work for children and young people. Read more from this link.

• Start a new thread x1

• Write a comment in the thread x 5

• Like a comment x 5

• Tell Your love story, biggest blunder, or weirdest habit.

• Peek at this image from Instagram and look for the code. Do not forget to follow us.

• Watch this video and find the code. If you liked it, be sure to also subscribe to the Demi channel.

• Search Demi.fi for Sanpo, which tells you the code you need to complete this task.

• Suggest a charity item for next month in this discussion.

• Fill out the feedback survey.

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5 Results and Analysis

The main concepts of the Demi Spirit Challenge and their relationships are introduced below in this chapter. Furthermore, the results from the beta test are presented in this chapter. The requirements for the new feature were collected with various stakeholder interviews as well as with user surveys that included the users of Demi.fi.

5.1 Results of Beta Test

The implementation of the beta test was described in the previous chapter and this chapter presents its results. Overall, the beta test was a success, at least from the point of view that a great deal of useful information was gathered from it. 32 respondents answered the final survey, which is not a huge amount but indicates the opinions and attitudes of the users. Strong community spirit increased among the users and the entire atmosphere during the testing was exceptionally positive. This was probably due to the small group of testers, but the results indicated that Demi Spirit and the challenges based on that will create the desired effect on the atmosphere of the service and to the activity of the users.

One particular task was especially popular and 43.8 % of the respondents chose it to be the most enjoyable task of the challenge [45]. It was sort of an inside joke of the service where a certain figure, named Sanpo, and a secret code was hidden in a random place on the service. To accomplish this task, users had to search for that code and fill it into the field provided on their challenge page. Despite the hints provided to the users, the task proved to be quite challenging, therefore users had to work together to find a solution. At the end of the challenge, users who had successfully found the secret code also helped those who had not yet completed the task. Respondents justified their answer on the grounds that it was fun and challenging enough. It takes time to accomplish it and others can help with it, in which case it can also be done as teamwork. The most boring task with 28.1 % of the answers, appeared to be the one where users were asked to tell their own love story, biggest blunder, or weirdest habit. Some of the respondents justified their answer on the grounds that they did not have anything to say and it was annoying to forcibly try to come up with some stories [45]. The final survey and discussions on the test environment provided valuable feedback, especially on the functionality of the different task types. Some testers were concerned that the challenges would increase their

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screen time and that the number of unnecessary comments of discussions would increase on the service. Moreover, tasks aimed at gaining more visibility for social media content aroused criticism in some users. This led to the conclusion that when designing tasks, it is important to keep in mind the perspective of the users and the fact that the tasks must not unilaterally serve the goals of the organizer but must add real value to the users.

Figure 4 from the final survey illustrates the numbers of how likely the ability to complete Demi Spirit Challenges on Demi.fi would increase users' desire to use the service. 34.45

% of respondents answered option 4 and 15.6 % answered option 5 on a scale from 1- 5, where 1 means "not at all" and 5 means "very likely". This reveals that the challenges would increase the users' desire to use the service [45].

Figure 4. Results – How likely is that collecting Spirit points would increase your activity at Demi.fi?

To the question "What could make the challenge even more enjoyable?" respondents answered, among other things, that they would like to have more prizes, there should be more variety in the tasks and there should be more tasks in the challenge in their opinion.

Cosmetics, movie tickets, various gift cards, and Demi magazines were the most re- quested prizes among the respondents. Figure 5 illustrates how frequently users would like to perform different challenges on Demi.fi. 34.4 % of the respondents answered

“weekly”, 21,9 % answered “more than once a week” and 18,8 % answered, “once a

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month”. This reveals that users are willing to participate in challenges quite frequently [45]. Offered options for this question were “more than once a week”, “weekly”, “every other week”, “monthly”, “rarely”, and “never” and these can be seen in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Results – How often would you like to complete different challenges on Demi.fi?

On the question in which respondents were asked what topics they would like the challenges to address in the future, they answered among other things, climate change, mental health issues, sexual harassment, appearance pressures, loneliness, substance abuse problems, menstruation, nature conservation, literature, stress, and bullying. All these topics are ones that are covered very frequently and openly in Demi; therefore, they are very well suited as topics for future challenges. Figure 6 illustrates how likely it is that collecting Demi Spirit points would increase the user’s activity on Demi.fi. 16.1 % of the respondents answered option 5 and 19.4 % answered option 4 on a scale from 0- 5, where 0 means "not at all" and 5 means "very likely" [45]. This reveals that the ability to collect Demi Spirit points would increase the user’s activity on Demi.fi at least to some extent.

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Figure 6. Results – How likely collecting Spirit points would increase your activity at Demi.fi?

When the respondents were asked would they want the Demi Spirit counter to be visible to other users, 46.9 % answered yes, 46.9. % answered no, and 6.3 % answered I do not know [45].

The final survey included these questions for the testers:

• What was the most enjoyable task on the challenge?

• Why did you like that specific task?

• What was the most boring task?

• Why did you not like it?

• How likely would the challenges increase your desire to visit Demi.fi?

• What could make the challenge even more enjoyable?

• How often would you like to complete different challenges on Demi.fi?

• What kind of prizes would you like to get?

• What topics do you think the challenges should address? (for example, mental health, climate change, appearance pressures, saving money, etc.)

• How did you feel about the #demutjeesaa challenge? You are also free to provide feedback on challenges in general.

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• Is there something else that users should receive Spirit points from?

• How likely is it that collecting Spirit points would increase your activity on Demi.fi?

• Do you want your Spirit counter to be visible on your profile for other users as well?

• What feelings do the Spirit scores evoke in you? Feel free to give us feedback.

• Do you have any other wishes or development suggestions for the Demi.fi development team?

Based on the results of the beta test, a decision was made to implement the actual, fully- functional version of the Demi Spirit Challenge feature, and the main concepts of it and their relationships are introduced next.

Spirit Challenge

Spirit Challenge is a large assignment that users, also called players, can complete. The concept of players is introduced later in this chapter. Challenges are usually based around a specific topic – such as theme, product, or organization – and may be created for a commercial partner. An example of a challenge would be the “#demutjeesaa” charity challenge, which is built around contributing to a charity chosen by the players. Chal- lenges cannot be completed directly by players. Instead, challenges are completed by completing the tasks that are set as objectives of the challenge. A task may be required to be completed multiple times as part of a challenge. Challenges may grant points when completed. Challenges may also have other data attached to it, such as descriptions, visuals, branding, time constraints, etc.

Task

The task is a single small assignment that players can complete by participating in the discussion forum. Tasks vary depending on the challenge they belong to; an example of a task would be posting a message to a thread. Tasks are completed by performing the activity indicated by the task's type. Some tasks may only be completed once, and others may be completed multiple times or an infinite number of times. Tasks usually contribute to one or more challenges when completed. Furthermore, there may be tasks that are not part of a challenge, so that players may gain Spirit points by participating in the dis-

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cussion forum, even if there are currently no challenges available or the player has completed all of them. Tasks may also have other data, such as for descriptions and visuals, links, or additional constraints such as a specific thread to post in.

Spirit Points

Spirit points are points that players gain from completing tasks and challenges. The Spirit point counter is displayed on the player's profile page.

Spirit Badge

A spirit badge is a visual representation of a completed challenge. Badges appear on the player's profile page.

Player

The player is a registered user of the discussion forum participating in challenges. All users are automatically registered as players. Players tie all the other concepts together as they complete tasks and challenges and collect points and badges.

Figure 7 demonstrates the relationships between these concepts.

Figure 7. Relationships between Demi Spirit Challenge concepts.

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5.2 Demi.fi – Technical Environment

The technical implementation of Demi.fi is based on a software platform called Platta.

Platta is a collection of services that together make up the application behind Demi.fi and other web services owned by A-lehdet Oy, such as Lily.fi, Apu.fi and Terve.fi. The basic architecture of Platta consists of a front-end application and backend application for each web service. The front-end and backend applications each consist of a collection of mi- croservices that together make up the application. The main part of the front-end is a JavaScript Single Page Application (SPA) built using the React web framework. The front-end application provides a visual user interface for website visitors by fetching and displaying, as well as modifying data provided by the backend application. The main part of the backend is a PHP application built using the Laravel Lumen web framework. The backend application is responsible for providing the front-end application with data from various databases and other data sources, as well as providing the A-lehdet Single Sign- On (SSO) solution for authentication. Due to the high volume of visitors on Platta-based sites, and the high amount of content created by users, many of the implementation details in Platta are aimed at optimizing performance. There are various solutions in place for on-demand scaling of resources, caching data, and optimizing content search, for example.

5.3 Demi Spirit

Demi Spirit is a feature on Demi.fi. It was designed as a means against cyberbullying and hate speech, which has been a problem from time to time. The basic idea of the feature is that users are able to earn Demi Spirit points when they are active, or they perform different actions and follow guidelines and rules. In this feature, the user profile on Demi.fi has a Demi Spirit point counter that is visible only to the user itself . The user receives more points, for example, when starting a new thread, writing a reply, liking someone's comment, or starting to follow another user. Points are deducted from users due to bad behavior that does not comply with the rules of the service, such as if a moderator deletes a user’s thread or comment, or if a user’s account is banned. The layout for the Demi Spirit counter can be seen in Figure 8.

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Figure 8. Layout image of Demi Spirit and Demi Spirit Challenge.

The purpose of this feature was to use gamification to motivate users to return to the service and create more engagement. Furthermore, it is intended to have a positive im- pact on the atmosphere of the service when users can be rewarded for being active and following the rules. From a commercial point of view, users would be more valuable to a commercial partner when this feature can demonstrate their activity and engagement.

This has not been possible before. The Demi Spirit feature has been tested along with the Demi Spirit Challenge and will be implemented at the same time as the Challenge.

5.4 Demi Spirit Challenge

As mentioned before in the Introduction, users of the Demi.fi online service represent the generation Z, the generation which wants to be involved in influencing the development of the products and services they use. Because of the long working history with the Demi brand, it provides plenty of insight into the generation Z and helps with understanding the needs of the target group. For example, through a charity challenge, designed for the beta test, users are able to influence socially important issues and at least tentatively, the charity challenge was designed as an ongoing campaign. Demi Spirit Challenge is a