Capturing the complexity of gamification elements: a holistic approach for analysing existing and deriving novel gamification designs

Gamification is a well-known approach that refers to the use of elements to increase the motivation of information systems users. A remaining challenge in gamification is that no shared understanding of the meaning and classification of gamification elements currently exists. This impedes guidance concerning analysis and development of gamification concepts, and often results in non-effective gamification designs. The goal of our research is to consolidate current gamification research and rigorously develop a taxonomy, as well as to demonstrate how a systematic classification of gamification elements can provide guidance for the gamification of information systems and improve understanding of existing gamification concepts. To achieve our goal, we develop a taxonomic classification of gamification elements before evaluating this taxonomy using expert interviews. Furthermore, we provide evidence as to the taxonomy’s feasibility using two practical cases: First, we show how our taxonomy helps to analyse existing gamification concepts; second, we show how our taxonomy can be used for guiding the gamification of information systems. We enrich theory by introducing a novel taxonomy to better explain the characteristics of gamification elements, which will be valuable for both gamification analysis and design. This paper will help guide practitioners to select and combine gamification elements for their gamification concepts.