IS Seminar Series – The concept of gamification: why we should care about it

Gamification, or more widely, motivational information systems, has been a treding topic in IS-research during the past few years. The question that both researchers and practitioners want answers to is, does gamification actually work? In this talk I will shortly cover the concept of gamification, why we should care about it, what we know based on research, and whether we are asking the right questions regarding it. Furthermore, the future directions for gamification research will be discussed.

Dr. Jonna Koivisto is a postdoctoral researcher at the Gamification Group. She holds a PhD on information studies and interactive media from the University of Tampere, where she has worked at the Game Research Lab. Dr. Koivisto also holds an M.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of Jyväskylä. Her research focuses on gamification and consumer behavior and motivations online. She has also authored several seminal empirical works on gamification as well as spearheaded efforts to synthesize existing academic literature on the topic. In addition, her research interests include consumer behavior in games and other online contexts as well as new online business models. Dr. Koivisto’s research has been published in various internationally respected scholarly journals (E.g. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Information Management).