Game.UP: Gamified Urban Planning Participation Enhancing Exploration, Motivation, and Interactions

ABSTRACT

We present our interdisciplinary research on gamification as a communication tool in urban planning. Approaching the topic from a user-centered perspective, we combine knowledge from the domains of architecture and human-computer interaction and define domain-specific requirements and areas of interest. To substantiate our findings, we present a prototypical case study of a public participation application, developed in consultation with the urban planning project driver and evaluated on-location with members of the public. Our results highlight the opportunities in pursuing a new sub-field of gamification within urban planning and include concepts of game interfaces and spaces in this research. In our case study, we present a methodological approach to assessing gamification in urban planning participation and provide findings on how gamification changes the users’ relationship to participation as well as evidence that the “avatar” game element can affect the motivational affordances meaning of task, perceived competence, and social relatedness.

1. Introduction

That communication and participation within urban planning are essential (Selle, 2005) is most evident where it fails. Some of the worst outcomes include public protests, destruction of the social landscape the urban project was meant to propel, and financial ruin. Having an open channel for involvement from the public to politicians, planners, and drivers is crucial then, from a design requirements point of view. Certain information and participation interventions involving the public are mandated from local and federal governments; However, the involvement of the public is a costly ordeal in terms of time and runs a risk of failing ultimately beneficial city projects due to the public potentially being “uninformed” or “rationally ignorant” (Downs, 1957) and the difficulty in achieving democratic agreement. Urban planning problems are in their nature “wicked” or “ill-mannered” (Rittel, 2013), meaning problems cannot be expressly defined and have infinite solutions, solutions cannot be defined as wrong or right, and the solution is dependant on the framing of the problem. This factor only adds to the need for transparent decision-making and open communication.

The topic of digital public participation in planning has been examined in the last fifteen years in both research and practice. Digital means enable planners to reach a larger number of people, promote access to data and information, and allow planning information to be exchanged independent of place and time (Thiel et al., 2018). Different approaches highlight the fundamentals of participation SuUBwebsite, the opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0 (Lokaiczyk et al., 2010), or the strengths and weaknesses of eParticipation (Leitner & Sachs, 2018). Social media is used for advertising events or to rally planning protests (Leitner & Sachs, 2018), and mobile technologies enable location-based access to data or new means of data input and output (Thiel et al., 2018). Public displays (Du et al., 2020; Hosio et al., 2015), as well as virtual and augmented reality (Allen et al., 2011; Carozza et al., 2014) are implemented to support the understanding of planning and bridge the gap between 2D drawings and 3D spaces. However, as the novelty of these new technologies wears off, applying methods like gamification is being used to support participation processes and motivate users to interact more regularly with planning information (Leitner & Sachs, 2018; Thiel et al., 2018).

Existing applications in urban planning participation utilize gamification for commenting, rating, giving feedback on projects, strengthening lateral and vertical trust, promoting a sense of community among people within a neighborhood, or supporting reflection and learning by the public (Thiel et al., 2018). However, research on gamification in both the wider context and within the field of urban planning communication is scattered. Not only is further research into how gamification affects different types of people (Förster, 2014; Schoßböck et al., 2018; Thiel et al., 2018), and how it can improve interaction, usability, and interfaces is needed (Schmidiger et al., 2017; Thiel et al., 2018), work on how to contextually apply gamification to digital applications of urban planning needs to be mapped and standardized, similar to how gamification in fields such as education and health care is increasingly becoming established (Dicheva et al., 2015; Pereira et al., 2014). A better understanding of different planning stakeholders’ needs and issues within these processes and considering them within digital application designs are essential (Green, 2019; Schoßböck et al., 2018). To investigate gamification within the context of urban planning communication, it is necessary to look beyond the technology to the requirements of the processes themselves (Green, 2019). Therefore this research, conducted within the interdisciplinary research project Game.UP (Gamification in Urban Planning) at the Technical University of Munich, investigates how gamification can be applied in urban planning participation. We present relevant background theory on urban planning processes and gamification and address the following research questions: (RQ1) What urban planning participation deficits can be addressed by gamification; and (RQ2) What effects does gamification have on public motivation and participation in the context of urban planning?

2. Background

2.1. Urban planning participation

The process of urban planning is a sociotechnical and political process concerning the development of the built environment at a city or neighborhood scale. Key aspects of this domain are the design, regulation, and use of space within an urban environment. Planning changes to urban systems is a systemic process (Bastianello, 2009) requiring stakeholders of different specializations to come together, not only project drivers, planning experts, city planning authorities, but also members of the public who are affected by planning. Citizens are involved for one of the following reasons in modern planning processes; to support peoples democratic rights to information and participation (Bryson et al., 2013; Pateman, 1970; Rowe & Frewer, 2000), to manage stakeholder influence, power, and expectations (Müller-Pfaffenstiel, 2014), to optimize solutions to local issues (Clements-Croome, 2012; Rowe & Frewer, 2000; Townsend & Tully, 2004), or to support a sense of ownership of place among the local population. Negotiating the needs across these primary stakeholder bodies involves a highly complex series of tasks whose consequences can be disastrous if the communication between them fails (Selle, 2005). One example is “Stuttgart 21,” a high-profile, large-scale infrastructure project in Germany, where miscommunication, nontransparent processes, and a lack of deliberation between stakeholders of different opinions and levels of knowledge resulted in large scale protests and police investigations incurring serious economic damage and delays to the project (Brettschneider, 2011).

These issues have fueled a movement to create more transparent planning processes to raise awareness of planning projects among the public, generate acceptance for these projects, and utilize local expertise within proposals (Clements-Croome, 2012; Townsend & Tully, 2004). Due to the nature of planning projects, the opportunities to influence them as they progress from design to construction become more expensive and time-consuming. Consequently, it is optimal to have participation interventions early on in the planning process. This can still be a challenge due to planning project information access and having a channel for involving the public. A minimum public involvement is laid down by planning legislation in many countries such as the United Kingdom or Germany. These formal processes determine public involvement depending on factors such as project size and scale. Forms of participation can include making plans available to the public during planning application, announcing project plans, or organizing participatory events for affected people to comment on projects (Townsend & Tully, 2004). Where projects are controversial or conflict is foreseeable, these formal processes may not be enough (Müller-Pfaffenstiel, 2014), and often additional informal participation is conducted, such as cooperative planning workshops or digital crowd-sourcing (Brabham, 2009).

As processes of change, successful planning communication is about conveying clear visions and goals, educating people on the needs and risks of an intervention, including those affected early on, building trust in leadership, and creating fair processes (Ten Have et al., 2016). Research shows that where the aims of communication and participation are clear, then public contribution can be integrated into the iterative design process, which dictates urban planning; otherwise, insights gained often have no effect on the planning outcome (Selle, 2005). However, public awareness of planning projects and processes form the foundation of any such interaction, and this foundation is often lacking (Thiel et al., 2018). Studies in the domain show that laypeople have difficulties associating their everyday surroundings with architectural processes, organize information differently to experts, and find it hard to understand technical drawings as they lack domain-specific training (Rambow, 2000). Furthermore, public needs seem misaligned with participation offers (Jenney et al., 2020). Reducing information overload by providing small amounts of information regularly (Hiatt, 2006), enabling quick access to more detailed information on demand (Hiatt, 2006), and providing regular feedback (Ten Have et al., 2016), as well as space for deliberation and exploration (Hiatt, 2006) can counteract these issues, as providing different experiences to satisfy different stakeholder needs.

2.2. Gamification

When reviewing the literature on gamification in urban planning and architecture, which is primarily application-based, it becomes clear that whilst game and gamification elements play a significant role within this context, reducing gamification to the use of game elements does not do the body of work justice. For this reason, we explore the term in a broader context, beyond only gamification elements to gameful design. With less than twenty years of dedicated research, gamification is a relatively new field (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). Although the concept is not new (Fuchs et al., 2015), universal definitions and context-specific application spaces for gamification are not yet fully established, literature is limited and scattered across domains, research has not yet been widely discussed in high ranking journals (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019), and there is no consensus on the term gamification or gamification approaches. We approach gamification within our research using a broader definition that includes Deterding et al.’s “game elements” (Deterding et al., 2011; Werbach & Hunter, 2015) and Zichermann and Cunningham’s “process of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems.” (Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011). In the following two sub-sections, we look at these two approaches, gamification elements and gameful design, where the latter includes theories from game design such as Schell’s “game mechanics” (Schell, 2019), game visualization (Bowman et al., 2012; Jenney & Petzold, 2017), and player typologies (R. Bartle, 1996).

2.2.1. Gamification elements

Research into gamification has rapidly increased over the last decade, evident in the growing body of literature and the subsequent emergence of dedicated conferences. Within this growing body, many authors have attempted to categorize “gamification elements” as the essence, or verbs, of gamification design (Buckley et al., 2018; Mora et al., 2015; Schacht & Maedche, 2015; Thiel et al., 2018). Design frameworks include Reeves and Reed’s “Ten Ingredients for Great Games” (Reeves & Read, 2009), Chou’s “Octalysis” framework (Chou, 2019), the “Dynamics-Mechanics-Components” model (Werbach & Hunter, 2015) or Hunicke et al.’s “Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA)” model (Hunicke et al., 2004). Despite this, there is no agreed-upon gamification approach or comprehensive or consistent categorization of gamification elements, which may be in part due to the varied approaches and philosophies existing in the field of game design on which gamification research is founded (Adams & Rollings, 2006; Fullerton et al., 2004; Salen et al., 2004; Schell, 2019).

The most commonly used and most highly researched game elements include “points,” “badges,” and “leaderboards” (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019) with a recent shift in research attempting to empirically analyze the effects of these and other game elements in increasing engagement and enhancing related outcomes (Looyestyn et al., 2017), in increasing participation (Morschheuser et al., 2016) and motivation (Hamari et al., 2014; Morschheuser et al., 2016), as well as in benefiting psychological and behavioral outcomes (Hamari et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2016; Seitz et al., 2014). Findings in fields such as health and education suggest that the effects of game elements depend on task types (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019) and contextual factors such as the social environment and the system’s nature (R. Bartle, 1996; Hamari et al., 2014; Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). This supports our research motivation and context-based approach, as it suggests studying gamification phenomena is foremost dependent on the context and findings, and therefore hard to translate across domains. This contradicts some of the initial definitions claiming game elements are a universal tool to be applied and produce the same results. However, the unequal exploration of game elements and their applicability or the accessibility of frameworks (Debus, 2019), that gamification research is limited to only a few domains, and previous publication bias regarding the reporting of results, may interfere with our understanding of what universal game elements are (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019).

2.2.2. Gameful design

Game elements are interpreted as the smallest components in a game; however, there are alternative game design (Adams & Rollings, 2006; Fullerton et al., 2004; Salen et al., 2004; Schell, 2019) and gamification approaches. The simplification of gamification to elements has led to criticism of gamification (Bogost, 2013, 2015; Fuchs et al., 2015). Jesse Schell (Schell, 2019), a game designer, approaches games design using the elemental tetrad, which breaks a game down into four parts: technology, mechanics, esthetics, and story (Schell, 2019). These mechanics are considered unique to games and “describe the goal of your game, how players can and cannot try to achieve it, and what happens when they try” (Schell, 2019, p. 41). Gamification is a concept independent of technology; however, key aspects of esthetics, mechanical elements such as space, and storytelling such as the target audience are relevant when considering gamification for urban planning public participation.

2.2.2.1. Space

Space in the virtual world is similar to space in the real world; in both, the designers control a person’s experience (Lawson, 2007; Schell, 2019). In architecture and planning, different arrangements of spaces are created for different activities. For example, a classroom will look very different from a manufacturing hall or a living room. Different spaces fulfill different needs and raise different expectations in how they should be used and what is or is not appropriate in them. In virtual spaces, as in physical spaces, the rules of space differ dependent on the use of the space (Schell, 2019, p. 147). Whilst we perceive physical spaces as three-dimensional, this is not necessarily required in a virtual world. Virtual spaces have “bounded areas which may or may not be connected” and can be nested within other spaces (Schell, 2019, p. 131). The linking or overlap of virtual and physical spaces has novel implications for urban planning communication involving gamification solutions such as with gameful design. Tools and interfaces, like virtual and augmented reality (Thiel et al., 2018), as well as the use of on-body mobile technologies to locate digital information in the real world (Thiel et al., 2018), can be used to achieve enhanced spatial relationships. A less explored concept within the field of architectural and urban planning communication is to utilize the concept of space, as understood from the game mechanic perspective, as a way to interact with the public and manage expectations. The esthetics of these different spaces play an important role in the management of user expectations; different spaces or “modes” must look as different as possible from each other (Schell, 2019, p. 139).

2.2.2.2. Esthetics

Using visualization techniques, games manage user expectations and present complex information in an easy-to-understand way. Esthetics “have the most direct relationship to a player’s experience” (Schell, 2019, p. 41) and describe the rendering of the game space as well as how information is presented to the user (Schell, 2019). Rendering is an important aspect of both game design as well as urban and architectural planning, which has resulted in increased use of game engines within architectural practice, due to their quick rendering capabilities and built-in physics. In planning, the visual communication of information is more dominant than spoken and written language (Rambow, 2000) and is an effective communication tool between experts and laypeople. Visual tools can represent space in coded drawings such as building plans, sections, and elevations, whose ingrained codes and conventions can confuse laypeople. Games differ in their visualization techniques due to the more diverse target audience, prioritizing sensory visualization methods over arbitrary, learned, ones such as redundancy or repetition of information in different variations (Bowman et al., 2012; Jenney & Petzold, 2017). On top of this, game interfaces are evolutionary, meaning they adapt or can be customized according to the user’s familiarity with the system (Schell, 2019; Zichermann & Cunningham, 2011). Game visualizations can be differentiated through their primary purpose, such as displaying status or progression; or their temporal usage, for example, if information is continuously visible or only when needed (Bowman et al., 2012). Consequently, information is presented dynamically when the user needs or wants it, or when gameplay requires it.

2.2.2.3. Target audience

That people’s personalities, motivations, and interests differ is a well-understood concept in the field of games design (R. Bartle, 1996; Schell, 2019); however, its application within gamification research is limited (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). Bartle (R. Bartle, 1996), for example, developed a model of four (later extended to eight (R. A. Bartle, 2004)) different personality traits, which he observed in player behavior in multi-user dungeon (MUDs) games. Similarly, Nacke, Bateman, Mandryk (Nacke et al., 2014) or Marczewski (Marczewski, 2015; Tondello et al., 2016) develop typologies based on six player types from demographic game design model experiments (Nacke et al., 2014) or based on the self-determination theory (Marczewski, 2015; Tondello et al., 2016). In all these well-known categorizations, exploring, achieving, socializing, and manipulating traits are included (R. Bartle, 1996; R. A. Bartle, 2004; Nacke et al., 2014). Following these theories, different players possess these traits to different degrees, meaning individuals will not be motivated by the same interactions (R. Bartle, 1996). When designing a game or a gamified application, these models’ usefulness is in understanding that the use of different elements and mechanisms in combination can provide options for each of these player types. As a result, either creating participation targeting specific player types, or providing different types of people different interaction opportunities within a single participation application is paramount.

3. Synthesis

RQ1, as stated in the Introduction, was addressed using a theoretical examination of gamification and urban planning participation (presented in Section 2), supplemented with planning stakeholder interviews (Jenney et al., 2020). The consolidation of state-of-the-art scientific knowledge and domain-specific requirements enabled us to address the core research question of how gamification can be applied in urban planning participation. To validate our theories (presented in this Section) and address RQ2, a gamified participation prototype was developed within a real-world planning intervention, designed in an iterative process in consultation with project drivers (Section 4), and evaluated on-location with members of the public to assess how the use of gamification impacted motivation, digital space association, and learning effects (Sections 5 and 6). This approach is common within architectural research and echoes the design science approach (Hevner et al., 2004). In this section of the paper, we identify participation requirements (3.1) and gamification potentials and pitfalls (3.2) identified through the theoretical and exploratory research. From this, our areas of interest (3.3) were derived.

3.1. Participation requirements

Strategies to improve urban planning public communication and participation are described in Section 2.1 and include raising public awareness of projects and processes by making them visible to those affected at early planning stages before building commences; reducing information overload through the provision of regular and small amounts of information; helping laypeople understand technical information by transferring this information in more laypeople-friendly ways, such as by utilizing more globally understood visual and verbal language; and aligning individual public needs with the information provided, for example, by incentivizing public involvement in the project. Different fields of study, such as information visualization, human computer interaction, or the digitalization of information and communication offer different measures to address these issues. However, as the focus of this research is to identify where gamification can counteract these issues, domain-specific requirements for gamified participation systems are defined and detailed below.

3.1.1. Quick overview

Information needs to be easily accessible even if a project is not known, and members of the public need to be able to understand the essence of a project quickly in order to judge if a project affects them or if they are interested in it. This is also important as planning projects are conducted over long periods of time, and public stakeholders will change over the course of the project (on- and re-boarding).

3.1.2. More detail

Members of the public have different levels of planning knowledge. People who have no prior knowledge require easy access to information with the option for more details on demand. Those with prior knowledge require quick access to a greater depth of information.

3.1.3. Filtering

Different people are interested in different aspects of planning. Whilst some people may be concerned with a city’s green spaces; others may be concerned with the effect a project may have on the view from their window. Therefore, projects need to be filterable to allow for these differences.

3.1.4. Input

Some forms of public participation are solely concerned with informing people about what is happening. Whilst this is an essential part of public participation, planning problems may require specific information from members of the public who have planning relevant location-based knowledge. Both planners and members of the public need input mechanisms to enable two-way communication.

3.1.5. Feedback

Efficacy is an essential part of people taking part in public participation events (Bovaird et al., 2015). With this in mind, it is important for planners to not only provide regular feedback on a project’s progression but also on how the public contribution is incorporated within a project. Often the content of public contribution requires analysis; however, some aspects such as the number of participants could be communicated immediately. In simpler questionnaires, an individual’s contribution might be comparable to the majority immediately, such as when asking about a preferred project variant.

3.1.6. Co-creation

Co-creating is a higher level of public participation and requires discussion among stakeholders as well as the exploration of different options and outcomes.

These communication requirements are not limited to any specific technology but form the contextual basis for creating tools to improve planning communication processes. The provided information, possible interactions, and implemented technologies need to satisfy stakeholders’ needs, whether they are planners, project drivers, or members of the public, to facilitate successful processes and the successful utilization of tools.

3.2. Gamification potentials and pitfalls

Applying gamification to the fields of architecture, urban planning, and public participation in planning poses an interesting domain for collective and cooperative purposes involving many different stakeholders (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). An example of gamification within this field is the work conducted by Ekim Tan under the title “Play the City” (Tan, 2014). Tan uses games to collaboratively develop urban neighborhoods, including game elements such as turns, quests, teams, and rules. Here gamification is used to structure a co-creating process by providing clear roles, actions, and tasks, structuring the collaborative process, and providing room for deliberation. Another example of gamification in city planning is the application “Traffic Agent” trafficagent. In this application, school children play the role of a detective, identifying challenging or pleasant points along their journey to school. City planners analyze the identified sites, and appropriate actions are taken; for example, if there is a dangerous crossing, the crossing will be changed to become safer. Gamification elements such as achievements, quests, or a narrative are present in this application, to encourage citizen participation and engagement in identifying difficult spatial situations. In the planning domain, evaluation methodologies for gamified public participation approaches are often qualitative, focusing on the context-based metrics of individual application scenarios (Choi, 2014; Laureyssens et al., 2014; Savov et al., 2016). In many cases, the primary object of evaluation is the iteration of prototypes and not the success of gamification within the case (Kazhamiakin et al., 2016; Laureyssens et al., 2014; Savov et al., 2016).

Gamification research is greatest in the fields of education, health, and crowd-sourcing (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019), and whilst these fields have progressed in recent years, as research has shifted toward more empirical approaches (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019), there is no investigation as to whether gamification elements have the same effects in different fields or for different application purposes (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). Koivisto and Hamari’s literature review (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019) summarizes a number of general gamification research deficits, which are also applicable to this research. An increase in gamification research in more diverse fields could greatly benefit knowledge on the use and impact of gamification elements in different application contexts, as could the investigation into a broader variety of game elements (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). For example, in architectural and urban planning, elements in support of collaboration or enabling perspective change are possibly more useful than elements promoting conflict. Besides these, gamification research suffers from a number of common methodological challenges such as limited sample sizes in studies and short experiment periods, little use of validated psychometric measurements, a lack of control groups, as well as the lack of investigations into individual game elements providing limited insights into the individual effects (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). Results are not clearly reported (Hamari et al., 2014), and there is no “consistency in measurement instruments and research models” (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019).

In the context of urban planning, gamification can benefit from a broader definition of gamification and greater integration of personality (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019) and context-based requirements (Green, 2019; Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). However, it can also benefit from connecting methods of evaluation from both the domains of gamification, where elements are investigated qualitatively, and planning, where evaluations consider context and participation goals. In our research, we address some of the issues of gamification, propose a method for evaluating gamification in the planning participation context, and derive areas of interest based on both urban planning and gamification knowledge and requirements.

3.3. Areas of interest

When connecting the requirements for participation systems in an urban planning context and the potentials of gamification, our research highlights three key areas of interest (AOI) where gamification can be utilized in urban planning participation. The first area, Stakeholder Needs, centers around the navigation and structuring of planning-related information. Planning participation deficits and requirements are strongly linked to understanding processes and the relevance or consequences of certain information and actions. Gamification research indicates that complex information can be structured in an easy-to-understand way. The second area, Motivation, is derived from one possible means of judging the success of participation processes. To encourage engagement with planning information, people need to perceive a benefit in their actions. Gamification offers means to sustain motivation and encourage interaction. The third area of interest, Space-Time, focuses on the issues of public awareness and expectation. While planning participation research indicates discrepancies between information and object, gamification research supplies the means to connect these, through spatial and temporal design and reference. The AOI’s are described in more detail below.

3.3.1. AOI 1: Stakeholder needs

Literature on planning communication highlights that an open channel to the public can help members of the public in navigating a planning project. Breaking down complex planning information into smaller portions over time can support laypeople’s understanding of a project and keep a project within the public’s consciousness throughout the project’s lifetime. Research shows that gamified crowdsourcing methods can help motivate users to answer specific questions or complete specific tasks (Khatib et al., 2011; Shabtai, n.d.) and support the collaborative generation of design variants (Eiben et al., 2012; Khatib et al., 2011; Poplin, 2014). Both of these strategies are legitimate methods of involving members of the public in planning applications; we focused on the first as it was considered more relevant to the context of this research, where one of the aims was to take a step away from event-based participation toward more agile communication, as well as helping members of the public to locate and navigate planning projects throughout the planning process.

3.3.2. AOI 2: Motivation

There are many ways in which to measure the success of gamification within public participation, such as the success of the design outcome, success based on the degree of public involvement and their decision-making power, the public’s perceived efficacy, the perceived usefulness from participation outcomes for planners and the public, or the overall success of a planning project. Evaluating the impact of gamification within urban planning has not been addressed in the literature, and many application approaches do not clearly present their design and evaluation processes (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). In our research, we followed a similar approach to Sailer (Sailer, 2016) in assessing how gamification affects motivational affordances as defined within Ryan and Deci’s (Ryan & Deci, 2000) Self-Determination Theory. Furthermore, we present our research as a possible framework in arriving at a more standardized means of gamification evaluation in planning participation.

3.3.3. AOI 3: Space-time

The third area of interest during the development of prototypical implementations within this context was the visual-semantic connection of spatial information on location. Planning information is strongly linked to spatial qualities, and information presented on the internet, in flyers, or at the city planning department disconnects this information from its relevant locational context. In planning participation workshops or information events, the events are usually held near the development project’s location. We were concerned with locating planning information within its spatial context, decoupling participation from time constraints, and in the allocation of different digital spaces for different tasks.

4. Prototype design

To investigate these areas of interest and substantiate our findings, we developed a gamified public participation application. In addressing AOI 1: Stakeholder Needs, it was important to implement and evaluate the application within a real-world context with stakeholders from both the project driver and the public perspective. We collaborated with the project initiator and driver of a real-world ongoing urban planning project in the City of Munich, Germany, and evaluated the resulting Game.UP App on-location with members of the public. In this evaluation, we focused on investigating how gamification affects the user’s motivational affordances whilst interacting with the application to investigate AOI 2: MOtivation. For this investigation, we utilized Sailer’s (Sailer, 2016) evaluation method consisting of a combination of questions from commonly accepted motivation assessments (intrinsic motivation inventory (Tsigilis & Theodosiou, 2003), situational motivation scale (Guay et al., 2000), and the activity-feeling states scale (Reeve & Sickenius, 1994)). For comparability, our application was implemented in three versions to include a control group (control), a fully gamified group (gamified), and a gamified group where a single element had been excluded (gamified-a). We examined AOI 3: Space-Time, by carefully organizing the applications’ screen spaces and connecting the planning information to real-world coordinates. This section briefly presents the real-world planning project (4.1) and describes the developed prototype user interface (4.2), design rationale (4.3), and system architecture (4.4).

4.1. Application scenario

The urban planning public participation prototype was developed and tested within a real-world planning project, located in the city of Munich, Germany. Following a bottom-up initiative, the political and planning authorities launched a study into the feasibility of constructing a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across a wide road, comprising of two car lanes in each direction and two tram lines in the middle. The site and its surroundings, depicted in Figure 1, Figure 2, form a key transportation nexus joining the east and west of the city, connecting the city’s main universities with each other and linking the city center with the Olympic Park and the countryside surrounding the city. Due to the wide range and in some cases, contradicting issues involved within this project such as the social implications of building a bridge at this location, the prioritization of public transport and the local fire brigade over pedestrian traffic, the potentially high construction costs, and building duration, existing alternatives, and because the project is located at the border of three different local authorities, public participation is both needed and sought.

Figure 1. AR interface within the developed prototype.

Figure 2. Site analysis of the case scenario crossing project.

4.2. User interface

Figures 3 and 4

Figure 3. Application user interface: profile (l.), Map (m.), Project history (r.).

Figure 4. Application user interface layout with gamification elements highlighted.

show the layout and the interaction flow of our designed application. Within this interface, game elements were incorporated in the interactions with and between application screens. These elements are outlined and defined in Table 1 and are all used within the fully gamified prototype, reflected in Figure 4. The application was designed with the ability to remove game elements to be able to test our hypothesis in AOI 2: Motivation. From the screens shown in Figure 4, three different versions of the application are created: one fully gamified version, one gamified version but with avatar removed (gamified-a), and one control version. In the gamified-a app version, there was a pre-selected generic image of a person instead of the ability to choose an avatar on the profile page and there was no avatar displayed on the map page. The control version differed from the gamified version in that the avatar, badges, and quest visualization were removed although the participation survey was still available. Additionally, whilst the information about the project history was still available, any progression indicators were removed (dates of events were removed and the project icon/classifier indicating if their participation was possible). Furthermore, the application screens can be described as fitting into three layers: personal, project information, and interactive participation layers. The first layer displays the user’s profile which can include their chosen avatar and the badges they have earned through participation depending on whether the application version used those game elements. The second layer encompasses the map interface displaying the avatar at the location of the user and project icons in the project’s location; the project history page showing the current stage of the project and detailing preceding planning activities and participation events; and the project information overlay which can be accessed from both the pins on the map and project history pages. The profile, map, and project history views can be switched using the three tabs at the bottom of the screen. The project information layer provides access to information on different planning projects supporting lower participation levels (Arnstein, 1969). At a higher participation level enabling user input, the interactive participating layer encompasses the quest and AR screens (see Figure 1 for on-site usage of AR screen). These are accessible through both the map and project history pages. In Figure 4, the quest presented is a survey, which was used in the user test.

Table 1. Table of game elements used within the gamified application

Game Element	Definition
Avatar	A visible representation of a player’s character which the player controls and identifies with (Apperley & Clemens, 2015; Schell, 2019; Werbach & Hunter, 2015).
Badge	The visual representation of an achievement, often part of a reward mechanism (Werbach & Hunter, 2015).
Progress	Making the progression and development visible to the player (Schell, 2019; Werbach & Hunter, 2015).
Quest	A predefined specific challenge or task a player completes. It is usually liked to the narrative and may provide rewards upon completion (Werbach & Hunter, 2015).
Space	The areas in which the game exists and how these areas relate to each other (Schell, 2019).

4.3. Design rationale

In this sub-section, we highlight the design rationale behind our prototype to clearly present our research. While related work often focuses on individual projects or single public participation instances (Poplin, 2014; Tan, 2014), the character of our application scenario has high localization of separate but related projects which necessitated a more global design approach to support public understanding of planning decisions and boundary conditions. As a result, we transitioned away from event-based participation toward more agile, process-accompanying communication. Our aim was to enable quick access and understanding of planning information for users by providing a quick overview of projects as shown in the Informing layer in Figure 4. This was achieved through the project history and map pages. The chronological ordering of projects gives a temporal overview of the local project status and the pins on the map contain quick facts and also help in bridging the gap between digital information and its physical and spatial context on site. The use of avatars and the three-dimensional nature of the map interface link the real and virtual worlds and help users feel embodied. Project-related proximity notifications add to this effect. Overall this can enable users to quickly find and determine the personal relevance of a project or participation instance. If considered relevant by the user, projects and participation details or the augmented reality overlay can be easily accessed through an information button on the project pin. The project history and project progression can be scrolled through, linked to related material, such as participation documents, results, or website links; and basic filtering options, though not implemented within the tested prototype, are feasible. Beyond the exploration of projects, users can take part in projects through participation quests or surveys, developed by planners or planning authorities and integrated within the app. These quests could aim at gaining local insights, discussing project variants, or publicizing physical participation events. At a higher participation level (Arnstein, 1969) and task complexity, “quests” could take the form of “mini-games” as digital co-creation environments similar to “B3 – Design your Marketplace!” (Poplin, 2014). Badges were implemented to make user contributions visible to themselves, supporting efficacy, and to measure skill and project affinity for planners to anonymously target specific user groups where questions require certain prerequisites.

4.4. System architecture

The prototype was built in Swift for iOS 13.1 using the Xcode development environment. All user studies were conducted on an iPad 11 as it provided a larger screen for accessibility and visibility. An initial selection screen at the start of the application allowed the switching between application versions (gamification, gamified-a, control). The application prompts the surveys throughout the beginning, middle, and end of the user study through a web-view controller accessing instances of the survey on SurveyMonkey, so a reliable data connection was required to record the user session on location. GPS and Camera access were required for the Apple map, in which the AR view (see Figure 1) is accessed. There were some technical difficulties with the on-site AR concerning scene detection due to the high number of moving variables (pedestrians, cyclists, cars), as well as environmental issues hindering the reliable placement of a QR code. As a result, the AR view in the application, implemented using the ARkit framework, only displayed a scene of the bridge upon manually tapping the screen.

5. Experiment design

For the prototype evaluation, we conducted on-location interviews, where participants were passersby on the street recruited without compensation, over the course of five nonconsecutive weekdays between December 2019 and February 2020. We chose to conduct experiments on location rather than in a lab-controlled environment because of the demographic of participants we would attract, as well as the fact that participants would most likely use a future iteration of this app on location to grant an unfiltered spatial context of where the urban planning is happening. Weather conditions varied between cold and cloudy and warm and sunny, but the conditions were dry. It is important to note that in order to design certain questions in our experiment, in particular ones asked in the demographics and in the participation page in the application, we were informed by observations and interactions with the audience at a public event around our building project scenario, and an informal semi-structured interview session with the project driver respectively. The public event was a series of student presentations that communicated the different architectural solutions which revolved around building a bridge to facilitate crossing the street. Community members and the local press attended and also had sometimes passionate (on behalf of the audience in objection to the project) question and answer sessions with the presenters and event organizers. The interview with the project driver was an initial introduction to get permission, coordinate our studies, and make sure we captured their interests in conducting our evaluation.

The on-location evaluation sessions lasted between 10–15 minutes and consisted of three phases. First, participants provided consent, were introduced to the task, and filled out a demographics form which asked about their current planning knowledge and their sources of such information. Next, each participant had a 3–5 min guided interaction, depending on the which of the application versions was randomly assigned to them (control, gamified-a, or gamified). We ensured each participant had a chance to try out all the functionality built into their version of the app through this guided interaction session. After the interactive experience, the evaluation of the application experience began. Participants first filled out the game element motivation survey (Sailer, 2016) to address AOI 2: Motivation. Next, to address AOI 3: Space-Time, participants completed a game space association survey where they linked eight different functions we identified as important, with a particular screen in the application. Based on our argumentation made in Participation Requirements and Gamification Beyond Elements sections, these functions are: Navigation, location identification, project location, real-world planning information, project overview, project history, identification of project, identification of participation opportunity, and participation ability. Lastly, in the application evaluation, participants shared what new information they learned to help us measure any short-term knowledge gain from interacting with the app. After the user evaluations, we had a session with the project driver to reflect and gauge the usefulness of the application and feedback gathered from the public to address topics raised in AOI 1: Stakeholder Needs.

The Project Driver was an active member of the local community with means and connections, enabling the project’s successful promotion with local decision-making bodies. They had achieved an educational level of master and worked in the field of mobility, supporting start-ups in this field, and had a strong personal and professional interest in promoting environmentally friendly and new mobility methods. They lived and worked within 10 minutes’ walk, cycle, or drive of the project location.

The Participant Demographics consisted of 15 users who evaluated the gamified public participation application on location. Although we had evaluated 30 participants in total, due to data loss from an unfortunate data recording error due to unstable Internet connections on location, we had to go back out to the field and rerecord until we had an even data set of 15 participants with five participants across all three versions of the application: control, gamified-a, gamified. Initially, further tests were planned; however, the spread of the worldwide epidemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Virus at the beginning of 2020 ended the testing phase early. The overall average age of all participants was 38.8 ($\sigma$ = 13.48 years). Across groups, the average age of participants was 50.2 ($\sigma$ = 21.08) in the control group, 45.2 ($\sigma$ = 24.24) in the gamified-a group, and 35.2 ($\sigma$ = 13.33) in the fully gamified group. Each group’s gender distribution was 2 females to 3 males in the gamified and in the gamified-A groups, and 3 females to 2 males in the control group. Participants had an education level of high school (n = 1), trade school (n = 2), bachelor’s (n = 5), or master’s and above (n = 7) with a variety of backgrounds as diverse as actors and social workers to chemists and a robotics engineer. Everyone who lived in Munich, Germany, (n = 13) also lived with ten minutes’ walk, cycle, or drive of the project location (n = 13). Two participants did not live or work in Munich.

6. Results

6.1. Access to planning information

Table 2 depicts the participants’ responses to how they access planning information. Participants could choose from the options: friends and colleagues, printed media (such as newspapers), project website, social media, own observations on site (for example, when the architect is viewing the site), e-mail, newsletter (a physical or digital subscription to a specific project or neighborhood), letter (usually an official document sent by the city on a project in the immediate vicinity), or other. Participants were able to select as many of the options as they wanted. A total of n =36 selections were made, of which n =2 indicated no channels were used. Overall, participants access information primarily through printed media such as newspapers (n =9). The gamified-a group utilized the highest number of channels at n =15 responses (gamified with n =12 responses, control group with n =9 responses). The gamified-a group also selected the most personal communication channels (friends and colleagues, social media, own observations) with n =9 and used more personal channels than public channels (print media, letter, political party, project website, e-mail, internet). In contrast, the gamified and control groups both selected more public communication channels (n =9 and n =6, respectively) than personal channels. Overall non-digital channels (friends and colleagues, print media, own observations, letter, and other) were selected more often than digital channels. The gamified-a group selected the most digital channels.

Table 2. Access to planning information (n = 15)

Channels	None	Print media	Letter	Political party	Friends/ collegues*	On-Site observations*	Non-digital	Project website	E-mail	Internet	Social media*	Digital	Total	Public	*Personal
Gamified	1	3	1	0	1	2	8	1	2	1	0	4	12	9	3
Gamified-a	0	4	0	0	4	1	9	0	0	2	4	6	15	6	9
Control	1	2	0	1	1	1	6	0	0	2	1	3	9	6	3
All	2	9	1	1	6	4	23	1	2	5	5	13	36	21	15

6.2. Public project input

Tables 3 and 4, Tables 5 show the frequency at which participants cross the road and the mode of transport used by participants within the area. This project input and the participants’ preference for the future type of crossing they would like were gathered within the app. Participants primarily traveled through the area on foot (n =12), or by bike/ e-bike (n =6). Most participants (n =13) crossed the road at the site at least once per day (n =6) or once a week (n =7). All participants (n =15) wanted a crossing, with most preferring the bridge variant (n =14) over the traffic light option (n =1).

Table 3. Participant frequency of crossing by application variant (a = gamified, b = gamified-a, c = control). Response to the question “How often do you cross the street Schwere-Reiter-Straße where it intersects the street Heßstrasse?”

Participant	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	Average
Variant	a	a	a	a	a	b	b	b	b	b	c	c	c	c	c	a	b	c	all
ALO a day	0	0	1	1	1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1	0	1	0	3	2	2	7
ALO a week	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	2	2	2	6
ALO a month	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1
ALO a year	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Never	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	1

Table 4. Participant mode of transport in area by application variant (a = gamified, b = gamified-a, c = control). Response to the question “What mode of travel do you use most often in this area?.”

Participant	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	Average
Variant	a	a	a	a	a	b	b	b	b	b	c	c	c	c	c	a	b	c	all
By foot	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	0	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	5	3	4	12
Wheelchair	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Bike, e-bike	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	1	1	1	1	1	0	0	0	1	3	2	6
Motorbike	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Car	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1
Other	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Table 5. Motivational survey responses, according to application variant (a = gamified, b = gamified-a, c = control) and participant

Participant	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	Average
Variant	a	a	a	a	a	b	b	b	b	b	c	c	c	c	c	a	b	c	all
A_Mean1	4	7	7	7	7	5	7	7	6	1	7	7	7	7	6	6.4	5.2	6.8	6.1
A_Mean4	4	5	6	5	7	6	5	4	5	1	6	7	7	5	6	5.4	4.2	6.2	5.3
A_Mean5	4	6	6	5	7	7	6	7	6	2	4	7	5	6	6	5.6	5.6	5.6	5.6
A_Dec1	4	7	7	5	7	7	6	7	5	3	7	7	7	5	5	6.0	5.6	6.2	5.9
A_Dec4	4	7	7	4	7	7	7	6	5	4	7	7	7	7	7	5.8	5.8	7.0	6.2
A_Dec5	3	7	7	4	7	7	6	7	7	3	7	7	7	7	5	5.6	6.0	6.6	6.1
Comp2	4	5	5	6	5	4	7	1	6	1	7	7	7	6	4	5.0	3.8	6.2	5.0
Comp3	4	5	5	4	5	5	6	7	7	2	7	6	7	4	6	4.6	5.4	6.0	5.3
Comp6	4	5	6	4	6	4	7	6	6	1	7	7	4	4	4	5.0	4.8	5.2	5.0
Comp7	4	6	6	5	6	4	6	5	5	3	5	7	4	6	6	5.4	4.6	5.6	5.2
Rel1	4	5	6	5	5	4	4	4	5	3	7	7	7	4	6	5.0	4.0	6.2	5.1
Rel2	4	5	6	5	6	6	7	6	6	1	4	7	7	7	6	5.2	5.2	6.2	5.5
Rel5	3	5	6	4	5	4	5	6	6	1	7	7	6	4	7	4.6	4.4	6.2	5.1

6.3. Game element effect on motivation

To examine the motivation effect of the application on participants, Sailer’s (Sailer, 2016) method was implemented. This method outlines a 13 question survey measuring motivational effect based on indicators identified by Ryan and Deci (Ryan & Deci, 2000); autonomy (meaning of task), autonomy (freedom of choice), competency, and social relatedness. The survey results are shown in Figure 5. All three variants of the application (gamified, gamified-a, control) were considered motivating, based on the assumption that everything above 3.5 on the x-axis is motivating. The control group has an elevated effect of motivation, and the fully gamified group has a trend toward a higher level of motivation than the gamified-A group. To understand the significance of our observed trends, we performed a non-parametric analysis of means and variance. For our subject groups, we conducted a Kruskal-Wallis H-test and Chi-squared Friedman test, respectively. Across all questions, the Kruskal-Wallis test produced significant values (p =3.1%) for question Rel1 (“I felt as though I was part of a team”). The Chi-squared Friedman test also showed a significant variance of p =2.2% for Rel1. The post-hoc Dunn test showed a difference between the gamified-a and control groups (p = .86%), where participants felt more a part of a team in the control group (average 6.2 versus an average of 4 for gamified-a).

Figure 5. Motivational survey (Sailer, 2016) responses for individual questions (l.) and averaged (r.).

We also decided to look at the motivational data across certain demographics instead of the groups. Further investigating the difference in motivational scores across gender, females (n =6) scored higher than males (n =7) across groups except for “Satisfied with performance” (Comp2, t = 0.7459, p = .4620) and “Felt like I made my own decisions” (Des5, t = −0.6788, p = 1.4972). When comparing across education levels, participants with master’s degree and above (n = 6) scored more highly than bachelor’s degree and below (n = 7) except for “Felt part of a team” (Rel2, t = 0.8531, p = .4009) and “Satisfied with performance” (Comp2, t = 0.7459, p = .4620). Lastly, across the groups, people who spent more than 5 min and 15 sec in the application (including taking the questionnaire) scored about the same for people who spent less than 5 min and 15 sec in the application in everything except for “felt capable and effective” (Comp6, t = 0.3970, p = .6944), “sense of achievement”(Comp7, t = −0.4383, p = 1.3355), “make my own decisions” (Des5, t = −0.6788, p = 1.4972), and “decide what I do during” (Comp4, t = −0.2218, p13 = 1.1739), where the people who spent less time scored higher. The time analysis is not very promising as some of the timestamps do not perfectly align with the amount of time spent in-app, as they include the time spent discussing and completing out-of-app questionnaires.

6.4. Game screen associations

Table 6 shows participants’ perceived associations between application screens (game spaces) and the available actions within the app for all participants (n =15), the control group (n =5), the gamified-a group (n =5), and the gamified group (n =5). Participants were only able to select one screen per action. These actions include navigation, identifying one’s own location, identifying the project location, viewing planning information in the real world, finding and viewing project information, viewing project history, identifying projects, identifying participation options, and participating in the project. The application screens included the map page, project information page, profile page, augmented reality window, and quest page. Participants’ associations of actions to digital spaces differed between the control group and both gamified (gamified and gamified-a) groups. In the first instance, access to project information was associated with the project information page (n =5); in the gamified versions (gamified and gamified-a), access to project information was associated with the map (n =1, n =2), the project information page (n =2, n =2), and the augmented reality window (n =1, n =1) and in the case of the fully gamified version even within the profile page (n =1). In both gamified versions (gamified and gamified-a), participating was associated with the map (n =2, n =1) and quest pages (n =3, n =4). In comparison, the control group associated participation more with the project information page (n =3). Whilst both the control group and the gamified-a group associated navigation primarily with the map screen (n =4, n =5), the fully gamified group drew associations with the map page (n =2) and the augmented reality window (n =2). Whilst the control and gamified-a group participants associated the action of viewing planning information in the real world with the augmented reality window (n =4, n =4), the gamified group participants associated it with the map (n =2), project information page (n =1), and augmented reality (n =2).

Table 6. Game screen associations: activities by application screen area (n = 15)

Area of application	Navigation	Real world planning info	Identify project	Participation	Location identification	Project overview	Project history	Participation	Project location	Total
Map (all)	11	3	7	0	13	3	3	4	7	51
AR (all)	2	10	5	2	1	2	0	0	4	26
Project info (all)	2	2	3	7	0	9	10	3	3	39
Quest (all)	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	8	1	15
Profile (all)	0	0	0	0	1	1	2	0	0	4
Map (a)	2	2	2	0	5	1	1	2	1	16
AR (a)	2	2	2	1	0	1	0	0	1	9
Project info (a)	1	1	1	2	0	2	3	0	2	12
Quest (a)	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	3	1	6
Profile (a)	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	2
Map (b)	5	0	3	0	4	2	0	1	4	19
AR (b)	0	4	1	1	0	1	0	0	1	8
Project info (b)	0	1	1	2	0	2	4	0	0	10
Quest (b)	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	4	0	6
Profile (b)	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	2
Map (c)	4	1	2	0	4	0	2	1	2	16
AR (c)	0	4	2	0	1	0	0	0	2	9
Project info (c)	1	0	1	3	0	5	3	3	1	17
Quest (c)	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	1	0	3
Profile (c)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

6.5. Learning effects

Participants (n =15) were asked what projects being planned in the area they were aware of, both before and after using the application. The text-based responses were categorized. Figure 6 presents the projects and issues mentioned. The colors show the increase in knowledge before and after using the application.

Figure 6. Learning effects (n =15).

7. Discussion and limitations

In this section, we interpret and discuss the results from the user evaluations and the post-study interview with the project driver framed according to the three AOI’s outlined in Section 4. We present and discuss our research limitations.

7.1. AOI 1: Stakeholder needs

7.1.1. Usefulness to project driver

A core piece of this research was to collaborate with a planning project driver within a real-world ongoing project. From the beginning, the project driver of the crossing project was open to involving our research within the project and was pleased with the developed application. This could be influenced by their previous positive experience with public participation and that they were not profit-orientated due to the project being publicly funded. The presented results were in keeping with the project driver’s assumptions. Concerns were raised over the low non-representative number of participants, and they agreed that “there should be better digitization” when it comes to urban planning processes to increase the availability of crowdsourced data such as for our project. Personally, they felt more representative results would support them in their discussions with decision-making and planning authorities. When asked about any concerns they might have regarding the possible feedback loop that might occur if more participants were exposed and expressed their opinion in disagreement with their goals did not bother the project driver. They felt it important to “open it up to the public” and have public input backed by data alongside “expert opinions.” However, the project driver did not feel it necessary to give the public feedback regarding their input nor felt a two-way communication channel relevant in contrast with what members of the public may require from such a process.

7.1.2. Participation results

Through observations during the user tests, it was clear that members of the public appreciated the on-location information about the planning projects around them and were happy to be informed and involved. As indicated in Figure 6, many people were unaware of the crossing project due to its being in the early stages. Those projects indicated by members of the public in Figure 6 before interaction with the application occurred, such as the apartment buildings or the government buildings, were already at a building stage. The result indicates that members of the public still access information on planning projects primarily through non-digital media such as print media, as indicated in Table 2. Our finding suggests that the press still holds an important position in providing the public with planning knowledge. Unsurprisingly, project-specific websites, e-mails, and letters were rated low. The first two, because if a project is not known (as indicated in Figure 6), it is unlikely that specific websites or targeted e-mails will reach people; the latter, because sending letters is usually linked to formal planning participation where only specific user groups are targeted.

Further investigation is needed into how gamification supported laypeople’s comprehension of planning information and processes; however, benefits can be drawn from involving the public in planning processes through process supporting gamified communication tools. Members of the public were surprised at how much was going on in the neighborhood and expressed their wish to know more. However, future applications must take both expert and nonspecialist needs into account when creating participatory applications as these needs differ from each other.

7.2. AOI 2: Motivation

On the basis that any results above the neutral measure of 3.5 on a Likert scale of 7 are motivating to some degree, all three versions of the public participation application were considered motivating by the public. Our results indicate that the control group app was perceived as the most motivating, alluding to a limitation in our study regarding the evaluation period to clearly detect motivational effects. This result may be because the control group was the oldest, meaning participants may not have as much experience with digital systems, increasing participants’ perception of the application’s novelty. This finding could also be connected to the way game elements were used, for example, suggesting a negative component of gamification in adding unnecessary layers of complexity (Bogost, 2015; Hyrynsalmi et al., 2017), however as only “avatars” were tested within our work, we do not have enough information to draw any conclusions in this direction. The further examination of different elements within this application poses interesting future work. The avatar game element seemed to affect the motivational affordance autonomy, meaning of task, positively compared to the gamified-a group, meaning participants felt the tasks they were conducting to be more meaningful when they had an avatar than when they did not. This finding is concurrent with findings by Rigby and Ryan (Ryan et al., 2006). In both cases, the avatar had a function beyond cosmetics (Sailer, 2016) in support of user interaction and cognitive projection (Schell, 2019). How an element is visually presented can affect how it is perceived (Sailer, 2016). Furthermore, it can be argued that the immersive qualities of avatars (Schell, 2019) may enable people to better perceive their relationship to planning projects and their ability to participate within them. In our study, the gamified group participants also felt slightly more competent in their actions and more socially related than those in the gamified-a group. Sailer (Sailer, 2016) was also able to identify a connection between avatars and social relatedness in his tests, although he found no connection between avatar and competence. The effects of avatars on social engagement could be explained through the user’s relationship to this game element, as an identifier and as a means to “control” the virtual environment. It is less clear why avatars may affect people’s sense of competency, but perhaps here too, as with the meaning of task, avatars affect people’s perception of public participation within the planning context. Our findings found no difference between the gamified and gamified-a groups regarding perceived autonomy in freedom of choice. These findings correspond with Sailer’s (Sailer, 2016) findings regarding avatars. Making game elements visually more explicit within future applications could improve both tangibility for users and element definitions among developers. Game elements were not always explicitly recognizable within our application, which may have affected the results.

7.3. AOI 3: Space-time

From on-site observations, people seemed to find the AR screen novel within this context. With 10/ 15 participants linking the AR screen with the action of accessing real-world planning information, as shown in Table 6, the use of AR may support the digital-physical connection of information. There was no difference in the association between the application variants regarding this point, which is unsurprising as there was only very limited implementation of gamification involved in the AR interaction. In future work, this could be expanded upon. Overall, the most commonly selected digital spaces were the map space (51/ 135) and the project information page (39/ 135). This is likely due to these digital spaces being familiar to people as they are widely used across different applications. There is some evidence from the user tests that the avatar game element influenced participants through the projection effects of this element. This is evident in some of the screen association differences (navigation, project location) between the different application variants, as displayed in Table 6. Most interestingly, however, is that the results displayed in Table 6 may suggest that the use of gamification affects people’s perception of the type of participation they are involved in. In the control group, participation was most associated with the project information page. This page is a more informative space linked to a lower level of participation. In the gamified versions (gamified and gamified-a), participants hardly associated the action of participating with the project information page but strongly associated participation with the map and quest screens. This suggests a more interactive and higher form of participation. Our results cannot confirm this theory; however, it opens an interesting line of future inquiry examining the connection between gamification and perceived engagement level. For example, it has been shown that digital information laid over the physical, in that of an AR hologram, impacts changing social behaviors (Miller et al., 2019). A further future investigation into how overlaying spatial information through AR in relation to people and objects in a certain context can reveal further persuasive interface insights in the gamified urban planning context.

7.4. Limitations

Within our research, we aimed to address some of the issues identified pertaining to gamification research. However, one issue we were unable to address was the short study period. The main reason for this is that planning projects span a number of years. To adequately evaluate how the application of gamification affects planning communication across the planning process would require a long-term dedicated project. Such an undertaking would be more suitable for research targeting more specific gamification-related questions. At present, the field is too young to do this form of research justice, as there is still too little understanding of the measuring methods and the effects of gamification in such processes. There are many possible sources of bias within the in-app questionnaire. First, very few participants indicated that they used a car as a transportation mode in the area. This is most likely due to participants being recruited off the street. There was no parking at the location, so the “car driver” group is underrepresented within our study. A lab-controlled study may have balanced this out, or the user test may be adapted to include this group. Furthermore, as the application was developed in consultation with the crossing project, this project was over-represented in the application compared to other projects in the area. This may have influenced the participants’ choice of preferred crossing type.

8. Conclusion

This work has used human-centered principles to investigate urban planning communication problems focusing on public participation. We have outlined the use of gamification as a means of solving public participation motivational issues, providing evidence that gamification can be used to communicate process and procedural information; to supply information in small, regular, understandable portions; to encourage interaction with planning information by highlighting benefits or providing them; and to support the connection between spatial, temporal, and digital information (RQ1). Further, we provide a background to gamification research and identify opportunities for gamification within the field of urban planning by a) adding to the new sub-field of gamification in urban planning, b) by highlighting the relevance of game interface and spatial concepts to the definition of gamification in a planning context, and c) by proposing a test methodology in evaluating the effects of individual game elements to facilitate the identification of universal game element effects. In addressing what effects gamification has on public motivation and participation a gamified public participation application was developed and evaluated by members of the public (RQ2). With the understanding of our context and tools, we consulted with the project driver of a real-world planning project, which allowed us to develop an appropriate case study highlighting real-world challenges. For this case study, we designed an informed prototype for gamified public participation as a process supporting communication tool in urban planning. The on-location evaluation with members of the public 1) confirmed the importance of considering multiple stakeholder perspectives during the development of such applications, 2) suggested a connection between the avatar game element and the motivational affordances autonomy in meaning of task, perceived competence, and perceived social relatedness, as well as 3) suggested that the use of gamification changes the relationship between a user and the participation level they engage in. The proposed evaluation methodology can be applied in different application contexts and for different game elements in future investigations. Only when comparable methodologies are utilized can findings on the effect of individual game elements be empirically corroborated. A further and more detailed investigation into how gamification affects users’ perceived perception of planning processes and participation is needed. Finally, a long-term investigation into the effects of both gamification and the location of planning information on-site should be pursued.

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted in collaboration between the Technical University of Munich (TUM) Chair of Architectural Informatics and the TUM Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures and Augmented Reality. The research is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the TUM International Graduate School of Science and Engineering (IGSSE).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah L. Muehlhaus

Sarah L. Muehlhaus holds degrees in architecture (M.A., Technical University of Munich (TUM)) and general management (MBA). She has experience in architectural research and practice, focussing on digital design decision support, information design, and public participation in planning. She is pursuing her doctorate at the TUM (IGSSE scholarship holder).

Chloe Eghtebas

Chloe Eghtebas is working toward her PhD on her topic of bystander privacy in Augmented Reality applications. She has a background in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She wanted to do her final degree in Human Computer Interaction to gain expertise in applying its various methods.

Nils Seifert

Nils Seifert graduated in the field of architecture. He worked as a teaching and research assistant at the TUM Chair of Architectural Informatics (2014-2020), focusing on decision support in urban planning, visual programming, 3D city models, information design, and data visualization. In 2021 he co-founded Urbanistic GmbH.

Gerhard Schubert

Gerhard Schubert is a Senior Researcher at the TUM Chair of Architectural Informatics and Director of Research at the TUM Department of Architecture. He studied architecture and completed his doctorate in 2014. His focus falls into the interdisciplinary field of computer science, architecture, and perceptual psychology and heads the CDP research group.

Frank Petzold

Frank Petzold is Professor of the TUM Chair of Architectural Informatics and holds a degree and doctorate in computer science. He is a founding member of the German Association of Architectural Informatics and the TUM Leonhard Obermeyer Center, and is member of the German Association of Computing in Civil Engineering and the Munich Data Science Institute.

Gudrun Klinker

Gudrun Klinker is Professor of AR at the TUM. She studied computer science (Friedrich Alexander University (Erlangen), the University of Hamburg) and obtained her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. She is a founding member of the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) and member of various program committees (V.R., VRST, 3DUI, UIST).