My last article was mainly about Collaborative Information Seeking – one of the trends in enterprise search. Another interesting topic is the use of games’ mechanics in CIS systems. I met up with this idea during previously mentioned ESE 2014 conference, but interest is so high, that this year in Amsterdam a GamifIR (workshops on Gamification for Information Retrieval) took place. IR community have debated about what kind of benefits can IR tasks bring from games’ techniques. Workshops cover gamified task in context of searching, natural language processing, analyzing user behavior or collaborating. The last one was discussed in article titled “Enhancing Collaborative Search Systems Engagement Through Gamification” and has been mentioned by Martin White in his great presentation about search trends on last ESE summit.

Gamification is a concept which provides and uses game elements in non-game environment. Its goal is to improve customers or employees motivation for using some services. In the case of Information Retrieval it is e.g. encouraging people to find information in more efficient way. It is quite instinctive because competition is  an inherent part of human nature. Long time ago, business sectors have noticed that higher engagement, activating new users and establishing interaction between them, rewarding the effort of doing something lead to measurable results. Even if quality of data given by users could be higher. Among those elements can be included: leaderboards, levels, badges, achievements, time or resources limitation, challenges and many others. There are even described design patterns and models connected with gameplay, components, game practices and processes. Such rules are essential because virtual badge has no value until being assigned by user.

Collaborative Information Seeking is an idea suited for people cooperating on complex task which leads to find specific information. Systems like this support team work, coordinate actions and improve communication in many different ways and with usage of various mechanisms. At first glance it seems that gamification is perfect adopted to CIS projects. Seekers become more social, feeling of competence foster actions which in turn are rewarded.

The most important thing is to know why do we need gamified system and what kind of benefits we will get. Next step is to understand fundamental elements of a game and find out how adopt them to IR case. In their article “Enhancing Collaborative Search Systems Engagement Through Gamification”, researchers of Granada and Holguin universities have listed propositions how to gamify CIS system.  Based on their suggestions I think essential points are to prepare highly sociable environment for seekers. Every player (seeker) needs to have own personal profile which stores previous achievements and can be customized. Constant feedback on progress, list of successful members, time limitations, keeping the spirit of competition by all kinds of widgets are important for motivating and building a loyalty. Worth to remember that points collected after achieving goals need to be converted into virtual values which can distinguish the most active players. Crucial thing is to construct clear and fair principles, because often information seeking with such elements is a fun and it can’t be ruined.

Researchers from Finnish universities, who published article “Does Gamification Work?”, have broken down a problem of gamifying into components and have thoroughly studied them. Their conclusion was that concept of gamification can work, but there are some weaknesses – context which is going to be gamified and the quality of the users. Probably, the main problem is lack of knowledge which elements really provide benefits.

Gamification can be treated as a new way to deal with complex data structures. Limitations of data analyzing can be replaced by mechanism which increase activity of users in Information Retrieval process. Even more – such concept may leads to more higher quality data, because of increased people motivation. I believe, Collaborative Information Seeking, Gamification and similar ideas are one of the solutions how to improve search experience by helping people to become better searchers than not by just tuning up algorithms.