Abstract. Digital Motivation in business refers to the use of technology in order to facilitate a change of attitude, perception and behaviour with regards to adopting policies, achieving goals and executing tasks. It is a broad term to indicate existing and emerging paradigms such as Gamification, Persuasive Technology, Serious Games and Entertainment Computing. Our previous research indicated risks when applying Digital Motivation. One of these main risks is the impact it can have on the interpersonal relationships between colleagues and their individual and collective performance. It may lead to a feeling of unfairness and trigger negative group processes (such as social loafing and unofficial clustering) and adverse work ethics. In this paper, we propose a set of strategies to minimize such risks and then consolidate these strategies through an empirical study involving managers, practitioners and users. The strategies are then analysed for their goal, stage and purpose of use to add further guidance. The strategies and their classification are meant to inform developers and management on how to design, set-up and introduce Digital Motivation to a business environment, maximize its efficiency and minimize its side-effects on teamwork.

There is a growing acceptance of the association between obsessive, compulsive and excessive usage of digital media, e.g., games and social networks, and users' wellbeing, whether personal, economic or social. While specific causal relations between such Digital Addiction (DA) and the negative life experience can be debated, we argue in this paper that, nevertheless, technology can play a role in preventing or raising awareness of its pathological or problematic usage styles, e.g. through monitoring usage and enabling interactive awareness messages. We perform a literature review, with the primary aim of gathering the range negative life experiences associated with DA. We then conduct two focus groups to help gather users' perception of the key findings from the literature. Finally, we perform a qualitative analysis of experts and practitioners' interviews and comments from a user survey on DA warning labels. As a result, we develop eight families of the negative life experiences associated with DA, examine the role of software in facilitating the reduction of such negative experiences, and consider the challenges that may be encountered in the process.

Gamification in businesses refers to the use of technology-assisted solutions to boost or change staff attitude, perception and behaviour, about the individual or collective goals and tasks. Previous research indicated that gamification techniques could introduce risks to the business environment, and not only fail to make a positive change, but also raise concerns about ethics, quality of work, and well-being in a workplace. Although the problem is already recognised in principle, there is still a need to clarify and concretise those risks, their factors and their relation to the gamification dynamics and mechanics. In this paper, we focus on gamification risks related to teamwork within the enterprise. To address this, we conducted three-stage empirical research in two large-scale businesses using gamification in their workplace, including two months' observation and interview study. We outline various risk mitigation strategies and map them to primary types of gamification risks. By accomplishing such conceptualisation, we pave the way towards methods to model, detect and predict gamification risks on teamwork and recommend design practices and strategies to tackle them.

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Digital addiction (hereafter DA) denotes a problematic relationship with technology described by being compulsive, obsessive, impulsive and hasty. New research has identified cases where users’ digital behaviour shows symptoms meeting the clinical criteria of behavioural addiction. The online peer groups approach is one of the strategies to combat addictive behaviours. Unlike other behaviours, intervention and addictive usage can be on the same medium; the online space. This shared medium empowers influence techniques found in peer groups, such as self-monitoring, social surveillance, and personalised feedback, with a higher degree of interactivity, continuity and real-time communication. Social media platforms in general and online peer groups, in particular, have received little guidance as to how software design should take it into account. Careful theoretical understanding of the unique attributes and dynamics of such platforms and their intersection with gamification and persuasive techniques is needed as the ad-hoc design may cause unexpected harm. In this paper, we investigate how to facilitate the design process to ensure a systematic development of this technology. We conducted several qualitative studies including user studies and observational investigations. The primary contribution of this research is twofold: (i) a reference model for designing interactive online platforms to host peer groups and combat DA, (ii) a process model, COPE.er, inspired by the participatory design approach to building Customisable Online Persuasive Ecology by Engineering Rehabilitation strategies for different groups.