Engagement and creativity in gamified remote co-design workshops: A comparison experimental study

The co-design approach is increasingly popular in facilitating the interchange of knowledge among multiple stakeholders. However, a new challenge emerged during the post-pandemic era when working from home became normal: how to facilitate co-design workshops remotely? The gamification tools, which involve the use of game elements in non-game contexts, appear to be a promising solution for re-engaging teams in online co-design workshops. To investigate this potential, we conducted an explorative experiment in an educational co-design setting with 46 Master's students participating. By comparing the use of an online gamification tool 'ideaGardener' in the gamified workshops with an ad hoc 'non-game' tool in the comparison non-game workshops, we found that participants experiencing gamified workshops reported significantly higher levels of engagement. Moreover, we invited five experts to rate all the developed concepts from these workshops regarding the students' performance of creativity. The results indicated that the concepts developed from the gamified workshops were acknowledged by the experts as having more novelty. This article provides practical implications that suggest the use of gamification tools in remote co-design workshops to achieve a higher level of participant engagement and more novel outcomes. It also discusses several educational implications based on the educational experimental context.