Keeping score: The quantified self meets gamification

Whether we’re conscious of it of not, every time we step on a treadmill or hold off on eating that second cookie we’re not only quantifying ourselves — we’re also competing with ourselves.

First attributed to a couple of writers in Wired magazine, what’s now known as the “quantified self” movement is exploring all kinds of tools that track various aspects of daily life including food consumed, calories burned or even where we focus our attention. Add gamification to this mix and “self-knowledge through numbers” becomes even more interesting, argues Jennifer R. Whitson, a postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University’s TAG Lab.

Whitson is the author of ‘Gaming the Quantified Self,” an academic research paper published in the scholarly journal Surveillance & Society in August. In it, Whitson suggests that adding badges or other rewards along with the various challenges members of the quantified self movement impose on themselves, like losing weight, to have a potentially richer experience:

“The game to be played is about bodies and human capacities. The user sees a representation of their self in the game and engages with it. This representation is formed from the data collected by algorithms, which is collated into strings of numbers, variables, and inputs within the game’s database, and then assembled into feedback systems that let the player know what to do next,” she writes. “Becoming the victorious subject of gamification is a never-ending levelling-up process, guided by a teleology of constant and continual improvement, driven by an unending stream of positive feedback and virtual rewards, and fuelled by the notion that this process is playful.”

Whitson looks at gamification and surveillance in three categories. The first is self-surveillance monitoring using tools like the Nike+ app to encourage runners to not only track how long or how far they go but provides feedback that motivates them to do better.

The social networking service Foursquare, meanwhile, is a good example of what Whitson calls participatory surveillance, where users “check in” to various locations over the course of the day to earn badges or be crowned “mayor” of a place they visit more often than anyone else.

It’s hierarchical surveillance or gamified workplaces, however, where Whitman’s research may prove most intriguing. She explores the theory that gamification could boost efficiencies in environments where productivity is highly important, like call centres. There is, however, some possible limits to the success organizations may have in this area, she contends.

“If workers are unable to turn the game off and are unable to choose to participate or not, this is not a game,” Whitson writes. “Pre-existing understandings of the institutional arrangement of work, and how work contrasts to play, are deeply embedded within subjects, defining their relationship with these institutions. A veneer of play is unable to hide the underlying reality of work.”

The barrier those involved in gamification must overcome, in other words, is an age-old problem: how can we better mix business with pleasure? Read Whitson’s full report, ‘Gaming the Quantified Self,’ to start figuring out an answer.