Towards Higher Motivation to Perform Software Comprehension Tasks Through Gamification

Abstract

Gaining an in-depth understanding of the structure of software systems can be overwhelming, time-consuming, and unappealing. Since people play a key role in software development, human factors, such as motivation, must be considered when designing software development tools. We investigated this concept by using "gamification" for software visualization. We developed a gamified visualization tool for object-oriented software architectures, added gamification elements using a user-centered design approach, and evaluated it based on qualitative feedback from software developers. Our results suggest that gamification meaningfully enhances software understanding via visualization. However, further design iterations are needed to improve gamified visualization, as well as a quantitative study to evaluate it.