The influence of gamification on intrinsic

motivation: the case of Nike+

Thibaut Aymard and Dr. Patrick Stacey

Abstract
The prevalence of videogames and their practices has been coined as the ludification of culture. One
phenomenon stemming from this trend is ‘gamification’, which is defined as the use of game design
elements in non-game contexts in order to initiate or encourage engagement in a given task. Our research
describes and analyses a case study that investigated the influence of gamification on intrinsically
motivated runners. Considering the rapid expansion of the phenomenon, it is of paramount importance to
examine the impacts of gamification not only on the targeted unmotivated users but also on other users
who might be already motivated by the task. We have adopted an interpretive paradigm and collected data
at a London based running club where some runners are using an information system called Nike+ as part
of their running experience. Our findings illustrate that gamification may have negligible effects on
intrinsically motivated users, in opposition to what is commonly argued within the academic gamification
field. We provide rich explanations regarding the dynamics shaping this finding and conclude that even if
it may not be an interesting and meaningful experience for all, it may be possible to see individuals with
very different levels of motivation coexisting on the same gamified information system.

Keywords:
gamification, gameful design, intrinsic motivation, meaningful user experience, goal-setting theory,
cognitive evaluation theory

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INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of ‘gamification’ on an intrinsically motivated
tasks. Benefiting from decades of gradual expansion, adoption and institutionalisation, video games have
become ubiquitous in today’s western world. Enabled by the prevalence of digital technologies such as the
Internet, computers and mobile technologies, a tsunami of easy to play and engaging casual games have
swept away all the demographic and situational clichés concerning video games. This “casual revolution”
(Juul, 2010) has opened up the playing of video games as never before. This phenomenon has been
observed by scholars as the “ludification of culture” (Raessens, 2006; Montola et al, 2009). By recognizing
the importance of what Huizinga (1955) once termed “the play element” in our current society, scholars
observe that video-games practises, mind-sets, conventions and competences are from now on
intertwined with the realm of our lives and environment (Raessens, 2006; Dixon et al, 2011). Therefore
the appropriation of dynamics stemming from video games permits individuals to develop “playful
identities” (Raessens, 2006; Dixon et al, 2011) and “gaming capital” (Consalvo, 2007).
One of the trajectories emerging from this “ludification” trend is the use of games in non-game contexts.
The use of game elements in non-game context is termed as “gamification” (Deterding et al. 2011). The
basic idea behind gamification is to introduce game-design elements in non-game context to increase
interest and motivation and therefore drive engagement (Deterding et al. 2011). Gartner (2011) positions
gamification at the top of its famous “hype cycle” and forecast mass adoption within the industry in the
next five to ten years. The most vocal proponents of the neologism consider gamification as a new
paradigm which will revolutionize our world by complementing it with a “game layer” (Priebatsch, 2010;
Zichermann and Cunningham, 2011). It would be inaccurate to say that this view and what it conveys has
been unanimously accepted by game designers and game scholars. For instance, Bogost (2011) contends
that gamification, as implemented today in the industry, is “bullshit”. Too summarize his view, which is
consistent with some important game scholars and designers (see for example McGonigal, 2011 and
Deterding 2011a), the gamification industry misunderstands and thus oversimplifies the dynamics of
games and what actually make them fun. Also, Bogost (2011) critiques the objectives of most
organisations implementing gamification, which is, he believes, to manipulate and trick users in order to
get the “best out of them”.
As the concept is in its infancy, both from theoretical and practical standpoint, such contentions could
have been expected; still the concept is too widespread and appears to present too much intrinsic value to
be simply ignored or considered as a simple fad. Because gamification is about driving engagement,
human motivation theories are central to the study of gamification. The research conducted in this area
mainly focus on providing recommendations in order to design a system which could afford motivational
affordance and consequently engage a broader set of users. To do so scholars usually frown upon the use
of extrinsic motivators and praise the development of an intrinsically motivating and meaningful user
experience (see for instance Laschke and Hassenzahl, 2011; Schell, 2011; Deterding, 2011a). In this
research we wish to address a question relating to motivation, which has not been covered so far in the
literature: What is the influence of gamification on an intrinsically motivated task?
At first sight this question may sound slightly paradoxical or counterintuitive in the gamification debate;
still we believe that it is of paramount importance to investigate this matter. Indeed, no gamified
information system is designed with the assumption in mind that absolutely no users have any
motivation, envy, or interest to engage with the system, service or activity. The usual objective of
gamification is either to initiate or encourage a given behaviour. It implies that from a motivational
perspective, users may be located on a large continuum from absolutely no intrinsic motivation to high
intrinsic motivation to engage with a task. This observation induces that users may potentially be
inherently motivated to perform an activity or use a service but will still be targeted by the gamification
side of the system. It is that specific point that we would like to investigate in this research.
This will be accomplished through an interpretive case study conducted at a London based running club
which will examine how 9 runners engage with a gamified information system called Nike+. This website
allows runners using the sportswear giant tracking devices (e.g. sports watch, wristband) to retrieve their
workout data. In order to encourage people who may be struggling to motivate themselves to run, the
platform also incorporates very integrated and developed gamification features. We therefore understand
that our 9 runners are exposed to gamification features even if they run for their own sake. We wish to

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contribute to the literature by providing rich insights from the case regarding the influence of gamification
on intrinsic motivation and the coexistence of intrinsically and extrinsically motivated users on the same
gamified information system.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Definition and framing

The term “gamification” was coined in 2008 (Paharia, 2008) and is now widely used (Deterding et al,
2011). It is defined as, the use of game design elements or characteristic in non-game contexts” (Deterding
et al, 2011; Zichermann and Cunningham, 2011). Building on the work of play theorist Huizinga's (1955),
Caillois in Man, Play and Games (2001) helps us to distinguish play and game through the concepts of
“paidia” and “ludus”. For Callois (2001) these two notions are at both ends on the scale of play activities.
Play or “paidia” is characterized by a “spontaneous and rule free play” (Dixon, 2009) while game or
“ludus” conveys the idea of a structured experience organized around defined rules, objectives, and
outcomes (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). This dichotomy and the mutual exclusiveness of playing and
gaming is challenged by contemporary game scholars such as Dixon (2009) as the line between the two
experiences seems to be quite blurry in the context of video games, therefore they may be considered as
twinned experience. Reflecting on the definition of gamification then, it infers that play is excluded.
Gamification uses game elements, “that do not give rise to entire games” (Deterding et al, 2011b:p2). Such
elements or “game ingredients” (Reeves and Read, 2009) may for example be a narrative context,
feedback mechanisms, time pressure, awards, etc. A game is supposedly designed for entertainment
purposes (Schell, 2008); consequently, any system designed for a non-game context is a system that
doesn’t primarily aim at entertaining people (Deterding et al, 2011b). Examples of non-game contexts that
embrace gamification could be business-intelligence, software engineering, education or even energy
consumption. As we are facing an “increasing societal adoption and institutionalization of video games”
(Deterding et al, 2011b), which Schell (2010) described as the “Gamepocalypse”, it may be helpful to
contrast “gamification” with concepts such as pervasive games or serious games. On one hand pervasive
games could be defined as extending the gaming experience to the real word (Benford et al, 2005). On the
other hand, serious games tend to capitalize on “the power of computer games to captivate and engage
end-users” in non-gaming tasks (Susi et al, 2007).

Motivational outlook

Gamification can, “motivate users to remain engaged in an activity” (Deterding et al, 2011b). But what is
meant by motivating users and how could a gamified system design-in motivational affordances? Because
the design of a gamified application embeds assumptions of what triggers motivation, this question is
central to the gamification debate. The Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is of great help in this respect.
SDT, “assumes that people are active organisms with inherent and deeply evolved tendencies towards
psychological growth and development” (Ryan, 2009). The theory distinguishes two types of motivations,
intrinsic and extrinsic. Whereas the extrinsic motivation is driven by external factors (reinforcers and
punishers), the intrinsic motivation is linked to inner psychological needs. Laschke and Hassenzahl (2011)
offer a lucid perspective on the philosophical assumptions driving today’s use of gamification. They
qualify the extrinsic oriented reward-systems approach undertaken by most practitioners as “a relic from
the era of behaviourism, a reissue of Token Economies and Learning Machines”. They advocate that
gamification should tend to deliver a better experience supported by the provision of significant meaning
and stories. Also, they argue that in order to have a real longstanding behavioural impact, gamified
environments should find a way to integrate disparate occurrences of expected behaviours into a single
experience instead of deploying one-shot rewards that fails to anchor behavioural changes. Most game
scholars share that view (Schell, 2011; Deterding, 2011a) and advocate for the use of design stimulating
intrinsic motivation at the expense of extrinsic motivation.

Contextual perspective
Research is far from having answered the entire question regarding how to design gamified information
systems “that use social psychological processes well by taking into account contexts, meanings, and
individual differences” (Deterding, 2012). Based on several gamification experiments within a work

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setting and especially focusing on the dynamic of teams, Cheng and colleagues (2011) found that “factors
like corporate culture, the team’s social norms, and leadership style can dictate when it is appropriate for
a team to participate in a gamification based experience”. Preliminary analysis of the Play Society
Research Project (Kuikkaniemi et al., 2011) tends to show that the “situation - context variables, social
dynamics, relationships between people and place or the state-of-mind of the user - surrounding the
specified playful event” might be a more influencing factor than the product or interface itself in causing
or not playful episodes. Cramer and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that in some cases, by overlooking
norms and social boundaries, game design artefacts may trigger counter-productive behaviour and result
in obstructing instead of driving user engagement. They gave the vivid example of a consultant who was
reluctant to check-in into the office of one of his clients as she or he was afraid that taking over the
“mayorship” of the place would be perceived as a display of public ownership and would indirectly
communicate about his identity in a negative way. Deterding (2011) notes that “playing games is the
prototypical example for an autotelic, intrinsically motivating activity”, still, because game elements are
transposed to non-game setting, usually from a “play” to a “work” context, they are likely not to generate
the same motivational affordance as full-fledged video games. , When a game design element such as a
leaderboard is imposed in a work context (e.g. to compare sales performance), leading to public
comparison and linked to financial incentives, it is neither voluntary nor free of consequence and
therefore can’t be observed without involving a situational dimension. Consequently, Deterding (2011)
argues that the concept of motivational affordance isn’t sufficient to conceptualise “the motivational pull
of single game design elements” and should be augmented to encompass situation as a critical parameter.

THEORETICAL LENSES
Most of the studies that investigate the motivational dimension of gameful design focus on how gamified
information systems should design-in motivational affordances. The debate usually revolves around the
distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (see for example Schell, 2011; Deterding, 2011a),
linking up to the Self-Determination Theory (Deci et al, 1985, 2000; Ryan et al., 2000). There, most argue
in favour of the strength of autonomous motivation against controlled motivation (see for instance
Laschke and Hassenzahl, 2011). We adopt a different angle because our participants are intrinsically
motivated by the activity: running. They are amateur runners voluntarily using an information system to
support their running experience, and this information system happens to be “gamified”. This
configuration doesn’t entail a gamified information system designed to foster user engagement in a
tiresome task. Therefore we saw fit to investigate this setting in the light of two complementary theoretical
lenses; Goal-Setting Theory (GST) (Locke, 1996; Locke and Latham, 2002) and Cognitive Evaluation
Theory (CET) (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1985). The GST has been chosen because most of the gamified
features of the information system under study, Nike+, are built on goals dynamics. The CET lens was
selected because it investigates how intrinsic motivation may be increased or undermined by external
factors, which in our case would be the use of a gamified information system. We now delineate these
lenses.
Psychologists Locke and Latham (1984; 1990; 2002) proposed the GST theory, sweeping away the old
positivist paradigm of the behaviourist school of thought which argued that motivation resides outside the
individual. Goal-setting is then conceptualized as discrepancy-creating process. By committing to a future
goal; one recognizes dissatisfaction with its present situation and show desire to reach a pre-defined
outcome in order to attain a pictured ideal state (Locke, 2006). The process motivates by concentrating
individual’s attention on the discrepancy (Locke and Latham, 1990). Goal difficulty and performance are
linked and progress in a linear way (Locke and Latham, 1990; Mento et al, 1987); increasing goal difficulty
would result in better performance. High goals energize individuals and entice to greater efforts. By
reducing the variance between what is expected and what is achieved, goals play a directive function
(Locke and Latham, 2002). When goals are easy, they don’t require much effort so the feeling of
commitment is quite loose. Similarly, because vague goals fail to provide clear direction and are,
therefore, open to interpretation, they can be adjusted by individuals in order to match lower levels of
performance (Locke, 1996). Self-efficacy, which is the perception of one’s own ability to complete a task
plays a critical role in getting goal commitment (Locke, 1996). Self-efficacy influences to a great extent the
overall goal-setting process as “people with high self-efficacy are more likely to set high goals or to accept
difficult, assigned goals, to commit themselves to difficult goals, to respond with renewed efforts to
setbacks, and to discover successful task strategies” (Locke, 1996). Providing individuals with feedbacks

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allow them to measure their current level of performance and therefore to act upon it (Locke, 1996).
Opposed to a “do your best” instruction or no instruction at all, individuals knowing what is expected
from them perform better (Locke and Latham, 2002) and are more persistent in doing so. Also, in order
to reach a goal, individual will exert a certain amount of effort. As this level of exertion is directly linked to
what is required to hit a given goal, hard goal trigger more efforts and lead to better performance (Locke
and Latham, 2002). Finally, goals can indirectly affect performance as they activate the use of “task-
relevant knowledge and strategies” (Wood and Locke, 1990; Locke and Latham, 2002), indeed,
individuals tend to plan more and formulate new strategies in order to face their new goals.
Next, CET (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1985) is one of the five sub-theories of The Self-Determination
Theory (SDT) framework (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000; Ryan and Deci, 2000). SDT argues that ,“people
are inherently motivated to feel connected [relatedness] to others with a social milieu, to function
effectively within a social milieu [competence] and to feel a sense of personal initiative in doing so
[autonomy]” (Deci and Ryan, 1994). Those tendencies do not operate mechanically but require a
supporting and nurturing milieu to develop; the social context can either thwart or encourage positive
behaviours towards psychological growth. Supporting and satisfying these three needs is a pre-requisite
for “vitality, self-motivation, and well-being”, in other terms, high engagement and intrinsic motivation.
Although SDT discusses intrinsic motivation, it doesn’t elaborate on the factors that could either
positively or negatively influence it. This is why CET (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1985) has been
developed. CET contends that supporting one’s perception of competence and autonomy is critical to
foster its intrinsic motivation. Three elements (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1985) have to be considered to
assess if a given event will undermine or nurture one’s intrinsic motivation: its controlling aspect, its
informational aspect and the functional significance of the event. The controlling aspect refers to one’s
perception of its locus of causality within the course of an event, meaning one’s perception of being
responsible or not of her actions. The informational aspect is associated with one’s perception of
competence during an event. Because any event displays both type of signals, it’s very likely that the
individual will perceive one aspect as more salient than the other. This will define the functional
significance of the event as either informational or controlling. A myriad of research have been conducted
within the psychology and sport psychology in order to test hypotheses based on CET. Termed as the
overjustification effect, Greene and colleagues (1973, 1974, 1975) demonstrated that external rewards
could undermine intrinsic motivation for inherently pleasurable tasks. Calder and Staw (1975) argued that
rewarding uninteresting task increase intrinsic motivation for tasks initially perceived as dull by
participants. Deci and Ryan (1985) expressed their disagreement with such interpretation and contended
that satisfaction and enjoyment are not found in the activity but in the reward. Within the context of
physical activities, as the attractiveness of the task is often of paramount importance with regards to
engagement, external rewards such as money or social status may be valuable tools to initiate
participation (Calder and Staw, 1975). Now, looking at the relationship between feedbacks and intrinsic
motivation, most studies revealed that positive feedbacks would increase one’s feeling of competence and
increase its intrinsic motivation whereas negative feedbacks would undermine it (Vallerand, 1983;
Whitehead and Corbin, 1991). Still, to be effective, feedbacks must be relevant and contingent to one’s
personal goal, appropriate to the overall level of performance and must foster one’s perception of control
Horn (1985, 1987).

RESEARCH DESIGN
Grounded in the interpretivist paradigm, this research follows Walsham’s (1995) precepts of interpretive
case studies in Information Systems (IS). Built around one single case study of a midsize London based
running club, and taking the individual as a unit of analysis, we attempt to provide a “thick description”
(Geertz, 1973) of the organisation in order to shed some light on the resulting phenomenon of the
implementation of a gamified information systems on the motivational dimension of intrinsically motived
amateur athletes. In terms of methods, qualitative data were collected through 9 interviews and extensive
observations of all relevant dimensions of the running club. The data analysis process was inspired by the
methodology described by Rubin and Rubin (1995). In the specific context of our research, because we
want to investigate the relationship between the game design elements implemented within the Nike+
platform and the motivation of our participant, we assume that individuals will rely on the introspection
of their own mental process, motives and actions to discuss our topic of interest. Listening to the
articulation of their experiences and attempting to interpret their views is therefore we believe the most

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suitable approach to understand the phenomenon. In order to study the phenomenon we have made the
logical choice to directly penetrate the participant’s world, where the process is taking place, and thus
gained direct access to the participants’ interpretation (Rosen, 1991). The interpretive approach to IS
research aims “at producing an understanding of the context of the information system, and the process
whereby the information system influences and is influenced by the context” (Walsham, 1993). This
approach aligns with our research aim as it provides a first frame to research a phenomenon that has not
been researched so far. Data were collected over a six week time period at Flyknit (a pseudonym), a
midsize amateur London based running club. We had the opportunity to accomplish 9 semi-structured
interviews which lasted about 45 minutes on an average. Also we carefully reviewed other data such as
the club blog, the private Facebook group and evidently the gamified Nike+ platform. In many situations,
the convergence between those different sources and accounts helped us to corroborate primary
interpretations and therefore give, we believe, more reliability and accuracy to our work.

CASE DESCRIPTION
The running club

Flyknit is an England Athletics affiliated midsize running club based in London consisting of about 300
active members. In terms of demographic, the club has a fairly narrow age structure with most of its
runners being between the age of 20 and 50 years old, with a strong concentration around 30 years old.
From a gender perspective, about 35% are women. The club doesn’t have any specific selection process
and is open to anybody from all age, background, athletic abilities or experience level. The club purpose is
mainly on road running, with members taking part in event all year round. Typical events are 5 kilometres
races, 10 kilometres races, half-marathons and marathons.
The philosophy of the club is to help runners in reaching their goals, whatever they could be, which
implies that performance isn’t the first raison d’être of Flyknit. Still we can distinguish three groups based
on a performance. The first one comprises the most assiduous and robust members, these runners enjoy
competition and challenges. They run long distances and are highly committed to their training
programmes. For the purpose of our research we will call them the performance runners. The second
group consist of what we could term as the serious casual runners; the mind-set is generally less
competitive, therefore the performance aspect is less exacerbated. Very few of them engage in marathons
but it is frequent to see them participating in 10K or half-marathon races. The last group, the fitness and
leisure runners group, is less homogeneous and encompasses a variety of profiles: beginners and less
experienced runners, people running at low paces or with limited endurance, members running less
regularly and those who run solely for well-being reasons without really caring about races or
performance.
The social side of the running club is of paramount importance to members, accordingly twice a month a
social event is organized; also it is not rare to see some members heading to the pub after a good training.
In order to communicate with its members, the organisers rely on a blog and a micro-blogging account
(Twitter). Due to the nature of such medium, the communication is mainly top-down and very few
interaction take place within both spaces. Conversely, the club has a very active private group on a social
networking website (Facebook). Communication on that platform is very open and diverse. The high
engagement in the social network group emphasis a common trait within many active runners of the club:
they like and are very comfortable with technology. Accordingly, many appreciate supporting and
extending their running experience with dedicated running technologies, such as the Nike+ suite which is
one of the most used worldwide.

The Nike+ environment

Enabled by the rise of low-cost sensing architectures, supported by the prevalence of smart mobile
technologies and surfing on the digital fitness trend, the Nike+ environment comprises a suite of software
and hardware designed to allow people to track their physical activity. At the heart of the Nike+
experience lies the Nike+ website. The platform main purpose is to provide running statistics to the
runners. The service is free but of course a Nike+ tracking equipment is required. Different sensing
devices exist with a set of different capabilities. In our research our participants are all using a sport watch
collecting their location, pace, distance and calories burnt. Nike+ incorporates very developed social

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component and integrates many gamification features, for that reason it could be described as a mix of a
digital fitness portal, a gaming platform, and a social network site. The user interface provides a rich and
straightforward experience. The website is divided into four pages: homepage, dashboard, activity and
places.

Homepage

The homepage is organised around four sections. First it presents an overview of the user, showing his
name, picture, how many NikeFuel points she or he has earned in total (more details about NikeFuel
points in coming sections) and an expandable list displaying the other users - or “friends” – she or he is
connected to on the platform. The second section displays a summary of the user’s activity. As shown on
figure 2, participant Brunny ran 1,013 miles in 509 run earning him 344,602 points. The third
information given on the homepage is the last trophies won by the user. Lastly, the user is provided with a
rich visualisation about his three last activities showing collected data such as calories, distances, steps
and routes.
Figure 1 : Screenshot of the activity overview of participant Brunny

Dashboard page

The second page is the dashboard page. This page has three principal functions, setting new goals,
checking progress on pre-defined goals and comparing you performance to other users. The goal-setting
functionality is central to the Nike+ experience. The user can choose between four types of goals, namely
running more often, running more miles, earning more NikeFuel or burning more calories. Once a goal is
set, a graphic representation is shown on the page which allows visualising the progress towards the goal.
Alongside goal setting and tracking, the page compares the user’s performance on the last 30 days to other
users with the same gender and age and to all the Nike+ community.

Activity page

The third page, the activity page, could be simply described as the statistical heart of the Nike+ platform.
Users can see all the activities they performed the last week, month, and year or since they started to use
Nike+. The smallest unit of analysis is the run for the running view and the day for the NikeFuel view. It
means that even if the user decide to check his monthly data, she or he can still drill down and access the
specific details of a given run or day. The page also displays a line of badges corresponding to six kind of
personal records; this feature will be discussed further.

Places page

Built on the famous web mapping service Google map, the places page allows users to see where other
Nike+ users run thanks to a heat layer colouring high activity zone on a map. Also it permits to draw the
routes they often use or to be suggested with a Nike+ top route. Nike+ top routes are very popular running
routes defined by Nike in many large cities all around the world, see figure 3. Nike+ top routes may be
compared to circuits where runners can compete, indeed you can decide to take such route and thanks to
your tracking device, Nike+ will be able to compare your performance with other users that already took
the same route.

Focus on the gamification features

On the top of all the statistics already available, Nike created an additional metric, the NikeFuel. It could
be conceptualized as Nike proprietary exertion currency and it is deeply integrated within the Nike+
experience. Defined by the brand as “the ultimate measure of your athletic life”, NikeFuel are awarded to
users after any workout performed with a Nike+ tracking device. In short, any activity one will do will be
converted into NikeFuel and added to a personal points counter. How much steps or burnt calories are

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required to earn a specific amount of NikeFuel is not directly known by the users as the conversion
process is voluntarily obfuscated. Still after some time spent using the system, one should have a good
idea of how much working-out is required to earn a given amount of NikeFuel. The points are awarded on
the basis of the exertion level of a task considering the specific characteristic of the user: gender, age,
weight and height. We assume that thanks to a conversion algorithm built around benchmark values, the
system is able to reward users equitably on the sole basis of their activity. For instance if two users are
awarded with the same amount of points even though the output of their workout is very different, it
means that the system considers that it corresponds to the same level of physical activity for both user
considering their own characteristics. The rationale behind this currency is to create a common ground
for all users to compare and compete. Other benefits could be that while burning calories might be quickly
disheartening, or might not even be an objective for a large part of the users, the NikeFuel targets anyone
and provide a good indicator of your everyday physical activity.
Many user behaviours may be rewarded by trophies. The trophies are closely linked to the goal setting
functionality described earlier. Awarded trophies are presented on the user’s homepage in a virtual trophy
cabinet. The list of all the available trophies is unknown and we assume that it might be in constant
evolution. Typical trophies are personal and will be linked to behaviours such as reaching goals,
outperforming a goal, breaking down records or reaching a new milestone. In figure 4 for instance, the
first trophy corresponds to outperforming a goal by 50%.
Figure 2: One of the shelf of the trophy cabinet of participant Tyson

In addition to trophies, each user is provided with six persistent badges representing six different day-
based personal best: most calories burnt, longest run is distance, longest workout in duration, all-time
fastest 1K, all-time fastest 5K and all time fastest mile.
Another key gamification feature is connected to the Nike+ top routes. Each route has a leaderboard and
what could be compared to a mayorship system. Consequently as figure 5 illustrates, each route has a
“Local Legend”, the user that ran the route the most and a “Speed Demon”, who is the user that achieved
the fastest pace on the given route.
Figure 3: Leaderboard and mayorship system for Nike+ top routes

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

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Performance runners

The more runners are seasoned, ambitious, self-committed and performance-oriented, the more their
running experience will be defined by what they try to achieve: performance-based goals. Such runners
manage their athletic life carefully, rigorously, and in great depth and thus cannot use the goal-setting
functionality as it is too simplistic. Justin, a very committed long-distance runner of Flyknit explains: “I
don’t really need it, I have my own plan, a [excel] spreadsheet that tells me what to do every day for 10
weeks. […] And what about tapering? How does it work out? You need variation in a proper training, and
rest is part of it. It’s not always about doing more. […] It just doesn’t match”. This highlights the
limitations of the Nike+ goal-setting functionality and why as an experienced goal-oriented runner you
might not use it. Indeed, because it only allows setting very basic goals, such as running more miles a
week, running more often, burning more calories or earning more NikeFuel points, it is insufficient to
train for a race. Justin’s quote also encapsulates the idea that the system is designed to encourage users to
always push their limits whereas sometimes, training to achieve a serious goals, such as Justin’s one to
break his half-marathon record, often requires a taper phase; meaning a period in the training where the
body can rest and recover after weeks of high-intensity training. This issue is also expressed by Florence:
“Well I played around with it [the goal-setting functionality], it’s very basic, there is no way it could be
used to organise my training, and even if it was, I’m not sure I would be bothered”. This quote reinforces
our previous point but also evoke another element: resistance to change as a barrier to user adoption.
Indeed, there is no apparent benefit to use this function when you satisfied with the way you have been
managing your training for years.

Casual runners

On the other hand we found that casual runners usually do not have any clear-cut running goals.
Therefore we observed that such users might be inclined to use the goal setting functionality, such
behaviour could be depicted through Usain’s quote: “I used to skip a session from time to time, when I
was up to my eyes in work or felt too exhausted after a long day, and that was fine with me really…
sometimes it is not compatible [with your work, family life, commitments…], you have to prioritise. […].
The thing is that it is very easy to find reasons not to go… and I started to do that a bit too often. […]. So I
challenged myself to run twice a week until I leave [for vacation]…so far so good. It’s there, all planned, all
I have to do is stick to the plan”. Usain has no training programme, goal or personal record to crush;
therefore the functionality provided him with the opportunity to formulate and commit to a goal. We
observed that the functionality helped to operationalize (when, how…) goals and provided a well-defined
space where to fight the discrepancy between present and ideal behaviour and thus trigger motivation
along the way. We also found that through mental projection the platform helps to materialize goals,
serves as a reminder of what still has to be achieved and allows looking back on what has been achieved.
The graphical representation of the progress towards the goal support this dynamic and proves to be a
valuable artefact as noted by Usain: “This may sound silly but the progress line really helps, even if I know
what I’ve achieved […] I still take a look at it from time to time […]”. Even though our analysis reveals that
some leisure/casual runners may be interested by the goal-setting functionality, such as exemplified with
Usain, it clearly doesn’t mean that this behaviour is common to all the runners sharing a similar profile.
Not having a performance-oriented goal doesn’t necessarily mean that runners will set-up a goal on the
Nike+ platform. The main reasons are that runners who are satisfied with their present running
experience may not see the point of engaging with the functionality and it appears to be the most common
configuration.
Goal-setting theory (GST) (Locke and Latham, 1984; 1990; 2006) is a helpful lens to examine this aspect
of the design of the Nike+ platform. Goals as motivational triggers refer to future valued outcome; this
means that the action of setting a goal is in the first place a discrepancy creating process. This entails that
to set a goal one must experience discontent with his current situation and desire to accomplish a more
satisfying defined outcome. Consequently the fact to set a goal is not trivial and embodies dissatisfaction
and will to change one’s present situation. With regard to performance runners, they don’t set goals as
they already have defined goals. Even if they would like to, the system doesn’t allow them to set up these
complex goals on the platform. On the other hand casual runners do not necessarily have well-defined
goals and in a way, this is what defines them as casual runners. Our analysis highlights that some runners
might be willing to set a goal on the platform (e.g. running twice a week for 10 weeks). In line with GST,

9
we found that goals in such situations play a directive role as they provide a specific training trajectory.
Also they encourage delivering a persistent effort and finally help the runner to figure out how and when
he is going to undertake the task, as goals stimulate planning capabilities. Still, being a casual runner
without performance-oriented goal doesn’t necessarily mean that one experience discontent with its
current situation and will set a goal on the platform. We tend to believe that in most case the runners who
have been running for a long time without defining specific goals do run for others motives (e.g. enjoying
the outdoor, meditating, fitness) and are obviously satisfied this way. Consequently they have no interest
in the challenges and goal-setting capabilities offered by Nike+. Therefore most of the participants use the
Nike+ platform use it for what it was first designed; namely providing a set of statistics about their run.
Still the platform calculates NikeFuel points, create milestones and constantly bombards them with
rewards based on their workouts statistics, and because the design of the website is structured to put
forward those features, users can hardly just disregard them.

Rewards and intrinsically motivated runners

The Nike+ environment rewards users with badges and trophy in two distinct situations: when they reach
goals that they pre-defined themselves in the system (e.g. running 15 miles a week for 10 weeks) or after
breaking milestones (e.g. 50 miles, 200K NikeFuel) and personal records (e.g. fastest mile, 5K, 10K…). We
observed that in most cases our participants where far from thrilled about these features. Our analysis
reveals three reasons which could explain why the reward system doesn’t seem to engage and motivate
users: failing to align and link the rewards to the running experience, ignoring the qualitative aspect of
why one would run and overlooking the changing nature of why people run. Then we will describe some
counterproductive effects resulting from the use of rewards and finally we will provide an overview of the
impacts of such rewards/game design elements on our runners.

Rewards and experience mismatch

Our analysis lead us to believe that runners who aren’t rewarded for behaviours that they perceive as
helping them to achieve a task that may lead them to enhance their running experience are neither
interested or influenced by such rewards. This mismatch between running experience and reward scheme
could be illustrated by a quote by seasoned runner Donovan who few years back broke is personal record
at the Venice marathon: “If I could put my Venice result on there, that would be something, but getting a
trophy because I logged some miles…”. This quote depicts the misalignment between Donovan’s supreme
running achievement and the rewards given by the platform. From Donovan’s perspective, it was nothing
out of the ordinary to run a large amount of mile, alluding that the rewarded behaviour isn’t linked to
anything especially esteemed by the user. On the opposite, being able to showcase to the world or remind
himself his past performance is a way more powerful motivational trigger. This example stresses a
persistent point observed across our participants which is the inability of the Nike+ information system to
link the rewards with meaningful aspects of one’s running experience.

Overlooking the qualitative benefits of the running experience

A second pitfall could be found in the fact that the rewards are only based on quantitative information,
namely miles, pace, steps, calories and points. From such data the system constructs quantitative-based
strategies supposed to encourage users into what is considered as beneficial behaviours. Logically, these
behaviours are only performance oriented with for instance running more miles, running at a faster pace,
running more often and the like. This quantitative focus is logical considering the origin of the platform
which was in the first place created to track runners and provide statistics. Still many aspects of the
running experience don’t translate into numbers. As demonstrated by Irina’s quote, the very quantitative
aspect of running may be intertwined with and surpassed by more abstract, qualitative and deeply
meaningful motives: “For me a good week is doing the 7K [7 kilometres run training at the club] at a good
pace, enjoying the scenery, the atmosphere, going home tired, […] it feels good, accomplished. […] I use it
[a tracking sport watch] because I want to see how I do over a long period of time, see where I’m
heading...”. Whereas her sport watch may indicate if she ran at what she considers being a good pace, how
much she enjoyed the moment or how accomplished she was after running cannot possibly be captured or
rewarded meaningfully by the system. Still the Nike+ environment attempt to reward her run on the sole
basis of the quantitative aspect; an aspect she obviously doesn’t allocate much weight when she assess if

10
she had a good running session. We understand that one assumption underpinning the design of the
information system and associated reward scheme is that anybody using a tracking device necessarily
desire to be challenged or want to improve his performance. Our findings exemplified with the case of the
well-being oriented runner Irina suggest that this supposition is severely flawed as the runners already
satisfied with their current sport practices are rather insensible to the performance-oriented stimulations
deployed by the system.

Missing out the changing nature of runner’s objectives

Another aspect to acknowledge is that what is valued or aimed at by a runner at one point in time isn’t
necessarily in another, understandably, what one defines as its optimal objective and running experience
isn’t a constant and fix variable and therefore may naturally evolve and change in time. We found that
rewarding efforts incrementally on a linear time basis is very quickly limiting. Asafa explains:
“Completing each milestone requires to increase your mileage […] it may be useful at the beginning… to
build-up your endurance base or just to get you out running but once you have found your pace, or
reached your limits, it’s rather useless. […] If you want to take it to the next level, you need something
else”. This quote highlights a natural change of objective and expectation towards running. In the case of
Asafa, while trying to get back in shape, he was first challenged by the milestones defined by the platform.
After successfully increasing incrementally his distance ran for a while, he lost focus as he couldn’t
perceive the benefit in chasing the next mileage milestone. Understandably, running faster and running
longer distance may only motivate you for a short period of time. This quote also emphasizes an
interesting point linking us back to why do people run. Even though you start running using the platform,
it’s very likely that after a while you will have either found a pace you enjoy running at, or in the case you
wish to go further and improve your performance, you will start a specific training plan, join a club or see
a running coach. In both cases, you will quit using the Nike+ platform for motivational reasons. To
summarize, we found that being provided with a continued motivational experience is nearly impossible
on the Nike+ platform as it doesn’t consider the fluctuant nature of why people run.

Counterproductive effects

We have found that in two ways the reward scheme implemented within Nike+ creates counterproductive
effects. First, if as a runner you are not interested or engaged by the motivational features, the design of
the site might not be the most suitable to your needs as it put a strong focus on such features which may
create frustration, as noted by Justin: “I really like the mobile app but the new site is so gimmicky […]
sometimes you just want to check a route or something and it’s taking you ages”. This quote emphasis the
fact that users who wish to solely use the core functionalities of Nike+ are not able to do it without being
deluged with game design elements and features they don’t need.
The second observation we have made is linked to the runners setting goals on the platform. It appears
that rewarding only total success might be undermining one’s motivation to try again after failing. Indeed,
the system doesn’t provide what we could qualify as near-goal reward, it’s either you hit the goal or you
don’t, for instance it’s either you hit your goal to run 20 miles a week for 6 weeks or you don’t. We found
that not acknowledging the effort made to try to reach such goal after a failure might lead runners not to
try again or to set easier goals. This finding is in line with the GST (Locke and Latham, 1984; 1990; 2006),
which preconizes to acknowledge and reward substantial efforts made towards a goal in order to keep one
motivated.

Impact of rewards on intrinsically motivated runners

Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1985) provides an interesting theoretical
perspective to investigate the possible influence of those game design elements on the runners of the
Flyknit running club. Indeed, CET aims at exploring the external factors that could increase or decrease
intrinsic motivation. Many studies (Lepper et al., 1973; Greene and Lepper, 1974; Lepper and Greene,
1975; Orlick and Mosher, 1978) have established the existence of what is coined as the overjustification
effect. It demonstrates that expecting a reward to perform an inherently engaging task diminish the initial
enjoyment and intrinsic motivation to do the task. The main dynamic underpinning the effect is to be seen
in the autonomy thwarting function of rewards, individuals may indeed consider the rewards as impacting
their self-determination. For instance a sport scholarship may be perceived as controlling as it could be

11
insidiously leveraged to force athletes to comply with expected behaviours. Our observations do not
suggest any evidences that the rewards distributed by Nike+ to the runners engender any internal
motivation decrease towards running. We identified three reasons which may explain this point. First,
because our runners are satisfied with the way they practice running, instead of being perceived as
controlling the rewards may be perceived as a confirmation of competence. Second, even if the rewards
aren’t perceived as positive information by the runners, the fact that they are allocated through a virtual
space implies that they may or may not be consulted by the users; also, as digital artefacts they may
embody lesser tangibility and could therefore be less impactful than their real world counterpart. Finally,
because most of our runners do not set goals on the platform through the goal-setting-functionality, the
system is not able to understand the reasons why they run; consequently the rewards are not connected to
their personal goals and are in no way meaningful to them, as a result they are widely ignored. Still it
doesn’t mean that these features have a no impacts on user experience. If most of the runners appear to
accommodate with the new gameful oriented design of Nike+, some seem to be annoyed to different
degrees by what they perceive as a platform cluttered with useless and attention-seeking gadgets. These
runners aren’t interested by the motivational features of the environment and use Nike+ only for the core
tracking/mapping/statistical functionalities. This issue could lead to potential user retention
repercussions and should be carefully considered. Indeed, as Nike seems determined to turn running into
a game, the discrepancy between the frequent runners’ needs and other targeted users will eventually
increase and may have more substantial consequences in the future.

The targeted audience of Nike+

It seems rather clear that the new version of Nike+ is not targeting users such as our participants,
meaning long-time amateur runners who already enjoy running. The platform seems to target people who
are not currently doing sport on a regular basis. A quick look at the platform reveals that in addition to
serve advertising/marketing and online sales purposes, Nike may attempt to link one’s sport experience to
the brand. We could speculate that if one starts his athletic life with Nike+ (website, mobile app and
tracking device) there is a fair chance that she or he will be associating his failures but more importantly
his successes with Nike, which could unleash possible long-term commercial benefits. As demonstrated by
Calder and Staw (1975), using external rewards may be a valid strategy to initiate individuals to perform
physical activities. In association to a reward scheme, the activity itself must be structured in a way to
allow physiological developmental growth towards competence and control over the activity. Such
configuration may lead one to gradually enjoy the task and develop internal motivation to undertake it;
then the rewards can be phased-out. Thanks to the novelty effect, the personal goal-setting functionality,
the varied challenges based on a well-designed difficulty curve, the social aspect of the platform and the
extra push provided by the rewards, we may think that Nike+ could help individuals to start running. But
then again, as illustrated by our analysis and emphasised by Calder and Staw (1975), at certain point
individuals might find the activity itself self-satisfying and enjoyable and wouldn’t need the external
means and support delivered by the gamified information system. As Nike+ isn’t able to assess one’s
motivation at a given moment or identify a possible tipping point between extrinsic or intrinsic
motivation towards running, the system isn’t capable to phase out the reward scheme.

Possible design orientations

As discussed above, some beginners may set goals and progress through Nike+, but it will only last for a
well-defined time, quickly personal fulfilment and inner motives may take over and the challenges and
rewards will start to appear gradually insignificant which will undermine the overall usefulness of the
system. What we could point out as the main pitfall in the current design of the Nike+ system is its
inability to connect and align with individual’s personal goals. The reason behind such shortcoming is that
the system does know too little about the users. Therefore providing a meaningful experience to most of
them is nearly impossible. In this section we will present some reflections about both issues.

Towards user profiling

Two solutions may help to obtain a rich and exhaustive picture of each user. First, today before being able
to use Nike+ properly users have to indicate their age, gender and weight. It could be a good occasion to
ask them some additional information such as running experience (e.g. 1, 2 6 years), level (e.g. beginner,

12
intermediate, confirmed) and expectation towards running (e.g. fitness, training). Second, the most
obvious way to learn about the users is to analyse the workout data. Indeed, it is paradoxical not to be able
to know your users when you are aware of their every move. The tracking technologies offer countless
quantitative data analysis opportunities for user profiling. Additionally, as noted by Dixon (2011), the
client-server nature of the gamified information system presents ready-made opportunities to research
user’s behaviour on the system.

Providing a meaningful experience

Nike’s biggest challenge is to provide a meaningful experience to a maximum of its Nike+ users. By
meaningful we mean that one will care about because it connects to her interests, personal goals or take
place within a social context she values. As explained previously, as a commercial organisation Nike
benefits in many ways from people using the platform. Logically they try to increase user engagement. As
our research demonstrates the current design lead frequent runners to disregard and ignore most of the
motivational features (challenges, milestones, rewards) and only use the tracking side of the platform.
Two questions arise, Is it in the interest of the users to try at any price to influence the way they do sport
just to have more people using a platform? and, How can you supplement an intrinsically interesting task
taking place in the real world with meaningful features?
Regarding the first question we believe that the system should afford basic customization to allow the
users who are only interested in the tracking/mapping/statistical functionalities to discard the
motivational features. Indeed, it is the reason why most of the runners bought the tracking devices in the
first place; it represents the core value of the system. Any element which may give users the feeling that
these fundamental functionalities are obfuscated should be given the possibility to be discarded.
Additionally, permitting such customization would have minimum user engagement repercussion as we
could assume that to be annoyed by such features you must be a frequent user of the platform.
Concerning the second question, we have identified three possible directions which may be valuable to
extend users’ running experience in a meaningful way. First, even if Nike+ has an interesting social
module, it doesn’t allow users to replicate real-life sport interactions. For instance it could be enjoyable
and entertaining to allow users to challenge one another or to create group challenges. Second, the
challenges from the system should be personalised, meaning that they should be created on the basis of
what the systems knows about the user. User profiling should permits to suggest challenges that are in
line with user’s personal goals. These challenges should be just hard enough to be perceived as both
stimulating and attainable (Deterding, 2011a). Also, challenges shouldn’t be started automatically, users
should be given the opportunity to accept or decline them. Declining a challenge conveys information
which should be considered by the system and incorporated to design or not the next challenge. Third, it
could be fruitful to allow runners to customize their home page to put forward information they value
instead of displaying dozens of irrelevant trophies and statistics. For example, as observed above, a
marathon runner may like to display his last races and personal records on his first page. Indeed, as
argued by Antin and Churchill (2011), allowing such personalization would permit to create online real-
life social physiological dynamics such as reputation, status and identity affirmation and group
identification.

CONCLUSION
In this case study we found that our gamification participants do not always have the same goals,
depending on their running profile. The performance oriented-participants have well-defined
race/training/performance related goals whereas the more casual-minded participants do not necessarily
have clear-cut goals. We have found that most of these runners do not feel the need to use the platform to
set goals; still they are challenged by automatic game design features. We have observed that these
runners would most of the time discard these gamification features and would simply use the
functionalities that they need. The principal reason for ignoring such motivational features is their lack of
meaning. Because a frequent argument within the scholarly field of gamification is to argue that such
external motivators can undermine one’s initial intrinsic motivation to engage in an activity, we have
studied the perception of the motivation of our 9 runners since they use the new gamified system. Except
for one runner who the platform helped at some point, none of them noticed any motivation or
performance change which implies that such gamification features may be discarded harmlessly by users

13
without any influence on their motivation level. It’s worth noting that some runners were slightly annoyed
by the omnipresence of such features, which may have user retention consequences.
Reflecting on the current design of the IS, we have acknowledged that it might help people lacking inner
motivation to initiate a physical activity, which is, we believe, the target audience of Nike+. We have then
proposed some possible orientations in order to help provide a meaningful experience to runners sharing
the similar profile as our Flyknit users. Still, our research illustrates that from a motivational perspective,
any kind of individuals may coexist on a similar platform proposing motivational features that only very
few will find useful. Even if it is not interesting or appealing for many users and that it may not be a good
user experience design practice, in the case of Nike+, nothing demonstrate that it may have any
repercussions on intrinsic motivation.
It would be very hazardous to attempt generalizing on these findings and argue that poor gamification
features, such as for instance uncontextualised one-shot rewards carrying no meaning, would never
influence one’s intrinsic motivation. Reflecting on the output of our research, we could contend that three
predominant factors have to be examined concurrently to assess the potentiality of seeing a gamified IS
influencing user’s intrinsic motivation: the activity itself, the context in which the activity is carried out
and the design of the gamified IS. Running outside after work for your own enjoyment as part of a
supporting and friendly social group is diametrically opposed to working as a salesman in a competitive
company and being pressured to reach new sales objectives. In our case, even if the motivational features
of the IS were not designed the way we believe they should be, we contend that both the activity and the
context didn’t create the conducive environment which would have allowed the IS to influence user’s
intrinsic motivation. We believe that within a different context or/and in the case of a different activity,
using the same game-inspired motivational mechanisms used by Nike+ could have very different
repercussions on users intrinsic motivation.
Regarding research limitations, first it could be pertinent to reflect on what extents do the motivation
theories grounded in the CET, which have been mostly built around classroom and sport experiments,
may apply to a context where every interaction is mediated by technology. Typically the digital nature of
the Nike+ experience, characterized by intangibility and asynchronicity, is we believe a very influential
factor to consider with regard to the use of standard motivation theories dealing with intrinsic motivation.
Second, we have to point out that our research took place only few months after the roll-out of the new
version of the platform and that our analysis was based on a single round of interview at a single moment
in time. We cannot ensure that these finding will be consistent over time or that our participants’
interactions with the system will not change. Also these findings have to be carefully situated within the
context of the current version of Nike+ as the gamified design is a central factor to the study of
gamification.
Finally, regarding future research, it could be very insightful to examine how individuals who start to run
with Nike+ may or may not develop intrinsic motivation towards running and study their concurrent
engagement with the motivational feature. Identifying tipping point between extrinsic and intrinsic
motivation and the associated results in engagement with motivational features would be very valuable to
extend our understanding of the relationship between extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation and
gamification.

14
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