Virtual Coaches for Mission–Based Gamified Smart Communities

We propose a Virtual Coach for the gamification of participatory applications in complex socio-technical systems like Smart Cities and Smart Communities. In such participatory applications, the user community is an active and essential component. Users must voluntarily take up some tasks, in order to ensure the correct operation of the application according to its requirements and goals, which, in turn, delivers collective benefits to the community. In order to facilitate users, and support their sustained engagement in a participatory application, we use a Missions metaphor to describe those volunteering tasks. Our Virtual Coach is then responsible for selecting and recommending missions to users, based on a variety of factors, including the criticality of the corresponding tasks for the application purposes, the importance of the task for the individual user that should take it up, user profile characteristics, like personal preferences and skills, and the in-game incentives the user would earn by completing the mission.