Designing Gamification on Social Agriculture
(SociAg) Application to Increase End-User
Engagement
Ifrina Nuritha Vandha Pradwiyasma Widartha
Departement of Information Systems Indonesia Cultural Centre
University of Jember Dili, Timor Leste
Jember, Indonesia vandhapw@gmail.com
ifrina.pssi@unej.ac.id
Abstract— Social Agriculture (SociAg) application is a web
based social media application prototype which is used for
providing active, interactive, and persuasive communication
among farmers, farmer communities and professionals as space
for sharing information each other to improve science and
technology knowledge in agriculture. SociAg application is
developed by implementing gamification concept for increasing
user interest within using this application. Gamification is used
as one of strategy end-user engagement to attract enthusiastic
farmers, farmer communities, and professionals in utilizing
SociAg applications to interact with useful information sharing
especially in agriculture. Through gamification concept, the
active SociAg application user will earn reward be in the form of
point in each the use of SociAg application activities. The
achievement of these points are able to be used either by
government or by policy maker as one of reference to grant the
agriculture assistance, in order the assistance is able to be
provided on the right target.
Keywords— agriculture; application; gamification; end-user
engagement
I. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture in Indonesia is one of supporting aspect the
majority of Indonesian people life. The agricultural sector
become one of the main component government programs and
strategies to solve poorness. According to data from world
banks, foretime, Indonesia's agriculture has achieved good
results and contributed for Indonesia’s economic growth
significantly, including creating jobs and solving poorness
drastically [1]. However, from the decreasing of harvest
productivity of almost all kinds of staple, in addition, the
majority farmers who worked in the field meet reduction, the
agriculture activities have potential lost to create additional
job field and increase income. One of the factors which cause
decreasing the agriculture productivity is the lack of
information access for farmer to develop their products [2].
Increasing knowledge, information access and developing
farmer capability can be increased by carrying out
disseminations regarding the latest update of world agriculture
development. The initiative for developing information
technology and communication (ICT) in rural areas, for
Saiful Bukhori
Departement of Information Systems
University of Jember
Jember, Indonesia
saiful.ilkom@unej.ac.id
example social media can be utilized as one of digital media
dissemination to open up opportunity for distributing
information to rural communities, improving relation among
research and dissemination, and supporting rural areas
development. Based on the problems above, it has been
established a social media Agriculture (SociAg) web based as
dissemination media which can facilitate information
exchange between farmers, farmer communities, and
professionals in developing knowledge science and
technology especially in agriculture sector.
One goal of increasing user engagement is to increase the
contributions made by the users. However, maintaining users
to be engaged is a challenge which is faced by new social
media application. In online social network, most user don't
participate very much, but they often simply lurk in the
background (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute
content). The users in online communities are usually falling
into three categories: 90% of the users never produce any
content, 9% contribute every now and then, and only 1% of
the user base is responsible for the majority of contributions
[3]. How can we motivate users to use the new application
with strong engagement? According to [4] gamification can be
implemented on a website-based application in order to
enhance motivation, concentration, effort, loyalty and other
common positive values to all user.
Therefore, in this research, the SociAg application is
developed by implementing the concept of gamification. This
concept could increase user liveliness and motivation to use
this application. Gamification is an innovative concept of
driving and influencing end user adoption based on the
concepts of game mechanics and social computing. In
gamification strategies, game concepts are used to improve
retention, attention and interaction between end-users and
applications.
The main aims of this research are defining gamification
elements, and designing gamification concept on SociAg
applications will be introduced. The gamification concept uses
game mechanics and game design elements to measure,
influence and reward user behaviors. It takes the essence of User Features
the game components such as goals, rules, playfulness,
e. Features to display notifications
elements of fun, feedback, reward and promotions. We hope f. Gamification feature that displays user point
that by implementing a game mechanism in a non-gaming information
context able to result a higher level of engagement. g. Account management features
a. Features to create meeting agenda for
Gamification has already been used successfully to achieve professional forums
improvements in a multitude of challenges. The effective b. Features to upload information related to
gamification usage has assisted Ford company success in agriculture
c. Features to display the information already
encompassing more than 100.000 new visitors within a day, Professionals posted
otherwise campusfood.com website integrate game mechanics d. Features to give like, and comment
into it as well which has impact to the successful increase in e. Features to display notifications
the number of new users up to 20% [5]. In this study, the f. Gamification feature that displays user point
information
gamification concept is used as a means to increase the g. Account management features
farmers, farmer communities, and professionals motivation as a. Feature for approval of new professional user
end-users to utilize the SociAg application within information additions
sharing in agriculture. This research use common and positive b. Features for all user's data management
Administrator c. Features for data management information that
feedback, such as points and leaderboards to build up the users has been posted by the user
motivations, and to engage and excite users. End-users earn d. Features for professional data management
points by completing simple tasks and activities. For example, e. Features for organizer data management
ask a question, give a response or feedback to the question are
all value-added tasks that present opportunities to earn points. III. GAMIFICATION DESIGN ON SOCIAG APPLICATION
Through the gamification concept, active users of SociAg
applications will earn points that can be used by policy makers Gamification is not converting the application into a game,
or governments in providing assistance to the right target. it is merely turning the user experience of the application into
an engaging and fun activity so that the users stay hooked and
interested. The success formula of Gamification is simply 70%
II. SOCIAL AGRICULTURE (SOCIAG) APPLICATION psychology and 20% strategy and 10% tools usage [6]. With
the proper design and implementation of a game concept
SociAg application consists of 3 integrated modules, (gamification) is also proven to play a role as a motivator even
including module for user administrator, farmers or farmer lead the user to perform certain actions.
communities and professionals. The main goal of this
Creating the gamification concept requires complex
application is making a better communication between the
planning and implementation, since there are several
farmers or farmer communities and professionals, therefore,
components and elements to considered. The several
this application provides key feature for those three users to
gamification components which will be applied in this design
post information, whether related to technological
are as follows [7]:
developments, methods, or products in agriculture.
Users must prepare information content and images less a) Rules : is an order that is used as a foundation in a game,
than 100kb to be uploaded so that the information can be usually this rule is used to explain what can be done and
posted into the SociAg application timeline. The information could not be done by the user.
that the user has posted will be readable by all SociAg users.
In posting information that appears on the timeline of the b) Feedback: users will earn reciprocity when they have
reached or completed something. Feedback is usually
SociAg application, users who upload information, as well as
related to gifts, points, or comments from users.
other users, can view, leave comments and give like to the
information. Another features in the SociAg application are c) Goal: is the main thing which should be achieved by the
presented in Table I. user.
d) Challenge: is a challenge which should be faced by users to
test level of user proficiency, and become an important
TABLE I. FEATURES IN THE SOCIAG APPLICATION
component in the games formation.
User Features Based on these components, the SociAg application is
All user Features that handle login and user register process formed using the achievement gamification approach, by
giving point to the active SociAg application user, which is
a. Feature to give like to professionals profile
b. Features to upload information related to
often sharing information, commenting or giving feedback on
Farmers and agriculture postings or answering questions from other users and posting
Farmer c. Features to display the information already various matters related to counseling in fields of agriculture.
Communities posted SociAg application focus on creating an engaging experience
d. Features to give like, and leave comment for by using the most basic game elements, such as [8]:
user news post
 1) Points: If every time user completed a task, user
received some kind of a virtual reward. It would keep user
encouraged to engage more so that they could complete more
tasks and get more rewards. Points are part of the reward
system. Points are given to the users for the actions on
completing simple tasks and activities. Points are actually
immediate feedback given to the user for their actions to
understand the correlation between effort and rewards.
2) Leaderboards: Are exactly like in games, where the users
can compare their rank among the other user. The mere presence
of leaderboard induces the competitive spirit in any user because
they see their peers climbing up so they set a goal to participate
more and compete with them. Basically, people want to be the
best, to be on the top of the leaderboard. This plays major role in
enhancing and boosting user engagement.
3) Avatar: The way the users choose to express themselves
to the other user. This is a graphical representation of
themselves in the game. Avatars can be powerful mechanics in
any application. Letting the users personalize their profiles can
be a major step in engagement. Whenever the users are given
a freedom to be creative in how their profile images should
look like. That eventually influences other people to come up
with better ideas to look cooler or to show off better images.
SociAg application has a lot of learning context which is to
be conveyed to users, especially to educate how the farmers
and farmer communities could share information and
communicate directly with farmer professional which is joined
in this application easily and pleasurely. Each component
(Rules, Feedback, Goal, Challenge) will interplay to another
component, therefore designing gamification should relate to
learning context which can be obtained by users. Tabel II
shows the representation of gamification design on SociAg
Application by using achievement gamification approach, with
component based gamification framework.
TABLE II. THE REPRESENTATION OF GAMIFICATION DESIGN ON
SOCIAG APPLICATION
Component Domain Representation
Rules Game theme SociAg game theme is to become a farmer,
farmer community and professional who
actively share information.
Action • Post information
• Like Information
• Like Professional Profile
• Comment Information
Rules of • Only for registering as one user
Games • Post information many times
• Leaving comment to information posted
• Giving like / dislike to each information
posted
• Giving like / dislike to each professional
profile
Feedback Reciprocity • Point earned from information posted
apply in every giving a single information
posted.
• Point earned from leaving comment apply
in every comment to information posted.
• Point earned from leaving comment apply
in every giving a single comment to
information posted
• Point earned by user when another user
give ‘like’ appreciation to information
posted
• Point earned by professional when farmers,
farmer communities and another
professionals give ‘like’ appreciation to
professional profile.
Mechanic Getting bigger point then user get greater
chance to rank upwards
Goal Gameplay User should post information, leave
comment, receive like from their posted, and
receive profile like (special for professional)
as much as possible to earn points.
Objectives • Posting information relate to agriculture
• Leaving comment to information posted
• Giving like to information posted
• Giving like to professional profile
Challenge Problem • Validating a posted
domain link • Giving information posted which is factual
and educational
• Becoming top user
Progression • Every user earn point that continue to grow
when post information, leave comment,
and receive like from another user
• Every professional earn point that keep
growing when farmers or farmer
communities give like to professional
profile.
• The number of posts that keep growing
when users post information
• The number of comments that keeps
growing as users comment
• The number of likes that keep growing
when another users give like
Gamification may be defined as applying game designs
and mechanics in non-gaming apps to make user interactive
and also to boost user engagement. To maximize engagement,
SociAg application use rewards. These help users not only
become engaged, but also retains their engagement and
attention. User performs the activity to accomplish the goal
(e.g. get points). Each user's engagement is awarded with
certain points. The number of points awarded to the
engagement depends on the type of activity. Activity is a task
that should be done by a user to receive a reward. In this case,
the defined activities to create a gamification concept for
farmers, farmer communities and professionals are shown in
Table III.
In order to give a better explanation, we define an activity
is formulated in Definition 1 [9].
Definition 1. Let a be the identity of activity and p be the
point of activity, then an activity A = (a, p).
Each activity is rewarded with a pre-defined number of
points. Users will earn 10 points each time posting agricultural
related information. Users will get 1 point each time giving
comments. Users will get 1 point each time another user gives
like to the posted information. Professional users will earn 1
point each time a farmer or famer community user gives a like
to a professional profile. Total points are obtained from
accumulated points ranging from posting information, leaving
comments, and giving like, both like for posting information Information posted activities are marked by the information
and professional profile. appearance which is uploaded to SociAg timeline page. The
achievement of the user in doing post activity will be marked by
reward as point. Points can change with two conditions, that is: a)
TABLE III. LIST OF ACTIVITY IN GAMIFICATION
point increases when farmers, farmer communities and
Activity Point professionals carry out information posted activity, and b) point
Post Information 10 will decrease when administrator remove post.
Like Information 1
Like Professional Profile 1
User receives like based on information which has posted,
will earn additional point as much as 1 point, however if
Comment Information 1
another user cancel like activity then point from user who post
information will decrease 1 point.
In order to calculate the total of points that received Activity for giving like professional profile which is
by a user, a log of activities is required which is carried out by farmers or farmer communities used to give
formulated in Definition 2 [9]. appreciation for professional in the form of like by performing
Definition 2. Let u be a user in this application, then click like button to every professional. This activity will have
log(u) is a list of tuples for user u with attributes user an impact to increased professional user activeness in
u, activity A and timestamp t which can be defined in Equation conveying latest information about agriculture. Professional
1 [9]. user which receive like will get 1 additional point.
(1) Leaving comment activity is marked by the comment
appearance under user’s posted information which carry out
For example, user professional has these following information post. The users who leave comment will earn one
activities: additional point.

1) 17-1-2017 Post Information
2) 18-1-2017 Comment Information
then, log (professional) = {( professional, post information, 17
í 1 í2017), (professional, comment information, 18 í 1 í
2017)}
After storing all activities in log (professional), the
collected points by user professional after doing some
activities is formulated in Equation 2 [9].
(2)
Given log(professional) as the example, the the total of points
that are collected by user professional is 10+1=11.
Based on gamification design description in Table II,
Definition 1 and 2, then the description from application which
has formed can be seen into Figure 1. There are four kinds of
activity which would be made gamification as in Table III.
Total point accumulation which is obtained by each user
will be showed to SociAg application. Administrators are able
to see total point for each user and leaderboard for user who
reach top level within points acquisition.
IV. CONCLUSION
Gamification method is able to applied in SociAg
application. Gamification of SociAg application is designed as
effort to improve user engagement and create a higher level of
motivation. The concept of gamification in the SociAg
application is developed in noticing the components of
gamification, which contains: rules, feedback, goal and
challenge. This research is focus on user aspect of ease in
using SociAg application as well. This aspect of ease is based
on format and layout of web site by noticing the most basic of
game element, such as point, leaderboard and avatar.
In SociAg application, gamification located to points
acquisition of users who are obtained from posted information
points, number of user’s likes from posted information,
number of comments from users, and number of another
user’s likes to professional profile. Users can compare their
rank among the other user. User who reach top level within
points acquisition will appear on the leaderboard as a winner.
Based on this research, is going to carry out the further
research regarding to evaluation measurement the impact of
gamification on SociAg application.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is supported by DIPA University of Jember in
Fiscal Year 2016, Number SP.DIPA-042.01.2.400922/2016,
07 December 2015. We would like to say thank you for
Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengabdian kepada masyarakat
Fig. 1. SociAg Application Page for Professional User
(LP2M) University of Jember for the kindly support and
advice. In addition, we are very thankful to the reviewers for
their helpful and useful comments.
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