Gamification System

Abstract

NRB's Groove application aims to enhance employees' work life by centralizing internal tools and simplifying access to employee services such as the MS 365 calendar, room booking, Commuty parking reservation, etc. Beyond its practical aspect, Groove is also designed to promote themes of ecology, wellness, and partnership through a gamification system integrated into the application.

Gamification consists in turning non-game activities into more game-like experiences by using game elements (points, badges, etc.) in order to achieve some business objective. The goal in this context is to make everyday actions entertaining and rewarding, thereby encouraging employees to take part in green challenges, wellness initiatives, and collaborative tasks.

Originally, to do so, Groove used an external gamification engine, Oasis, that proved to be unreliable, difficult to integrate and maintain, and ultimately became a technical and business liability. To solve this problem, this master's thesis aims to build a new gamification system which is aligned with Groove's business needs, but also ensures reliability, quality and robustness.

The work started with some theoretical research on gamification and its psychological underpinnings. Then, a detailed analysis of the Groove application and the failing Oasis implementation was performed. A business analysis phase stated concrete requirements, which guided the system design captured in use-case, class, and sequence diagrams. Key technological choices were made and justified: Kafka and Zookeeper were adopted for event streaming, Drools as a rule engine, and the solution was fully implemented using Java with Spring, JPA for persistence, and PostgreSQL for the database. The system was then covered with rigorous unit, integration, end-to-end, and performance testing, and the code was delivered in a deployment-ready state in line with the Groove team deployment's procedure.

The result of this master's thesis is a fully tested, functional, maintainable, readable and robust gamification system seamlessly integrated into Groove, effectively replacing the Oasis engine, that supports Groove's business goals of engaging employees in ecology, wellness, and partnership initiatives.