Gamify 2024 – Proceedings

3rd ACM International Workshop on Gamification in Software Development, Verification, and Validation (Gamify 2024)

Frontmatter

Keynote

Bug-Hunting Games to Assist Software Development and Testing Education (Keynote)
Natalia Silvis-Cividjian
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Although software testing is paramount for a safe society, students perceive it as a not attractive chore. The VU-BugZoo project at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam is an attempt to remedy the situation by engaging students in exciting bug-hunting games. One of the products emerged from this project is DBugIT, a web-application with samples of executable and faulty standalone code and the VU-SmartHome, a micro-controller based miniature house with a corrupted firmware. We will present the opportunities and challenges of this approach in teaching both software testing and programming.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p1, author = {Natalia Silvis-Cividjian}, title = {Bug-Hunting Games to Assist Software Development and Testing Education (Keynote)}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {1--1}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3695732}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

Papers

Engaging Developers in Exploratory Unit Testing through Gamification
Philipp Straubinger and Gordon Fraser
(University of Passau, Germany)
Exploratory testing, known for its flexibility and ability to uncover unexpected issues, often faces challenges in maintaining systematic coverage and producing reproducible results. To address these challenges, we investigate whether gamification of testing directly in the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) can guide exploratory testing. We therefore show challenges and quests generated by the Gamekins gamification system to make testing more engaging and seamlessly blend it with regular coding tasks. In a 60-minute experiment, we evaluated Gamekins' impact on test suite quality and bug detection. The results show that participants actively interacted with the tool, achieving nearly 90% line coverage and detecting 11 out of 14 bugs. Additionally, participants reported enjoying the experience, indicating that gamification can enhance developer participation in testing and improve software quality.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p2, author = {Philipp Straubinger and Gordon Fraser}, title = {Engaging Developers in Exploratory Unit Testing through Gamification}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {2--9}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3685683}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

A Gaming Quest to Improve Web Locators Robustness
Diego Clerissi, Maurizio Leotta, and Filippo Ricca
(University of Genoa, Italy)
Web applications have become fundamental to our lives, thus testing methods ensuring their quality are essential. Usually, Web test automation frameworks and tools use locators to interact with the GUI, serving as hooks to the widgets within Web pages. However, locators are known to be one of the most significant points of fragility in Web testing, due to their susceptibility to rapid software evolution impacting the Web pages structure. While gamification strategies have been recently incorporated into the Web testing process to increase testers engagement, by means of tasks and rewards tailored around test activities, they have not yet been applied to locators robustness. In this paper, we introduce TestQuest, a tool under development that adapts gamification to improve locators robustness, by employing evaluation metrics and best practices designed to make testing via locators more engaging for testers, potentially enhancing the overall test quality.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p10, author = {Diego Clerissi and Maurizio Leotta and Filippo Ricca}, title = {A Gaming Quest to Improve Web Locators Robustness}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {10--17}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3685684}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

Enlisting Students in Gamifying Software Testing Education: Results and Key Insights
Maura Cerioli, Maurizio Leotta, and Marina Ribaudo
(University of Genoa, Italy)
Gamification aims to enhance motivation for a variety of routine tasks by incorporating game elements, such as scoring. In educational settings, students are often the players, and gamification can create a more engaging learning environment that motivates them to achieve academic success. In this paper, we describe an experimental software engineering course where we asked students enrolled in a Master’s degree program in Computer Science to play the role of game designers and develop software prototypes for the gamification of software testing education. We outline and compare their three proposals to gamify learning in software testing, which reflect team members’ diverse interests and inclinations. As a result, the proposals vary in nature, ranging from a gamified standard web application delivering exercises to a fully-fledged game. User testing provided a preliminary evaluation of their playability. Our lessons learned can guide other academics in designing similar assignments for software engineering students to develop gamification prototypes.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p18, author = {Maura Cerioli and Maurizio Leotta and Marina Ribaudo}, title = {Enlisting Students in Gamifying Software Testing Education: Results and Key Insights}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {18--25}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3685685}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

Testing Robot Challenge: A Serious Game for Testing Learning
Anna Rita Fasolino, Caterina Maria Accetto, and Porfirio Tramontana
(Federico II University of Naples, Italy)
Software testing education is becoming increasingly important both in academia and industry. Despite efforts to improve teaching approaches at the university level, many challenges persist for better preparing students for their future careers. In this position paper we present the Testing Robot Challenge tool implementing a serious game designed for motivating the students to practice testing and learn how to write effective unit tests in coverage testing. The game exploits the mechanism of the challenge that students can play against state-of-the-art tools for automated test case generation. It is configurable by teachers, in order to tune the complexity and type of challenges to the specific needs of the students and to the objectives of the course taught. To validate the tool, we performed a preliminary experiment involving 15 students of a Software Engineering course who provided generally positive feedback about it and useful comments for its future improvement.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p26, author = {Anna Rita Fasolino and Caterina Maria Accetto and Porfirio Tramontana}, title = {Testing Robot Challenge: A Serious Game for Testing Learning}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {26--29}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3685686}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

Test Smells Learning by a Gamification Approach
Anna Rita Fasolino and Porfirio Tramontana
(Federico II University of Naples, Italy)
The presence of test smells related to low-quality test cases is a known factor contributing to problems in maintaining both test suites and production code. The need to avoid and fix test smells is becoming more and more popular in the scientific community, as well as the importance of knowing how to detect and refactor existing test cases. However, these practices are very little considered in academic testing courses, due also to the difficulty of making them attractive to students. This position paper presents an approach for teaching test smells based on gamification. It exploits a tool, TSGame, that provides a serious game where students can familiarize with test smells by practicing with their detection and removal from JUnit test code. TSGame has been implemented as a Web-based application that allows a teacher to assign students test smell detection and refactoring tasks that they have to accomplish in game sessions. Upon completion of the tasks they have the possibility to gain rewards. A preliminary version of the tool has been validated in the context of a Software Testing course at Master degree level, with 37 students that showed the tool effectiveness and usefulness for test smell learning.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p30, author = {Anna Rita Fasolino and Porfirio Tramontana}, title = {Test Smells Learning by a Gamification Approach}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {30--33}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3685687}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

ScoutDroid: A Tool For Mobile Augmented Testing with Live Feedback
Lorenzo Laudadio, Riccardo Coppola, Marco Torchiano, and Stevan Tomic
(Politecnico di Torino, Italy; Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden)
In the evolving landscape of mobile applications, effective and efficient testing methods are crucial for ensuring high-quality user experiences. This paper introduces a novel end-to-end mobile testing technique designed to enhance exploratory testing by incorporating gamification strategies. We developed a plugin that integrates these innovative techniques, aiming to make the testing process more engaging and effective. With the use of a live feedback system, the plugin drives testers to thoroughly explore the application, leading to the discovery of more defects and improved software quality. Preliminary evaluation suggests that this approach could not only increase tester engagement but also improve the detection rate of critical issues. This research highlights the potential of merging exploratory testing with gamification, setting the stage for more dynamic and productive mobile testing methodologies.

@InProceedings{Gamify24p34, author = {Lorenzo Laudadio and Riccardo Coppola and Marco Torchiano and Stevan Tomic}, title = {ScoutDroid: A Tool For Mobile Augmented Testing with Live Feedback}, booktitle = {Proc.\ Gamify}, publisher = {ACM}, pages = {34--37}, doi = {10.1145/3678869.3685688}, year = {2024}, } Publisher's Version

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