# Framing Algorithm-Driven Development of Sets of Objectives Using Elementary Interactions
## 6 Discussion  
The concept described of a platform-mediated, almost un-administered, approach to creating an SOO seems to be attainable. Such a platform enables the development of an SOO and the suitability of MCDA applications for various purposes. Further, the platform could be made openly available. The platform concept might modularly integrate methods already established in decision tool development, such as stakeholder analysis, determination of weights, and transformation functions for indicator values. The platform concept relies on a great number of participants, as the validation study has revealed. For example, in the case of citizen science projects; however, it is known that user activity decreases over time [70]. The case study also revealed evidence of declining motivation among some participants. For this reason, it is necessary to continually motivate the participants. The platform concept, thus, needs to include methods of motivation design for the participants. Gamification, the application of gaming principles to real-world tasks [71], might be a methodology to foster the motivation and engagement of participants. The platform is expected to offer multiple opportunities for gamification; the platform generates a huge amount of usage data, e.g., the number of interactions of each user or the number of consecutive days of logins. Especially, the introduction of a reputation system is considered as fostering engagement without affecting the participation negatively [72, 73]. As indicated in the specifications for the component Participant Manager, reputation attributes, such as those maintained at Stack Overflow or ResearchGate, are candidates for motivation sustenance. Moreover, immediate feedback is considered an important means of fostering engagement [74]. Immediate feedback can be given by an extensive statistics component, which would visualize the effects of any performed El. Key figures, such as \"Participant's number of Els\" and \"Platform Els in the last 24 h\" might be motivating for some of the participants. In general, the platform concept enables the use of visualizations, since the available information is integrated into the platform. Visualizations are known as beneficial for the cognitive processing of information, especially when combined with interactions [75]. In particular, in multimedia learning, visualizations are attributed to a prominent role [76]. To visualize the results of MCDA applications, there are already various approaches, especially to comparing different variants of diagrams [77, 78, 79]. These capacities can be further supplemented within this platform by the integration of all important information over time, as well as the possibility for interactive visual evaluation of the platform-contained information, such as performing a sensitivity analysis. Further, the capacity of the platform to trace the changes of various components over time, such as the simulation model of the real-world systems and the preferences model, would support the visualization of these changes over time. Among the assumptions originally made in the platform concept was that the cognitive complexity of Els was to be regarded as low. However, the validation study has shown that Els may indeed lead to complex cognitive processes in the participants; it is not possible to limit the cognitive complexity of Els consistently to the level of simple multiple-choice questions. For example, a multiple-choice question regarding the best definition of an SOO element requires considerable reading work. Another example of higher cognitive complexity is the creative work required when naming new elements. Therefore, further research needs to clarify what degree of cognitive complexity is operable for Els without perceiving them as hard work, thus discouraging participants from engaging with Els. The application of SOOs developed may have a variety of purposes. A probably common application scenario is an SOO that is used as a standard tool for certain classes of decisions.