With the field of gamification teeming with constant change and activity, it’s easy at times to forget that it’s still a foreign concept to some – what a difference from a few years ago! Browsing through the question-answer site, Quora, I stumbled upon a request to “describe gamification as you would to an 18 year old,” so I thought I’d provide a general summary of gamification as I see it. The first thing to know is that “gamification,” linguistically, is a bit of a misnomer. Though it sounds like it should describe the process of transforming something into a game, in the same way evaporation describes a transformation to vapor, gamification is NOT about turning business into a game. Rather, it is a collection of different elements, including game mechanics, to achieve the ultimate goal of boosting engagement and motivation. This could mean getting employees engaged in their internal online community, getting call center representatives to provide better service to their callers, or merely smoothing out the employee onboarding process. While there’s a world of detail involved in a successful gamification strategy, it can be broken down into three areas: psychology, design, and analytics.
1) Psychology
Since gamification is really all about increasing engagement and motivation, a large part of gamification is understanding a blend of social, cognitive, and behavioral psychology. The principles involved, like self perception, competition and desired rewards, interact and manifest differently in every person. It’s important to know how a strategy will make an impact, not only on an individual user, but also on a group’s dynamic as well. This in-depth understanding of the interaction between user and reward system is the impetus for design direction.
2) Design
Once the user to application interaction is understood, that knowledge is used to frame the reward engine’s design elements. This process isn’t just restricted to the visualization of leaderboards or badges. While certainly necessary, they are far less important than the subtle, less visual elements that will make or break the success of the gamification strategy. For example, attributing point values to foster prioritization of certain actions over others, or linking actions together to form meaningful missions the user can complete.
3) Analytics
The collection and analysis of data is where the process comes full circle. While users are accumulating rewards and making progress along mission tracks, the same information used to reward them is gathered for analysis. Behaviors like clicks, read-throughs, comments, and logins are kept in an effort to perpetuate an effective feedback loop. As users perform behaviors, that information is collected and analyzed to better understand usage. The game can then be tailored to better achieve even better results before the cycle repeats. This can be particularly effective as it allows for a unique understanding of dynamics like consumer interests, employee actions, process adoption and company trends.
In the real world, gamification would look something like this: take your existing, engagement-deprived application, like a SharePoint community, and layer businesss gamification onto it. The site looks the same, but seamlessly (if done well) integrated into the site is a motivation engine that tracks and rewards actions in a manner designed to achieve business KPIs. There are many more intricate details involved with a gamification solution, but this should be enough to give you a good strong starting foundation.
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