First things first, thanks to everyone who has completed the User Types 2.0 survey. If you have not done so, please take a few minutes to fill it in. I am trying to make this one a little more scientific so that the results can be used to help us all build better systems!. Check out the results so far. If you have done it, but want to play with the charts a bit, you can use the User Type Analysis Tool. This lets you manually put the values in and suggests what kind of mechanics and ideas may work for the dominant user type(s).
Gamification
Europe’s Only International Forum Dedicated to Driving Consumer Revenue and Engagement using Game Thinking
The UK’s first meeting dedicated to gamification has been announced for March 26-27th in London.
Leading international gamification experts are due to speak at the first ever Enterprise Gamification Europe, a two-day event dedicated to helping marketing and digital professionals marketers and apply gamification to help improve their business modelling in the ever-changing, completive and fast-pace game of marketing.
Following a run of recent articles in MarketingWeek and other major publications, ‘gamification’ has set the blogosphere on fire and is the talk of customer-facing marketing and sales from some of the world’s leading brands.
The Puzzle of Problem Solving
First off, can I ask you all to go and take my new User Types test? I really want to test it out. Let me know if you think to results are fair or way off. Ping me on twitter (@daverage) and thanks!
This week I wanted to outline my process of problem solving. This may sound strange and it may be utter rubbish, but many have commented on how I go about it!
Problems are like puzzles that need to be solved. You know what the desired outcome is, you just have to figure out how to get there with the information you have available.
Nabu Smartband from Razer
I don’t often post press releases here, but this one excites me! Razer is a company that has produced gaming peripherals for years now. Used by pros and casual gamers alike, they always produce distinctive and interesting kit.
So when they announced they were going to release a fitness like band, I had to find out more!
It turns out they have made a competitor product to the likes of FitBit (which I use) and Nike Fuel Band (which I can’t afford!!). Not only does it look really cool, it has a boat load of features. Rather than just a fitness tracker, it is a full features smart watch, showing you incoming calls and notifications. It is a fitness tracker, with location awareness and all sorts iof other bio data. Finally it is social, with band to band communications.
3 Layers of Motivation (Updated for 2018)
The more I consider motivation, the more I realise it is one of those things we in gamification use as a catch-all. It’s a bit like how we treat the term “game mechanics” and, well, gamification!
Generally speaking, you will hear the terms intrinsic and extrinsic when motivation is spoken about. You will hear Deci & Ryan, Dan Pink, Maslow and more spoken about. However, when it comes down to it our argument is always the same. Intrinsic motivation is always better than extrinsic rewards. At times you will also hear a further comment that a balance of extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation will yield the best results.