In gamification, there is often a lot of mention of things like “Neuroscience”, “Neurochemistry”, “Neurotransmitters” or “Brain Chemistry”. In particular, you will hear people speak about neurotransmitters such as Dopamine.
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that transmit signals around the brain. They all have different functions and have different effects on us. In this blog I am going to discuss 4; Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphins (DOSE).
Well, Happy New Year everyone. 2014 was a good year for gamification, but 2015 is where we will come of age I feel. Below are a couple of top 10’s for my blog. The first is based on page views for blogs just posted in 2014. The second is based on comments for blogs in that year and the final is page views for all content on the site.
It looks like defining gamification was a big thing in 2014!!
Posted on April 16, 2014As many of you know, I recently took exception to a particular definition of gamification that was doing the rounds. However, the positive effect was to make me think about what it really means and also started to make me wonder what other people think of it. So, I asked them – I did a… More…
Wow, nearly 90 posts this year! 2014 saw some fantastic speaking opportunities, a new deck of cards, a new theory around fun (that I really need to finish soon!).
Massive thanks to all of you, roll on 2015!!!
[list-posts vars=”year=2014|posts_per_page=-1″]
I have spoken about mystery and the like in the past and you would be forgiven for thinking that uncertainty sits in a similar space. The difference is that mystery or surprise are designed and deliberate.
In this instance I am defining uncertainty as “The lack of certainty. A state of having limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state, a future outcome, or more than one possible outcome.” 1
Uncertainty can be both negative and positive. As with mystery, sometime snot knowing all the details leads to a healthy curiosity and motivates you into “opening the box” (though that didn’t work out so well for Pandora…). There has be research done on how uncertainty can actually boost motivation as well. A paper called “The Motivating Uncertainty Effect” 2 This study showed that if people were given a limited amount of information about the reward they would receive, it could actually boost motivation.
I just thought as I had not written a post for a few days (researching for a couple of good ones!), I would put up my 7 rules for gamification.
