4 tips for creating viral content #gamification #icebucketchallenge

Ice bucket challenge 4 tips for creating viral content gamification icebucketchallenge

A couple of days ago I got nominated for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is a viral awareness campaign that has been knocking around the internet for a few weeks now. A person is challenged to pour a bucket of ice water over their head, film it and nominate others to do the same. If they don’t want to do that, they can donate to the ALS (or in the UK Motor Neurone Disease) charity.

The video above is my contribution.

This challenge has been massively successful, raising millions for the charities and also making millions aware of the disease. But what has made it such a success? Read More ...

[Updated] Defining fun – some research results

UPDATED 27/08/2014

After a few more responses, I have realised I missed off Learning as a type of fun!!!

As many of you will have seen by now, I am running a short survey on what people find fun. So far I have had 155 results, for which I am truly grateful! Of course, I need more – so tell your friends, I am missing any answers at all from the 17 or younger age group!

However, I thought it would be fun to share some of the findings so far, show those of you that have answered so far that there is something happening with your answers. I have been categorising the answers into various types of fun, creating new types as I find answers that don’t fit into those I already have. So far this has given me 21 types of fun. Part of this process is to get your feedback on the types I have so far – are they all separate for example, or can I group a few. Also, can I group them generally beyond what I have already. I really need your feedback to help this process! Read More ...

Just rewarding activity is not gamification: stop it!

I have promised in the past not to write about the dangers of extrinsic rewards anymore. However, can’t stand reading about gamification being a failure anymore, when the articles proclaiming this almost always start with “gamification is about awarding points, or physical rewards to people for doing dull tasks”.

No quoting from Dan Pink or Deci and Ryan this time, just facts based on experience.

If you offer a reward, especially a material reward that has value to people, you are setting yourself up for failure. Every time I have seen a ‘gamified’ campaign that offers someone like an iPad as a prize for participation, it has had problems. The worst culprit is when the prize is offered for nothing more than activity (so no actual creativity needed). Read More ...

S.M.A.R.T Gamification – Goal Setting

In one of those “D’oh” moments, it occurred to me that management types have been promoting one of the core components of gamification since at least the 80’s!

We all agree that one of the main aspects that forms good gamification is good goal setting (at least I hope we all do by now). Well The Management have been told to do this for about 30 years now – ever since a concept called “SMART” was first given air. SMART is an acronym (of course, we all love one of them), that generally stands for; Read More ...

Dynamic teams: Learning from the kids

The other day, I had the joy of taking my eldest daughter to a theme park (Chessington World of Adventures). We had an amazing time, finished off with a visit to what I thought was a sort of soft play area.

It turns out it was way more awesome than that. It was a steam punk themed ball shooting arena called Temple of Mayhem.

The arena was 2 floors high, with walkways laid out in a horseshoe around the edges. Each of the walkways had a bank of guns, whilst the ground floor had 2 large cannons.

The guns and the cannons fired tennis ball sized foam balls (as many as you could get in them). Also dotted around were various mechanisms to get the foam balls from the ground floor up to the first and second levels. Read More ...

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