badges

Reward Excellence not Mediocrity and Expectation

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4 Days Reward Excellence not Mediocrity and Expectation

When designing a reward system, it is easy to be tempted to reward everything!

  • “Hey, you clicked on a button – woot”.
  • “Awesome, you clicked that button twice, go you!”
  • “OMG, you clicked that button 10 times now, you are the button king – have the button king badge!!!!!”

The trouble with this is it devalues rewards very quickly. I have written in depth about rewards and badges before, so won’t go into it here. What I want to put over in this short post, is the need to reward the right things and congratulate others.

Take my daughters school and a previously mentioned issue I have around them rewarding kids for attendance.  100% attendance = a  reward of no homework for a week and a certificate. The issue here is the children being rewarded are 99% of the time not in control of their attendance. It is down to illness or parents taking them out of school for various reasons. It also highlights those who are unable to maintain 100% for reasons out of their control and could turn the class against them. Read More ...

6 Tips for Short Term Gamification

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Pblnc2 6 Tips for Short Term Gamification

A question I get asked a great deal is “Are points, badges and leaderboards enough?” The stock answer from me is usually a resounding “No, you must consider motivation and the needs of the user, think RAMP and more…” In fairness, this is good advice and you should consider intrinsic motivation over extrinsic and the like. However, the answer really should be “Sometimes, it depends what your goals are.” You see, if you are looking for a short term or short sharp engagement, PBL may well be fine. Very often in gamification we are trying desperately to get people to consider long-term motivations and engagements. Really, it is likely that it is just a single simple task that people want completing. Read a new policy, complete the training, check out a new product. Read More ...

Virtual Economies

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Economics 1436520799 Virtual Economies

A little free section from the new book 😉

Virtual economies are not as common an addition to a gamified system, but I wanted to include a little bit about them.  Virtual economies can be based entirely in the virtual world, or can break that barrier and have some effect on the real world, depending on how they are designed. If you consider points and badges, they are a type of virtual currency, though they have no real world value, in the system they represent effort and skill. If that virtual currency can then be used to purchase virtual goods, you being to have an actual economy. For example, many games allow you to collect coins or points and then exchange them for in game goods. For example, Fallout Shelter from Bethseda. As you play the game, you earn bottle caps – the in game currency. Those bottle tops can then be used to purchase new rooms for your shelter. Read More ...

Points & Badges Video Tutorial

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Vlcsnap 2014 03 27 11h36m24s217 Points 038 Badges Video Tutorial

The fourth video in my series of tutorials (finally!!)

This one is just a short (10 minute) look at points and badges in gamified systems and how to make some use of them. Not all that different from my Points and Badges: Not Totally Evil blog post, but also talks about balancing and best use case.

Enjoy!

Designing a simple “Thin Layer” gamified system.

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Cropped gamification Designing a simple 8220 Thin Layer 8221 gamified system

I thought this week, after 2 years of avoiding it, I would write a short starter for actually creating a gamified system.  This will cover the basics of what I call a Thin Layer system – also known as PBL (Points, Badges and Leaderboards) system.

Now, before you all shout at me for explaining how to do a system that I can often be heard saying is not the best type of gamification, consider this. Thin Layer is the most common type of system out there and it is the easiest to start with. It can also be very effective over short periods of time, for things like short campaigns, education and on boarding into deeper systems. The point is (as Kris Duggan from Badgeville once pointed out to me), sometimes, something is better than nothing, as long as it is well designed and created for a purpose. My view is, of you are going to try – you should at least be armed with the right information to make the best go of it possible. Read More ...