Experience

Experience Points and Gamification – Getting it Wrong

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Experience Points Experience Points and Gamification 8211 Getting it Wrong

Gamification often uses points, deal with it. They can form a solid backbone to a system, after all, they are just a granular form of tracking and record keeping!

My issue today is with a misconception about using experience points in gamification. In games, we know that experience points are used in many titles. In a game, experience points (XP) are gained by doing tasks, completing missions, killing the bad guys and more. Often, the early stages of games see the user “grinding”, doing small, unskilled repetitive tasks over and over again, to gain XP. Read More ...

My 3 main focuses for rewards and feedback

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RIM My 3 main focuses for rewards and feedback

One of the key things that I consider when looking at anything in gamification is how feedback is going to be handled. For me, feedback is anything that gives a user some understanding of progress and achievement. This can be something as simple as a message that says “You have completed the survey”, to a full virtual economy working with points, badges, levels, leaderboards, trading, prizes etc! They are all just there to keep the user informed.

I feel there are three important aspects that need to be considered when designing feedback and rewards for any system though. It should be – cue another mnemonic – RIM…..! Read More ...

Using Gamification to create meaningful feedback through Accessibility and Immediacy

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Questions box Using Gamification to create meaningful feedback through Accessibility and Immediacy

Whilst I process the amazing presentations, talks and general chats that happened at SocialNow, I wanted to put together a quick post around the ideas of accessibility and immediacy.

Imagine the situation.  You are an airport and have thousands of people moving through your building every day. Most have a very predictable path. Land, get of plane, walk to baggage claim, go to the exit.  On the way, they have to go through various checks. Customs, passport control, security etc.

All of these people are in a hurry, they have a goal and want to get to it as fast as possible.  Your problem is, you want to find out how they have found the experience of going through the processes in place at your airport.  How was the flight, how was the security, how was baggage claim etc. Read More ...

What the NHS has just taught me about poor user experience.

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Docs What the NHS has just taught me about poor user experience

Whilst I normally blog about Gamification and finding the benefits in understanding the psychology of people, this post is of a deeply personal nature. It also shows how important user experience is. I hope though, you will retweet this far and wide. Oh – and it is a bit of a rant.

This was to be a letter to our medical practice, but to be honest; I decided that it would not make any difference. The last time I tried to complain to the NHS, they seemed to think that it was perfectly acceptable to be told it was best to take my heavily pregnant wife, who was in labour and begging for help, back home. The same heavily pregnant wife who less than an hour later gave birth to our daughter, in our upstairs toilet with no one but me available to deliver her. All this whilst on hold to the same hospital as the tried to find someone to talk to me. This broke none of the their guidelines. Basic human care was apparently not high on the agenda. So rather than going that pointless route again, they will be getting a short note with the URL to this blog on it. Read More ...