Gamification

Focused Feedback and Attainable, Maintainable Goals

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Focused feedback and goals Focused Feedback and Attainable Maintainable Goals

Don’t Mention Gamification

I was challenged recently to talk about gamification without mentioning games or gamification! The reason is that many people have not got time to dive too deep into the meanings and on its own, gamification as a word is confusing, to say the least. So, I took to YouTube and had a go!

My thoughts revolved around two core concepts; Focused Feedback and Attainable, Maintainable Goals.

Focused Feedback

Feedback is essential for engagement in anything we do, whether it is related to our job, social life or hobbies. Without feedback, we don’t know where we, how we are doing or where we are going. Not having feedback is like driving without seeing the road or a map! Read More ...

Diminishing Effect of Rewards

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Scales 1487607673 Diminishing Effect of Rewards

One of the things you discover when you have kids is just how much you must bribe them to achieve anything. This is especially galling when, like me, you understand the behavioural impacts of using rewards to modify behaviour etc.

One of the things this has shown me is the existence of an effect I’m calling here “the diminishing effects of rewards”.

Basically repeated use of rewards leads to the rewards becoming less and less effective until they become expected payments rather than rewards. This is not quite the same as Over Justification effect as the reward does not become more important than the activity, it just becomes an expected part of the activity and without it, the activity is no longer considered acceptable. Read More ...

GWC16 – Well That Just Happened!

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IMG 9858 GWC16 8211 Well That Just Happened

Last week was the 5th edition of Gamification World Congress. I have to admit, it was great fun. There were some extremely good talks, I especially enjoyed the parallel stage that had a nice mix of academic and practical talks going on.

A couple of highlights for me were Kevin Werbach and Yu Kai Chou. Kevin spoke about the need for more rigour in the industry, to start using more empirical data and not just intuition – a cause close to my heart these days! Yu Kai, in the face of his slides not working, pulled off a fabulous talk from the heart about the industry and how important games are to him and us all. Read More ...

The Future of Gamification

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Augmented reality 1476093062 The Future of Gamification

Recently I was honoured to be asked to be part of a documentary about games, their history, and evolution. One of the questions that I was asked that really got me thinking was “What is the future of gamification?”

I am asked this quite often and tend to go with a safe answer. In my view, we will not speak about gamification within the next few years. It will be spoken about in the same way social media or digital is, just  another part of various strategies. In the case of gamification, it will become part of a standard set of tools for experience design. Read More ...

Target Gamification – My Top 9 Gamification Elements

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Target Gamification V1 Target Gamification 8211 My Top 9 Gamification Elements

There are some questions I am asked more than others. Today I want to give a slightly longer answer to one of them than usual! The question? “What is your favourite gamification element?”

My usual answer fluctuates between feedback (which covers anything from verbal to full online economies) or progress, which I have written about in the past. Recently though I realised that this was just not enough of an answer anymore.

The truth is, I have no one favourite element, every solution requires something a little bit different. However, there is a sort of process that I go through when designing a solution or strategy. It starts with my core or target (see – it ties in with the title!!). Then I have a few things that help to support that core, then finally something that embraces it all. Let’s start with an image. Read More ...