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Dynamic teams: Learning from the kids

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Temple of mayhem 2 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 ...

Altruism: Kindness begets kindness

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One of the ideas that has always fascinated me is altruism within random groups. The idea that if you do a good deed and others see it, they will also be more likely to do a good deed.

I have been testing this idea on my drive into work for a few months now. In a totally non scientific way, I have been alternately allowing people to cross past me at a junction and not letting them. When I let them cross, I keep an eye on the car behind me to see if they then let the next person through.

I would estimate that about 7 times out of 10, the person behind will let the next car through. When I don’t do it, then the car behind almost always follows suit and won’t let the someone past. Read More ...

Gamification is sh1t. Let’s make it better.

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I thought that might get your attention. Excuse the contrived use of the 1 in shit there as well, firewalls can be so jumpy about certain words.

Now back to my point.

Gamification, in far too many cases right now,  is indeed shit. I am not saying gamification itself is bad, just a lot of the uses and applications of gamification that we are seeing out there falls into that particularly odorous category.

It’s as if gamification has become the duct tape of user design. “The user experience is a bit off, what should we do? Add gamification”. “The system is not great, people get stuck and don’t like using it, what should we do? Add gamification – points and badges will fix it!”. “We need to improve efficiency in the department. How can we do that? A leaderboard you say? Let’s do it!” Read More ...

Gamification: The users perspective

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As a gamification designer, it is easy to get hooked up on the intricacies of the system. The feedback mechanics, the game mechanics, the economy and the cleverness of it all. It is also easy to think, “this is going to be great” when you have a new idea and then spend waaay to long making the idea real.

What we need to to is step back from time to time and say “How will this actually impact the user”.

For example. You have this fabulous animation that you want to make use of. It fits the overall theme of the gamified solution you are building and think that it adds a little bit of playfulness to break up part of the process. Great. However, what does it really give the end user? If it is used once and adds some greater value to the process they are going through, by giving a new understanding or insight – then brilliant. If it really does give the user a break for a particularity complex part of the process, then okay. If it sits there and forces them to watch it, possibly more than once with no option to skip – step away from the idea. Read More ...

Playful design vs Game inspired design

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When I first started to describe Game Thinking, I talked about gameful design or game inspired design. Part of me was always split about what I really meant. In my mind, these ideas were based on user interface more than anything. So creating menu systems that mirrored ideas seen in games, or creating slightly more fun look and feel.

It wasn’t until I was messing around with the Snapchat interface that I realised what I was really thinking about – playful design. Design ideas that add to the pleasure of using something whilst not necessarily altering the functionality. The example that Snapchat gave me was something I discovered just by playing with the interface. If you go to your chat stream and slide up, the image at the bottom becomes an animation. At the moment it is of the Snapchat ghosts playing football. Read More ...

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