Gamification: 75% Psychology, 25% Technology [06Oct11] - 0 views
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Should enterprise applications be as addictive as Angry Birds? A true believer in gamification would say yes, if you want people to actually use them.
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Most of all, gamificiation is about understanding that "if you can make something more fun, and include notions of play, you can get people to do things they otherwise might not want to do."
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Businesses have successfully applied gamification principles to achieving goals like reducing travel expenses (Google) and improving cashier checkout performance (Target). The Google example is interesting because it "actually got people talking about how to save money on travel," whereas the more traditional corporate water cooler conversation would be about how to cheat the system, Zimmerman said.
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"Gamification by Design" largely focuses on the psychology of engagement and ways it can be applied to business applications.
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Gamifying an application doesn't necessarily mean adding fancy graphics and sound effects, but often it does mean keeping score and letting "players" see how they rank on a leader board--the equivalent of the high scores screen on a video game. In a business context, that might mean letting salespeople see how they rank and how close they are to achieving a goal or securing a bonus as a way of getting the competitive juices flowing.
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On the other hand, in a traditional loyalty program you might award one point for every dollar a user spends. In a gamified system, you might want to instead provide variable, unpredictable reinforcement where participants can hit the jackpot. This is the design principle that keeps slot machine players glued to their chairs, even though they ought to know the house always wins.