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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.

[Social media is a powerful tool to connect with customers, but it can create big problems for your company if it's not done right. Learn more at 10 Social Networking Don'ts.]

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."

New research by Dr Brock Bastian from UQ's School of Psychology has found evidence that playing violent video games leads players to see themselves, and their opponents, as lacking in core human qualities such as warmth, open-mindedness, and intelligence.

In a recently published paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Dr Bastian and his co-authors looked at whether the experience of cyber-violence had dehumanising consequences for the self-concept of game players and well as their opponents.

Dr Bastian said given his findings, it was not surprising that many people were concerned about the effects of playing violent video games, especially when they appeared to reflect changes in people's behaviour, emotions, and cognitions in ways consistent with a loss of humanity.

A new phase in social media underway.

Force Field Analysis in Social Sciences analysis reflected on how things are accomplished or hindered by the way that people internalize external experiences in the process of their own psychological development.Now, suppose that an individual goes out and influences social situations in their community.  Also suppose that social media could amplify the persons exterior impact – this would likewise impact internal psychology, etc., setting up a form of polarity between two positions.  The greater the difference (diversity) in those positions, the greater the potential (energy state) of the outcome.The “Local Social” Force FieldSocial media is about to enter a new phase called “local social”.  The hyperlinks that bind the web will become the hyperlinks that bind a community.  The difference is that hyperlinks in “Global Social” environment converge down to specific information, Hyperlinks in Local Social will diverge up to diverse knowledge assets.Read more at www.ingenesist.com

Gamification describes a series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviors and effect desired outcomes. Originating from the video game industry, many of these pioneering concepts now play a key role in driving incentive and behavior management for both brands in the consumer world and internal scenarios in the workplace. Enterprise gamification is a user experience (UX) and consumerization of IT (CoIT) trend that will take the market by storm in 2012. Constellation believes that by 2013, more than 50 percent of all social business initiatives will include an enterprise gamification component.

In interviews with 55 early adopters of enterprise gamification, Constellation identifies the three core pillars that include measurable action, reputation and incentives. By creating triggers through both monetary and non-monetary incentives among customers, employees, partners, suppliers and other interested parties, organizations can secure sustainable engagement and drive business outcomes such as improved marketing response from external communities, sustained long-term customer loyalty, increased collaboration among internal teams, or enriched onboarding, delivering success with new hires, partners, and customers.

Enterprise gamification requires an application of psychology and behavioral economics to incentivize outcomes. Because enterprise gamification maps closely to human behavior, organizations will want to follow Constellation’s best practices in appealing to the “Seven Deadly Sins” for gamification design.

Gamification describes a series of design principles, processes and systems used to influence, engage and motivate individuals, groups and communities to drive behaviors and effect desired outcomes. Originating from the video game industry, many of these pioneering concepts now play a key role in driving incentive and behavior management for both brands in the consumer world and internal scenarios in the workplace. Enterprise gamification is a user experience (UX) and consumerization of IT (CoIT) trend that will take the market by storm in 2012. Constellation believes that by 2013, more than 50 percent of all social business initiatives will include an enterprise gamification component.

In interviews with 55 early adopters of enterprise gamification, Constellation identifies the three core pillars that include measurable action, reputation and incentives. By creating triggers through both monetary and non-monetary incentives among customers, employees, partners, suppliers and other interested parties, organizations can secure sustainable engagement and drive business outcomes such as improved marketing response from external communities, sustained long-term customer loyalty, increased collaboration among internal teams, or enriched onboarding, delivering success with new hires, partners, and customers.

Enterprise gamification requires an application of psychology and behavioral economics to incentivize outcomes. Because enterprise gamification maps closely to human behavior, organizations will want to follow Constellation’s best practices in appealing to the “Seven Deadly Sins” for gamification design.

Amplify’d from www.newscientist.comWHEN it comes to making friends online it is the quantity, not quality, of your blog posts that counts.Susan Jamison-Powell at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK studied the popularity of 75 bloggers on the site Livejournal.com. She looked at the number of friends each blogger had, the number of posts they made, the total number of words written and the overall tone of the posts. She then asked the bloggers to rate how attractive they found each of their peer’s blogs.She found that the more words a blogger posted, the more friends they had and the higher their attractiveness rating. The tone of their posts - whether they contained mostly positive or negative comments - had no effect. The findings were presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference this week.

"Drawing on cognitive science, an increasing number of game theorists and designers say that our growing love of video games has important things to tell us about our intrinsic desires and motivations. Central to it all is a simple theory – that games are fun because they teach us interesting things and they do it in a way that our brains prefer – through systems and puzzles. 'With games, learning is the drug,' writes Raph Koster, the designer of seminal multiplayer fantasy games such as Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. 'In game theory, this is often spoken of as the "magic circle": you enter into a realm where the rules of the real world don't apply – and typically being judged on success and failure is part of the real world. People need to feel free to try things and to learn without being judged or penalised.' Another important element is autonomy as games tap into our need to have control.

Finally another important game design facet is 'disproportionate feedback,' in which players are hugely rewarded for achieving very simple tasks. In highly successful shooters such as Call of Duty and Bulletstorm, when an enemy is shot, they don't just collapse to the floor, they explode into chunks. 'You're good, you're a success – you're powerful,' writes Stuart. 'Disproportionate feedback is an endorphin come-on.'"

In his latest study, Berger measured how various emotional and physical stimuli designed to activate the autonomic nervous system affected the likelihood that subjects would share emotion-free news articles. In one experiment, he primed 93 respondents with pre-tested video clips to produce emotional states associated with high arousal (anxiety, amusement) and low arousal (sadness, contentment). Then, in what participants were told was an unrelated trial, Berger presented the respondents with neutral articles and videos, and asked them to rate how inclined they were to share these news items with friends, family members, and coworkers. The result: "Situations that heighten arousal boost social transmission," Berger concludes.

Judith Cherry, Head of Research and Insight at the UK-based organization Opportunity Now and author of the report “Out of Office: Solutions for an Agile Future” [PDF] explained, “We’re moving the debate away from flexwork – because we’ve come to the understanding that we’re all flex workers. What we’re doing now is “agile working.”

The distinction is important, she said, because agile working is about more than working from home, or using mobile devices. It’s a whole new system of management.

She explained, “Technology allows us to work after hours, across time zones, at home, at the airport – we can manage this, so how come it is so hard to let people work three days out of the week? The psychology of work has not caught up with the technology.”