Gamification Complete Certification Book

Foreword As an education and training organization within the IT Service Management (ITSM) industry, we have watched with enthusiasm as the world of Gamification has evolved over the years. The opportunities provided through through Gamification Gamification have have allowed allowed for for significant significant growth growth within within an industry that continues to mature and develop at a rapid pace. Our pr imary goal is to provide the quality education and support materials needed to enable the understanding and application of Gamification in a wide range of contexts.

This comprehensi comprehensive ve book is designed to complemen complementt the in-depth eLearning Gamification Specialist program provided by The Art of Service. The interactive eLearning course uses a combination of narrated PowerPoint presentations with flat text supplements and multiplechoice assessments, assessments, which will ultimately prepare you for the Gamification certification exam.

In this brand new edition, we created a focused and specialized manual, which dives straight into Gamification. We We hope you find this book to be a useful tool in your educational library, and we wish you well in your IT career!

The Art of Service

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Contents Foreword

1

HOW TO ACCESS THE eLEARNING PROGRAM

4

Introduction

11

What is Gamification?

14

Objectives

14

Gamification

14

Definition

14

History

16

Games vs. Gamification

20

Three Fs of Gamification

21

Kinds of Gamification

22

Principles of Gamification

23

Incentive-Centered Design

24

Concepts

24

Questions

28

Benefits, Pitfalls, Characteristics, and Facts about Gamification

30

Objectives

30

Benefits

30

Pitfalls

35

Characteristics

36

Facts

37

0Questions

38

Gamification Elements

40

Objectives

40


40

Gamification Dynamics

41

1st Gamification Dynamic: Constraints

41

2nd Gamification Dynamic: Emotions

42

3rd Gamification Dynamic: Narrative

42

Gamification Mechanics

43

Challenges

43

Chance

44

Competition and Cooperation

45

Feedback

45

Resource Acquisition

45

Rewards

46

Transactions

46

Turns

46

Win States

46

Gamification Components

47

Achievements

47

Avatars

47

Badges

47

Boss Fights

47

Collections

48

Combat

48

Content Unlocking

48

Gifting

48

Quests

48

Leaderboards

48

Levels

49

Points

49

Social Graph

50

Teams

50

Virtual Goods

50

Questions

51

Psychology of Gamification

53

Objectives

53


53

Motivation

54

Behaviorism

54

The Feedback Loop

55

Evidence (data)

56

Relevance (data processing)

57

Consequence (data defining)

57

Action (data usage)

58

The Feedback Loop - Conclusion

58

Compassionate Gamification

59

Emphatic feedback

60

Use of psychology theories

60

Intrinsic motivation

60

Questions

61

Gamification in Education

63

Objectives

63

Introduction

63

Benefits of Gamification in Education

66

Disadvantages of Gamification in Education

70

Samples of Gamification in Education

71

Conclusion

76

Questions

78

Gamification in Business

80

Objectives

80

The Gamification of Business

80

Introduction

80

Early Hype

81

Using Gamification to Engage Employees

83

Key Benefits Gamification Brings to Businesses

87

Questions

90

Real-World Applications

92

Objectives

92

Real World Applications of Gamification

92

Gamification Sites

94

Gamification - Mobile

96

Other Applications

98

Optimal Applications

101

Questions

103

Trends and Future of Gamification

105

Objectives

105

Gamification Trends

105

Future of Gamification

107

Final Thoughts…

118

Questions

119

Answers

121

Index

122

Introduction The Art of Service’s trained IT professionals have created the Gamification Complete Certification Kit to serve as a complete introductory guide for anyone looking to grasp a better understanding of Gamification concepts and their practical application in any IT environment. Our Gamification Certification Kit provides you with the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the latest and greatest business and technology trends in the form of a study guide eBook and online course, all of which are delivered to you via our eLearning portal, ensuring you the freedom to access your course at your convenience!

The online learning program is available for a 90-day access period.

Gamification can be described as the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications. Gamification works by making technology more engaging and by encouraging desired behaviors, taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. With so many benefits, the IT industry is scrambling to get expert in the know. So, knowledge of the application and benefits of Gamification is a key for anyone looking to get a jumpstart in the IT industr y, gain respect from fellow IT enthusiasts, and make a difference in your organization!

The Gamification Complete Certification Kit contains everything you need to know about Gamification concepts, including: •

Real-world scenarios that describe what you have learned in the context of service solutions. These include thought-provoking questions to challenge your thinking and understanding.

•

Section reviews for each chapter to help you zero in on what you need to know and quiz questions to help solidify your knowledge.

•

A Real-World Guide to Gamification. Key information and real-world examples organized around the actual day-to-day tasks and challenges you will face in the application of Gamification.

•

Trainer lead, engaging Adobe Flash presentations that you can view and replay as many times as required.

Audience:

The Gamification Complete Certification Kit will be of interest to: •

Recent graduates looking to get a foothold in the IT Industry.

•

Individuals looking for work within public or private sector organizations.

•

Marketers and website product managers needing a tool for customer engagement and for encouraging desirable website usage behavior.

•

Educators looking to implement a new motivational tool.

•

Businesses looking to implement new employee training and motivational tools.

The topics covered in this course are: •

What is Gamification?

•

Benefits, Pitfalls, Characteristics and Facts about Gamification.

•

Gamification Elements.

•

Psychology of Gamification.

•

Gamification in Education.

•

Gamification in Business.

•

Real-world Applications.

•

Trends and Future of Gamification.

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites for the Gamification program, but basic IT literacy and knowledge is desirable. Contact Hours:

The recommended minimum contact hours for the eLearning course is 18 hours.

13

Delivery:

The program combines [8] short presentations supported by trainer audio. There are also quizzes and exercises at the conclusion of each module (marking scheme provided), to ensure that learners are testing their knowledge and competency to enhance understanding of key concepts. A Certificate will be awarded to students upon successfully passing the final exam and completion of the course.

This program is an eLearning Program. Your access details to the eLearning course are in the book.

Program Materials: •

Multimedia presentations.

•

Downloadable resources (PDF documents).

•

End-of-module review questions to assess your content knowledge.

We hope you find the Gamification Certification Kit beneficial to the expansion of your IT knowledge base and future career growth.

Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

Chapter 1

What is Gamification? Objectives •

To learn what Gamification is.

•

To learn the origins of Gamification.

•

To study Gamification design concepts.

Gamification

Definition Gamification is the application of game theory concepts and methods to non-game activities. It uses game design techniques & mechanics to solve problems and entice audiences to participate in the games in non-game situations. It works to persuade participants to behave in ways intended by the game developers in relation to non-game applications.

Gamification is used in applications and processes to improve user engagement, return on investment, data quality, timeliness, and learning. Nowadays a lot of organizations use gamification as a business strategy that applies game design approaches to non-game experiences to influence user behavior.

Gamification integrates game mechanics into a website, enterprise application, online community or similar medium that already exists to influence participation, engagement, and loyalty.

14

It takes data-driven techniques that game designers use to engage players, and applies them to non-game experiences to prompt actions that add value to the business.

Usually gamification applies to non-game applications and processes to encourage people to adopt them, or to influence how they are used. Gamification is effective because it makes individuals want to participate and makes them behave in desired ways.

It also shows a path to master the game and do it independently, by helping to solve problems and not being a distraction and by using a person’s psychological inclination to take part in gaming. The method urges people to complete tasks that they ordinarily would consider boring, such as reading websites, conducting surveys, shopping, or filling out tax forms.

The key to gamification is…the reward! Making the reward means a great deal to the individual and relating it to the activity makes it effective. In the case of a job, the reward would give the employee personal satisfaction from a job well done. Or for a student, rewarding himself with a cookie if he finishes homework might urge good behavior but when he runs out of cookies, he might eventually realize he actually enjoys completing his homework even without cookies as a reward.

People might see Gamification as a new term but the idea of using it, is not as new since it emerged from the digital media industry. It began in 2008 when Gabe Zicherman called it “funware.” He defined it as the art and science of turning your customer‘s everyday interactions into games that serve your business purposes and was the first to actually apply it. His work centers on gamification and the power of games to engage people and build strong organizations and communities.

Although gamification as a term is still being disputed, the practice continues to evolve. These days, the interest in gamification is accumulating and has prompted many conferences and workshops on the concept, despite the fact that many practitioners dispute the term “gamification.”

15

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GAMIFICATION

Because many designers within the video game and digital media industry are unhappy with some interpretations, they have already started to use different terms for their own practice (e.g. “gameful design”) because they want to detach themselves from recent negative connotations of the term gamification.

Here are some details that might help bring clarity to the term gamification. Gamification is NOT . . . •

Making everything a game or an immerse 3D virtual world.

•

Any game in the workplace.

•

Any use of games in business (e.g. McDonald monopoly).

•

Any simulation (although they may constitute serious games).

•

Just for marketing or customer engagement.

•

Just PBLs (points, badges, leaderboards).

•

Game theory.

Gamification IS . . . •

Listening to what games can teach us.

•

Learning from game design (including contexts of psychology, management, marketing, economics etc.).

•

Appreciating fun.

History Research points to the coining of the term sometime in 2002 and 2003 by Nick Pelling who described his work as a consultant for making hardware more fun. It wasn’t until years later that the word gamification started getting more attention.

Further research points to the fact that its first documented use was in 2008 when it was called “gameification” and used in a blog post by Bret Terrill, who was covering discussions in the lobby at Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

17 the Social Gaming Summit. He heard the term used in the context of “taking game mechanics and applying them to other web properties to increase engagement.” The term was picked up by other blogs and slimmed down by dropping the “e,” making it “gamification.”

•

Gamification as a word hasn’t been in use for a long time and was just a recent addition to vocabulary. But long before that it had been employed by many designers and researchers already examining the role of play and fun in computer applications.

•

Thomas W. Malone, founder and director of MIT Center for Collective Intelligence created heuristics in the early ‘80s for designing enjoyable user interfaces and Steven W. Draper in the late ‘90s analyzed the possibilities of fun as a candidate software requirement.

•

Experts devoted further research into the role of fun and play in user experience and the idea behind this use of playfulness in software was that instead of making interfaces simply usable, they could also be fun. The point was that it elicited positive emotions and feelings through things such as sound, graphics, challenge, etc., and enhanced the user’s experience with the software.

•

It has become such a hot topic that some fairly recent applications use more than playful elements and directly translate elements from video games to the interfaces.

•

Chore Wars which was released in 2007, is an example of this and incorporates a choreassigning software application inside a dungeon and dragons style interface, complete with dungeon master, experience points, monster battles and loot.

•

Bunchball launched the Nitro platform in 2007. It allows enterprises to integrate game mechanics into social networks, mobile applications, and websites. Even if they did not specifically call it gamification, they later adopted the term. The platform showed the trend that was about to hit.

•

In 2009, Foursquare was launched. Foursquare is a location sharing social network application that also includes videogame-like elements, namely points, badges, and leaderboards, which other gamification designs were based on.


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GAMIFICATION

Gamification on the Rise (>2010)

It was in 2010 when different industries started using the word gamification specifically referring to incorporation of social/reward aspects of games into software.

Venture capitalists got wind of this technique with one of them actually alluding to gamification as the most promising area in gaming. One other capitalist mentioned he noticed that half of all companies seeking funding for consumer software applications mentioned game design in their presentations.

In the same year, companies such as Bunchball and Badgeville began to describe the platforms they created for integrating game elements into sites as gamification.

Later that year, Badgeville was launched and made $15 million in venture-capital funding in its first year of operation. Badgeville provides gamification services to a number of large customers. IActionable launched a gamification platform whose goal was to integrate with Salesforce.com. This opened the gates for more sites and applications to release integrated game elements such as the Epic Win app.

Hit or Miss (2011 – the peak)

By 2011, gamification gained much more notice in both industry and the academic worlds with the annual Gamification Summit in January 2011 starting the year.


19 Although game design was clearly fundamental to the word gamification, some game designers really did not agree with the use of the word, possibly because of the fact that gamified applications so far, like Foursquare, did not really resemble games. They felt they were more reward and feedback systems, not games, because they were missing clear defining elements of games, such as a challenge and a story. A gaming expert says gamification is just “pointsification” or accumulating points for some intrinsic reward that hardly benefits the player. Other experts called it worse things, certainly not the true sense of the word gamification.

Despite all that, it still became popular and continued to evolve. Even as gamification parodies were made, comics created that referenced it and its possibly miserable future, its continued use indicated the technique was going to stay.

Badges, badges, badges … mushroom (2012)

Surprisingly or not, since technology in the gaming world develops at near light speed, people began to tire of gamification by 2012. There were only so many badges that a user could accumulate and gamification design, users thought, was getting old. Bunchball stuck to its guns and said bad gamification still worked to a certain extent. Plus investors were still pouring money into gamification platforms. In 2012 Badgeville announced its $25 million funding which backed up the still noteworthy interest and confidence in the concept and the platform’s ability.

There were some pleasant surprises as well, in the form of Zombies Run, which was a mobile app that created a rich storyline around the user, motivating them through the tale, zombie chases, item collecting and town upgrading. This was more like a game instead of just having badges, points and leaderboards.


20

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The year of Gamification (2013)

Although most have moved on past the disillusion, there still is some dissatisfaction as badge points and leaderboards continue to pepper the gamification blueprint. Some say this will be the case for quite some time, but Foursquare apparently admits there may have been too much emphasis on gamification in their product and might consider a change.

It seems more focus will now be placed on the importance of gamification design and the experience it creates that indicates the technology may be maturing.

Gamification, as earlier described, involves applying gaming concepts to non-game experiences to drive desired behavior from an audience. People tend to visualize gamification as games created for a business purpose, but it is not just about creating something new. It is about intensifying the influence of an existing, basic experience by employing the motivational techniques that make games so captivating. When you raise already high-value interactions with customers, employees, and partners, you increase sales, make stronger collaborations, improve ROI, encourage deeper loyalty, raise customer satisfaction and more.

Games vs. Gamification

The much disputed use of the word gamification deals mostly with what makes it different from games. A game is defined as structured play, usually for fun, while gameplay is defined as the interaction inside of a game.

The rewards can come in the forms of currency to give incentive to users in the digital world. Currencies could be anything predetermined by the game designer such as the need for financial reward, the need to do good, the need to help one’s community, the need for recognition and influence and the need for pleasure. Designers can assign currencies to each of these motivations


21 to reward people for desired behaviors.

Gamification differs from actual games in these ways: Games •

Have rules and objectives.

•

Provide a possibility of losing.

•

Can sometimes be intrinsically rewarding just by playing them.

•

Are typically difficult and expensive to build.

•

Usually transform content to fit the story and scenes of the game.

Gamification •

Could be just a collection of tasks with points or some form of reward.

•

Could make losing possible or not, because the goal is to motivate people

•

Can make intrinsic rewards optional.

•

Can be easier and cheaper.

•

Does not always usually require changing content even if game-like features are added.

Three Fs of Gamification

Gamification is so popular these days and has given many retail innovators numerous benefits. Both consumers and employees find them so appealing mostly because of their shared competitive nature pure enjoyment and camaraderie. Experts have found there are three motivators common to many employees or customers. One of its founding fathers established three Fs as drivers of gamification: 1. Feedback: Employers are required to reward their employees for a job well done. In the same

light consumers committed to buying a retailer’s products should be rewarded for customer loyalty.


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GAMIFICATION

2. Friends: Users feel they make a personal investment in engaging in the games and are

motivated to participate in challenges because it involves their friends and creates camaraderie. 3. Fun: Games are fun. It would be an understatement to say employees like to participate in

work that could be fun. Definitely consumers enjoy promotions or activities that bring them joy.

Kinds of Gamification

There are two types of gamification: 1. Implicit gamification pertains to a game-like design that accomplishes non-game purposes.

There is no actual game play but game design elements are unknown to the user. An example is LinkedIn’s progress bar. 2. Explicit gamification are actual games users can choose to play that fulfill non-game

purposes. An example is McDonalds’ Monopoly game where people know they are playing a game, but some may not be aware that the main goal is to get them to come buy more food. Serious games have some defined purposes or expected results developers want to achieve. But it also includes all the elements of gamification and an actual game which makes it look and feel like a real game.

Both implicit and explicit gamification are great solutions for engaging employees, customers, students etc. The key is knowing your audience, understanding what motivates them and designing your gamification program most appropriate to their needs.


23

Principles of Gamification

Gamification is not so much about playing the game but making non-game activities more appealing because they feel like game playing.

The most basic characteristics of gamification in action are: •

Simple, recognizable cues for next actions.

•

Clear, instant feedback for actions taken.

•

Easily identifiable markers for ranking and performance.

•

Streamlined, accessible paths to further achievement.

Organizations who want to employ game-like mechanics to their businesses should keep the following principles in mind before they attempt it. 1. Have a measurable goal. Target an objective you can measure such as encouraging a

specific behavior. For example if you want to increase the number of product reviews on your website, reward users for writing product reviews. Give them points every time they accomplish one. 2. Focus on things people already want to do. The best starting point for gamification is to

reward behavior your participants already practice. 3. Measure the change. Record and keep track of desired behavior before and after gamifying

it. It is crucial to track data in gamification strategies as it will tell you whether gamification is working. 4. Reward incremental progress. Experts say rewarding small victories makes for a good

game-like experience. Rewards should be given to small accomplishments as well as big ones. Rewarding people for making incremental progress toward bigger goals encourages them to keep going. 5. Make it social. Whatever environment you apply gamification, whether it be in a sales-

team leaderboard or Facebook, letting users share their accomplishments and badges adds meaning and significance to their achievements. Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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GAMIFICATION

Experts posit that since gamification is player-centered, gamification developers should focus on design based on incentives.

Incentive-Centered Design

Incentive-centered design (ICD) is the science of designing a system that aligns user incentive with the system’s goals.

Using incentive-centered design, system designers can observe methodical and probable trends in users. This would be the user’s response to motivators that provide incentives to induce more valuable participation. ICD is often considered to induce desirable behaviors from users, such as participation and cooperation. It takes some of the principles of economics, psychology, sociology, design, and engineering. Research communities have been very interested in ICD because of its role in helping systems benefit their users and eventually bring about better results.

Concepts Interdisciplinary concepts

Incentive-centered design is subdivided from various areas and can be used for many diverse systems and concepts. It bears a resemblance to user-centered design when it considers user’s wants, needs, and limitations when designing a product. ICD is associated with human–computer interaction because it involves the combination of humans and machines and how the two can work well together. ICD specifically works well with the goals of the user and the system so that the user achieves a pleasant and valuable experience while using the system. In turn the system can provide the user what he requires and in the end become more aware and responsive to changing needs. ICD also borrows from the Theory of Incentives. Conflicting objectives and decentralized information are two of the main components of the Theory of Incentives. ICD works so that both parties obtain optimal results by understanding the objectives of the user and the system and combine and process that information. Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

25 Information security

Information security is the theory of protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access and use. Incentive-centered design can help bring into consideration the errors that humans can make when using a system. These errors could possibly lead to weaknesses in the system that can be exploited by attackers. With ICD, a system can guide a user so he provides appropriate and adequate information to prevent system weaknesses. A simple example is the creation of passwords. Providing user tips, motivation and feedback on the passwords significantly reduces the incidence and possibility of attacks.

User-generated content

Media content users create and make available to the public on the internet is what makes up user-generated content. Receiving recognition for their work, connecting with others and selfexpression are the underlying motivations or what could be incentives for users to contribute to user-generated content. Examples include users uploading their own videos on YouTube, or users making contributions to Wikipedia, posting reviews on a website, etc. Three requirements that make information qualify as user-generated content are: the publication requirement, the creative effort requirement (Users must add their own original creative effort and value in their work) and that the creation is outside of professional routines and practices. Most user-generated content is non-professional and is not related to anything institutional or commercial.

Reputation systems

Reputation systems can influence a customer to buy a product with a high reputation score or buy from a seller who has a high reputation score. Goods, services, companies, service providers, and most anything have a reputation derived from the collection of opinions of other entities on these items. The reputation system uses an algorithm to generate reputation scores for them. Reputation systems bear a likeness to recommendation systems. Customers buy goods and services based on the reputation scores of those goods and services. Goods with high reputation scores attract more buyers. Examples would include Amazon and eBay, where customers who buy the item are able to rate and review the quality of the product. The cumulative ratings for the product are displayed


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GAMIFICATION

indicating its quality and popularity. The relation to incentive-centered design is that if sellers on eBay have a high reputation, then other users would be inclined to buy from them or if the item itself has high ratings, users will be more likely to buy that item.

Social computing

Social computing takes into consideration the association between computational systems and social behavior. Social computing involves a high level of community formation, user content creation, and collective action. Examples of social computing forms include peer-to-peer networks, open source communities, and wikis. In these areas, respect and recognition for users who deliver high quality content and contributions serve as incentives. The system improves and increases its quality overall because of these contributions.

Recommender systems

Recommender systems try to forecast how much a user wants a product and which product would be associated with the social network linked to the user. Social networks use these recommendation systems suggesting new friends, recommending related clothing, shopping sites, etc. It shows user rating and preferences. The Netflix Recommender System is intended to incentivize user participation, aligning the system’s and the user’s interests. Users want to find content they are interested in and Netflix wants the ability to give better recommendations to their users. The star system that Netflix provides allows for the both parties to benefit.

Online auction design

An online auction is an auction on the internet which can range from descending auctions to sealed-bid auctions. There is a wide variety of goods and services that can be sold in online auctions, and hundreds of various websites for online auctions. An obvious example is eBay. Users sell their own personal items on the site for others to buy. In relation to incentive-centered design, sites such as eBay allow users to assess the product they purchased and give it a rating. Sellers and goods which boast high ratings attract more buyers compared to untrustworthy sellers and below


27 standard goods for sale in the auction.


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Questions

1. What is one way that games differ from gamification? a. Games are easier and cheaper b. Games can be just a collection of tasks c.

Games provide the possibility of losing

d. Games make intrinsic rewards optional

2. Which incentive-centered design concept protects against unauthorized access? a. Information security b. Interdisciplinary concepts c.

Recommender systems

d. Online auction design

3. Which of the following can be given as an incentive to users in the digital world and can come in forms of currency? a. Games b. Coins c.

Rewards

d. Badges

4. What is the key to gamification? a. Loyalty b. Mechanics c.

Fun

d. Rewards


29 5. Which type of gamification refers to actual games that achieve non-game purposes? a. Implicit b. Elicit c. Explicit d. Illicit

6. Which system design is frequently considered to encourage participation and cooperation from users? a. Information security b. User-generated content c.

Incentive-centered design

d. Interdisciplinary concepts


Chapter 2

Benefits, Pitfalls, Characteristics, and Facts about Gamification Objectives •

To learn about the benefits of Gamification.

•

To study the risks of Gamification.

•

To examine some characteristics and facts about Gamification.

Benefits

If you are internet savvy then you are familiar with gamification technology. Gamification as stated earlier, attributes characteristics of a game or its game mechanics to an activity or entity that is not a game. It is employed chiefly to increase engagement and investment of a user base.

The basic underlying psychological principle of gamification is to provide positive reinforcement for each action. Sadly, the world is full of people driven only by incentive, where the phrase “What’s in it for me?” is a common motivation question.

Gamification helps to provide incentive where there is none, or to increase an already existing incentive. This produces a feeling of delight or happiness whenever we receive a new badge or trophy.

30

Opens Doors

Gamification supplies the methods for engagement of the customer or consumer. Gamification urges consumers to participate and rewards them for their efforts.

An online survey says gamification has increased commenting by 13%, social sharing to Facebook, Twitter, and networks by 22 %, and content discovery by a massive 68 %.

This helps bring businesses closer to new customers through a network of sharing with social media, other networks, and even word of mouth. Gamification provides a market where customers are encouraged to participate and are rewarded for their efforts.

Boosts Productivity

Gamification models can also be utilized to support greater improved employee productivity. Employees may work more assiduously for bonuses and other incentives, but what they understand is that working harder has a major impact on the business. They are made to realize that their individual work combined with the overall result makes them a vital part of the business. Gamification helps give them feelings that they have done a good job and are necessary to the business as a whole.

Requires a balanced approach

Providing a consistent reward system encourages continued engagement. Conversely a system that promotes inequality may push others to leave for other businesses.

A specialist once described this system as one that gives more rewards to the most skilled players and giving less or no rewards to the less skilled players. Not remedying the situation and allowing the situation to continue pushes the less skilled players to leave and never come back. Although this applies to a hypothetical game, it can still apply to the general structure of a reward system.

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More customers and employees who accomplish their goals and tasks easier and quicker, will overwhelm the novices. This process frustrates others from succeeding and feeling accomplished and sometimes stops them from participating in the first place. A reward system should balance these outcomes by implementing greater difficulty levels to insure equal participation.

Feedback

This is a basic principle of user experience and is made up of two essential parts. •

It tells users that their intended action was recognized.

•

It provides a clue as to how the system will respond to their actions.

Without feedback, users will not know if they are getting closer to their goal or what their current place in the game is.

Feedback in games also lets the player know where they are in the game and what or where their actions have brought them. It lets the user know their intended action was registered and that the system has responded in turn. It’s also an immediate indication that the user is getting closer to their goal.

Feedback pacing is important to motivate your users to stay on your site or keep coming back to it. Too much feedback overwhelms the user with information. Too little feedback bores the user. The correct amount of feedback keeps the user in that engagement loop, keeps him on the site and still has the interest to discover new activities. As a business, you do not want your users to leave your site because of something the site lacks or does, but what external forces do to cause your users to leave. Gamification, requires feedback be given when the intended action is performed. These actions may not be obvious and users may not even know they have accomplished a goal if there is no feedback. Feedback tells the user what they have done and motivates him to continue exploring actions. Well designed feedback can bring users to your site and motivate them to continue using it.


33 Badges and Achievements

Badges and achievements often serve as evidence of accomplishments and gives users bragging rights.

Usually badges and achievements are the means by which feedback is provided. The most common ways to display this to users is via Modals and Growl/Toast style notification. Badges and achievements also become a way to commodify user actions. It gives users something to present as evidence of their accomplishments, in the form of digital trophies. It allows them bragging rights, which play into the concept of competition. They may seem insignificant on the surface but are actually great at creating and driving motivation. On an intellectual level, it is the equivalent of a digital pat on the back. This positive reinforcement helps influence users on a different level than the non-gamified site.

Possible Activities for Earning Badges: •

Performing a specific action.

•

Performing specific action a certain number of times.

•

Achieving a certain rank/level of activity.

•

Time-based activity (Length or Specific time).

•

Editorially assigned.

Missions

Missions are activities where players get badges that result in a bigger accomplishment. The bigger challenges should be more difficult than badge activities and require more involved engagement from the user.

It is the equivalent of the stages and levels metaphor used in traditional video games and is a means of creating scales and levels of accomplishment to continually provide rewards and motivation for the user. Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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This multi-layered approach drives the different levels of motivation as well as encourages deeper engagement with the site. Pacing also plays a major role within missions as it does with feedback and badges. Missions that are unusually long will tire a user before they finish. Missions that are too short don’t deliver the increased level of accomplishment the user may want.

Progress and Ranks

Badges and missions add up to show a user’s progress, by indicating what level or rank the user is on or how many badges/achievements he has received. It also shows the users how close he is to leveling up. It is also a common feature to show the user’s progress compared to other users, via some type of leaderboard. This serves as a social incentive for continued progress by intrinsically motivating users to accomplish more than their peers or to be better than them.

In the game Call of Duty for instance, ranks determine a user’s expertise and/or dedication by creating to some extent, a class system. Users often get together to support similar players and praise their achievements. Gamification uses the same premise to create levels of dedication that users hope to attain. Everyone wants to be the best and that rank that appears next to a user’s name is a method of bragging about how close one is to achieving that.

Competition

It is a normal human characteristic to compare how well we do against others. Many are in fact, fiercely competitive, trying to outpace and outsmart their way to the top.

User progress and badge collections become a way to proclaim this dominance of the game. This is shown in signs such as FourSquare’s mayor system. Users go back and forth trying to outperform one another. In an ideal world, users would increase engagement and loyalty to the site in the process. The game mechanics give them more incentive to stay on the site and discover all that it offers. On the business side, the more time users spend on the site and the more views they have on the page translates to increased advertising dollars. Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

35 Motivation

Ultimately gamification aims to provide a layer of motivation by using the elements previously cited. The feedback of badges and achievements builds to create a user’s progress which then builds to create levels and ranks. While that is going on, it is essentially creating competition among users which is realized in the ideal state of gamification.

Gamification techniques can boost overall productivity by encouraging customers and employees through a system of tasks and rewards. These give them a sense of accomplishment and makes them feel the business needs them. The basic elements of gamification can be built into a site easily but would require more meticulous execution if it is introduced to harness the full power of gamification. Gamification also has a few pitfalls. Nevertheless, if a business implements it correctly, they can motivate their users to become more engaged and hopefully more loyal to the business.

Pitfalls

Although gamification has several benefits, those who are considering using it must also be aware of a few disadvantages it may bring. Here are some cautionary facts that come with implementing a gamified site. •

The motivation may only be a superficial one. This means players are motivated in the game but it has nothing to do with the product, or does not support the product it is supposed to promote. Programs such as frequent flyer miles provide some real world incentive for activity and progress. The benefit there is tangible. Gamification relegates that incentive to a digital celebration and bragging system.

•

Sometimes the method of reaching the highest rank can become insignificant since the only important characteristic is attaining that superiority. This is an issue of the wrong motivation direction. The user just works toward being the best and fails to discover what the site has to offer. This may seem immaterial for a business because the user is still using that time, but it is not building brand loyalty and true engagement either, which is what the company is hoping


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GAMIFICATION

to realize in the first place. •

Another issue with gamification that gamers argue is, it does away with the essence of a game. Game proponents and theorists contend it is almost just a copy of the game and lacks originality. Games advocate discovery and overcoming trials, which may be present to some degree in gamified sites, but not to the extent of traditional games. Unfortunately this is negligible for some companies and is not a problem.

•

New gamification companies like Bunchball, Badgeville or Big Door, make it seem easy to attach gamification to a site but its game elements have to be well designed and thought out for it to realize its true potential. This would take a considerable amount of time to do correctly. Game design belongs in the UX repertoire on a basic level. Superficial gamification can lead to superficial engagement and low ROI. A company has to consider when rewards happen, how they happen, and how they combine elements and integrate it into the existing site. Simply adding gamification to your site is poor execution and leads to poor outcomes.

Characteristics

Some characteristics of gamification include: •

Engagement Gap. Making the product or service more engaging, more game-like and more

fun so that more people will use the product or service. •

Choices. Having more variety will help engage the target audience so that they will have more

options to choose from instead of just performing one or two activities. •

Progression. It is another way to engage audiences, allowing them to move from one level to

another. Without it, the audiences may not be motivated to per form the same activity and end up with the same results over and over again. •

Social. Social interaction is very powerful as people generally love competition, collaboration,

sharing and teaming. This tells participants how everyone is progressing and gives social status to users. •

Habit. By instilling the habit in target audiences, they will execute the task or buy the product

as expected.


37

Facts

Here are some facts about gamification that might help you decide its value to your business. 1. More than 70% of the world’s largest 2,000 companies are expected to have deployed at least one gamified application by year-end 2014. 2. The overall market for gamification tools, services, and applications is projected to be $5.5 billion by 2018. 3. Consumer-driven gamification commanded more than 90% market share in 2011. 4. Vendors claim that gamification can lead to a 100% to 150% pickup in engagement metrics including unique views, page views, community activities, and time on site. 5. Over 2/3rds of employers consider gamification an effective strategy for encouraging their employees to improve their health. 6. 47% of vendors say their clients are looking to increase user engagement in their gamification applications. 7. 80% of current gamified enterprise applications will fail to meet their objectives, mainly because of poor design. 8. The enterprise industry vertical already accounts for 1/4th of all gamification vendor revenues. 9. 63% of American adults agree that making everyday activities more like a game would make them more fun and rewarding. 10. 51% of American adults agree that if a layer of competition were added to everyday activities, they’d be more cautious of their behavior in those areas. 11. In 2011, 29% of gamers were over fifty years old – an increase from 9% in 1999. This figure is sure to rise in the coming years with nursing homes and senior centers across the nation now incorporating video games into their activities. 12. 55% of gamers play games on their phones or mobile devices.


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0Questions

1. Which is a benefit of gamification that provides an environment where consumers can participate and be rewarded for doing so? a. Boosts productivity b. Opens doors c.

Feedback

d. Crowdsourcing

2. What is essential in motivating your users to stay on your site or to come back? a. Feedback pacing b. Gamification c. Badges d. Achievements

3. Which benefit of gamification shows a player his level in the game or how many achievements he has received? a. Competition b. Progress and ranks c.

Pitfalls

d. Feedback

4. Which of the following characteristics of gamification is very influential, as people generally love competition and participation? a. Habit b. Engagement Gap c. Choices d. Social


39 5. Which of the following lets the user know their expected action was registered? a. Progression b. Pitfalls c.

Feedback

d. Badges

6. Which of the following gamification characteristics makes the product more game-like and more fun? a.

Progression

b. Engagement Gap c. Motivation d. Competition


Chapter 3

Gamification Elements Objectives •

To learn about the dynamics of Gamification.

•

To study the mechanics of Gamification.

•

To examine its components.


The toolbox for gamification comprise your game elements. They are what you utilize from games to make business practices more game-like.

In general, games contain a huge collection of different paths, elements, templates and design patterns that can be applied to other games or gamification. The framework for gamification elements include basic components and a structure that houses these base elements. There are varying lists of elements depending on the structure you would require. Some come up to as many at 26 to 30 elements. In this case we’ll start with the basic three. What is important really is not so much the number of elements you have but how effectively you use them. This simple guide though should give you a sense of how different elements and structures can be implemented in gamified systems or games.

40

This pyramid framework has 3 levels:

Gamification Dynamics

Game dynamics, which occupy the top level compose the highest level conceptual elements in a gamified system.

1st Gamification Dynamic: Constraints Games have rules and therefore set limitations or constraints. The game or gamified system has its own life, rules and boundaries that players have to follow.

It is the challenge that makes the game interesting because all players have to abide by these rules. Limiting individual freedoms creates meaningful choices and interesting problems which makes game dynamics very important when the game designer conceptualizes his game or gamified system.

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2nd Gamification Dynamic: Emotions Games elicit any and all types of emotions and reactions that cover anything from sadness to joy, arrogance to humility and every other emotion possible. Gamification can do this as well but on a more restricted level.

The emotional range of gamification is more limited, it deals with real-life, non-game environments such as the workplace, where emotions do not provide any value to the business. However, gamification can still provoke a variety of emotions that can make the experience richer and more enjoyable. Gamification aims to at least produce a sense of accomplishment, an emotional reinforcement that makes people participate more.

3rd Gamification Dynamic: Narrative The narrative pulls the game or game system together explicitly or implicitly depending on the type of game system you want.

Gamification does not need to have the richness of the visual and realistic aspects of games when making the narrative but relies on consistent graphical experiences. What is important is the sense of flow and assigning certain kinds of practices that players have experienced and can draw insight from. If there is no sense of narrative, there is a risk of the gamified system merely becoming a collection of random activities that have nothing to do with the business’ objectives. Badges and points are awarded but they are completely irrelevant to the player and renders gamification ineffective.


43

Gamification Mechanics

Game mechanics occupy the second level of this gamification framework and is the element that prompts the players to perform actions.

The game mechanics move the game or activity forward. There are also more mechanics components than dynamics. Game mechanics are tools to help determine how to move the action forward and urge the players to begin playing and how to move from one level to another.

The mechanical elements of a game are: 1. Challenges. 2. Chance. 3. Competition. 4. Cooperation. 5. Feedback. 6. Resource Acquisition. 7. Rewards. 8.

Transactions.

9. Turns. 10. Win states.

Challenges The game sets an objective or objectives for the player to complete. Challenges can be called quests, but quests usually are made of some challenges.


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GAMIFICATION

Some examples of challenges are: • Beat 10 monsters. • Sell 3 products per day. • Get 3 perfect scores in row in a math challenge.

Quests are more like: •

Rescue the queen. First you would have to beat 10 monsters, collect 3 materials, go to some places and then climb a tower to rescue her.

•

Complete a day at school. To complete the object you have to collect all your grades, do homework, complete other tasks, etc.

Challenges can be simple or complicated and often involve communal activity or group play. Seth Priebatsch a game challenge expert gamified his South by Southwest Interactive keynote address with a group challenge where he required all attendees to work together in rows. He offered a $10,000 donation to the National Wildlife Foundation as a reward.

Chance The game or activity should provide the element of luck which is something the player cannot control.

These take the form of rolling dice, flipping coins or some action that would bring random results. These make the possibility of winning dependent on both skill and chance.


45

Competition and Cooperation Cooperation and competition may be contradictory but both are valuable components of game mechanics.

This evokes the emotional states of winning and losing. Competition raises the stakes for accomplishing the objective by showing players how they fare against other players or against other teams. You can encourage competition with time-based, team and individualized leaderboards. This tells players how they are ranked and maybe even how they can get passed their competitors.

Feedback Feedback is very important. Immediate feedback lets players see how they are progressing in the game in real time and either pushes them to move forward or not. Immediate feedback also minimizes the possibility of misunderstandings. It tells the player whether his actions were correct or not. Direct feedback or response to actions encourages users to continue or adjust their activities with onscreen notifications, text messages or emails. Congratulating a user for reaching a goal serves to encourage him to move to the next step or to a milestone. It can push him to go after a new reward.

Resource Acquisition Aside from rewards, games give players little bonuses for accomplishing an extra or optional task. It can also help move the game forward. The items acquired are valuable resources to help the player progress in the game.

Many games require players to collect coins or materials to build houses or armies. In some schools, students accumulate scores to be able to take their final exams and they collect examination points to get their diploma.


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GAMIFICATION

Rewards These are prizes or benefits the player acquires for some achievement in the game. Rewards can range from completing entire quests to just finishing a particular task. It can be some in-game items, points or rewards like money.

To facilitate gamification, companies can offer four types of rewards: status, access, power and items. Regardless of the reward type, a good gamification strategy relies on recognizing and rewarding consumers and employees to and encourage or reinforce desired behavior.

Transactions These include buying, selling or exchanging goods or items with other players or with non-player characters (NPC). NPCs can be shops where players could buy things. There can be shops created by players who want to sell something to other players.

Turns A turn is when it is time for the players to act, usually one after the other. Moves mechanics are used in the Tic-Tac-Toe game, where a player can make his move only when the other player is finished.

Win States States define winning or losing, either the whole game or just a particular segment of the game. In gamification it could involve a specific task. All chance mechanisms automatically include win or lose states in the game. The game can include a player-versus-player mechanism pitting one against the other.


47

Gamification Components

Components occupy the base level of this framework which can include procedures to get to the game’s higher levels which dynamics and mechanics represent.

Achievements These are forms of rewards linked to performing explicit actions. These work for people motivated by a need to achieve, to accomplish something difficult through lengthy and repetitive efforts.

They are driven by goals, and the desire to win. People motivated by achievement tend to look for challenges and set moderately difficult, but achievable objectives. For them the most satisfying reward is the recognition of their achievements.

Avatars A visual representations of players’ characters.

Badges A visual representations of achievements. Badges show the accomplishment or mastery of a skill which is especially meaningful within a community that understands its value. They are habitually used to identify skills and expertise within a group.

Boss Fights Are challenges.


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GAMIFICATION

Collections Items accumulated.

Combat Is competition.

Content Unlocking A form of reward for an achievement.

Gifting The part of the game where people feel good about giving things.

Quests A means to an achievement.

Leaderboards This is the list players in order of score, levels and points. Leaderboards rank users and that aims to motivate and urge individuals to become players.

Foursquare was one of the first to initiate leaderboards using city-centric ones, but now stress ranking users against their friends. Earn a few points for a check in, and Foursquare will show you which of your friends you have surpassed on the leaderboard. Many successful games implement a high-score table, which displays the high scorer’s name in lights. They also specify the players progress against friends and everybody else. In gamification, leaderboards are used to monitor


49 and display desired actions, using competition to push valuable behavior.

Levels Levels refer to sustained achievement and identifies the status of a player within a community and can unlock new missions, badges, activities, and rewards.

They are used in frequent-flyer programs as different classes, colored belts in martial arts and job titles in industry. It shows everyone your achievement of a milestone, or a level of accomplishment in a community which entitles you to a certain amount of respect. Levels are often defined as point thresholds, so that users can automatically level up based on their participation. It can also indicate a specific status that could allow you to control access to content on the site.

Points Points are the concrete measure of accomplishments and can be used to establish status. It can also allow players to purchase virtual or real items when accumulated.

Specific activities, sharing, contributing, or creating something useful for others could earn the player points. Most people innately enjoy gaining and increasing points and makes them incredible motivators. Points can be used to reward users across multiple dimensions, and different categories of points can be used to propel different behaviors within the same site or application. Points can indicate status as well and can be used to unlock access to content, or virtual goods and gifting. IBM Research and the University of Chicago studies have shown dramatic effects earning points can have on user behavior, even when there is no money involved. People just seem to enjoy being rewarded and love the feeling of earning these rewards.


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GAMIFICATION

Social Graph One is able to see their friends and interact with them.

Teams Cooperation between people online.

Virtual Goods Virtual goods are non-physical items that can be purchased to build a player’s character in the game, sell items and can be a source of revenue in the game and outside of the game. Games that provide a place to spend points gives an incentive to earn more, and offers the ability to customize an item that reflects a personal identity. Virtual goods help attain this and provide a good direction for creativity, competition, and self-expression in the community.

Virtual goods are intangible objects purchased for use in online communities or online games. Users buy virtual goods like clothing, weapons or decorations to create an identity for their virtual self while comparing and showing off to their friends. Virtual goods can also be used as a revenue center when users sell virtual goods in their community for actual dollars.


51

Questions

1. To make your business practices more game-like, which of the following do you take from games and apply to business activities? a. Game Dynamics b. Game Mechanics c.

Game Elements

d. Game Components

2. What is made up of basic gamification components and a structure to house them? a.

Framework

b. Games c. Toolbox d. Rules

3. Which dynamic of gamification involves eliciting feelings in players on a restricted level? a. Challenges b. Emotions c.

Competition

d. Constraints

4. Which of the following are objectives of the game the player needs to accomplish? a. Challenges b. Competition c.

Feedback

d. Transactions


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GAMIFICATION

5. Which component of gamification refers to the visual image of players’ characters? a. Badges b. Combat c.

Teams

d. Avatars

6. Which of the following aims to motivate individuals to become players and ranks them by score, level, and points? a. Leaderboards b. Points c. Collections d. Boss Fights


Chapter 4

Psychology of Gamification Objectives •

To learn about the Psychology of Gamification.

•

To study the feedback loop.

•

To explore compassionate Gamification.


How does gamification make its way into psychology? The basic psychology behind it is to deliver positive reinforcement for each action taken in a game.

Positive reinforcement as previously mentioned is tied in with motivation. Proponents will argue that positive reinforcement will engage participants and keep them in the game for as long as they enjoy it and gives them a feeling of accomplishment. So positive feelings the player feels provides the opportunity for motivation.

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Motivation What is motivation?

Motivation is not easy to define but in simple terms can be described as having a feeling that you are moved to do something. It is also defined as the reason or reasons one has for behaving in a particular way. It is also complicated by the fact that people are motivated by different things.

One question that companies always consider when talking about motivation is: Do we have a staff incentive scheme that rewards employees with money or prizes based on doing what we want?

Companies seem preoccupied with the question of staff incentives and rewards systems that they use to motivate their employees. Most companies especially large organizations have some form of tangible recognition or reward system. The premise being that if the company rewards people for specific behavior they will be motivated to do it repeatedly or more frequently. The problem is that these extrinsic motivations have limits and sometimes backfire resulting in demotivation, which is what the organization does not want or expect.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism on the other hand addresses the external factors, or extrinsic motivation. In very simple terms it is what goes in and out of the brain, but not what happens inside. A popular example of behaviorism is Pavlov’s salivating dog, where Pavlov noted that the dog would start salivating when the lab technician arrived because it knew it would get fed. This is an example of classical conditioning and relies on rewards. Looking back to the staff incentive question, are the incentives given based on the “I do this, I


55 get that” classical conditioning? For instance if I get a customer feedback of above 80% do I get a bonus?

Operant Conditioning is another type of behaviorism where the objective is to get someone or something to learn a particular activity using rewards and punishment to encourage the desired behavior.

Revisit the staff incentive question. Do you regularly receive a reward as a matter of course? For instance you get pizza if you meet your target. But do you lose the pizza if you miss it? Does the threat of not getting pizza still motivate you?

Gamification is heavily dependent on behaviorism. That means if it is designed badly the results can actually produce negative effects. For that reason before designing or introducing any gamified activities into your company you have to understand how to approach the different aspects of gamification.

You have to examine everything from reward types to the schedule and the limitations innate from over justification to completely missing the reason why. You also have to determine and realize how missing the intrinsic motivation, the most powerful motivation, is not a good thing.

The Feedback Loop

The Feedback Loop works under the principle that by giving people information about their actions in real time and giving them a chance and motivation to change those actions, you can often guide people to better behavior. The Feedback Loop is also a guiding principle in gamification, arguing against the notion that gamification is merely a fad. It is simply becoming easier to measure and use in everyday life. Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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A Feedback Loop consists of four basic stages:

Let’s take a look at the four stages of the Feedback Loop and see how they can be applied to gamification.

Evidence (data) The first stage of any Feedback Loop involves data collection. For this discourse behavior will be used as data for gamification Feedback Loops. So, behaviors must be measured, stored, and assessed to be relevant to the next steps. Behaviors must be quantified and then presented to the individuals taking part in the game. Information sent back to individuals in real time is even more helpful because it provides an immediate view of how things stand for any player at any time.

A factor that is making the use of gamification widespread is the rapid drop in price of sensors and their equally rapid development. We can sense and quantify everything from energy usage, car fuel, brushing your teeth, walking and anything else you can slap a sensor on. From the Wii Fit, to the PS3 Move, to the Xbox Kinect, all on video game consoles, data is collected and then showed to participating individuals in real time.


57 As you see your Wii Mii mimicking your every move as you run around a fake beach, that’s the evidence stage of the Feedback Loop. Have you found a way to get information to your customers in real time, measuring actions you want them to improve? Mint.com has. So have Zynga, Playfish, Empire Avenue and many, many others.

Relevance (data processing) Data is irrelevant if there is no frame of reference. Even if you can read how fast you’re going on your speedometer, it means nothing if you are unaware of the speed limit in your area. Knowing your BMI is irrelevant if you do not know what a healthy BMI level is or even what BMI stands for. for. A credit score of 750 does you no good if you think the top rating is 45000 instead of 800.

Gamification does you little good if all you are concerned with is a way to measure things you want your customers to do. What you need to figure out is a way to transmit that information back to your customers in a setting that makes it meaningful for them.

Consequence (data defining) Consequence in this context, simply refers to the effect or result of a previous action. After you have collected your data and shown it to your players, make sure your Feedback Loop actually shows them the actions they can take.

Relevant data can become useless if it has no connections to people or does not tie into a larger purpose or goal. Feedback Loops should not control the people you’re communicating with, but should give them back control by guiding them to paths made available with the new information.

In most games, the consequences are obvious. If you don’t jump at this point, your character dies; if you don’t help your friend water their crops, you lose your right to reciprocity; if you don’t kill Mugsy Two-Toes, Big Boss Green won’t share his drug money with you, and so on. Copyright The The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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GAMIFICATION

In your gamification project, understand your strategy enough to be able to direct players to a desired end using the data they willingly give you.

Action (data usage) Your feedback loop has failed if no action is ever taken. Your data remains simply data. We all want to get at the ROI of social media and action makes up the Return. Without action, all you have is information and in games, information is never enough.

Your players must engage with all the information provided. It gives you behaviors to sense and relay to start the Feedback Loop all over again. Do you include calls to action after your customers engage and learn from you? Do they have the ability to act immediately or does it require you to draw it out through many steps? If you’ve built your feedback loop correctly every action taken begins a new loop that brings you closer to your strategic goals.

The Feedback Loop - Conclusion

Each organization’s feedback loop will differ in execution but will use the same elements. You have to measure behaviors and relay data in a relevant context to your customers so they can understand the consequences of their moves and engage in a desired action to lead to more behaviors to be measured.

For instance, in some new Hybrid cars, there is a display on the dash that shows a plant. The car’s computer takes the emission and gas data from the driver’s actions (Evidence) and converts that data into the image of the plant (Relevance). If you drive more economically, economically, the plant flourishes, but if you drive wastefully or recklessly, the plant withers (Consequence). At this point the driver can either continue driving the way he has and watch the plant flourish or wither or change his driving to affect the image of the plant (Action).

Copyright The The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

59 Correctly applying data back to your customers’ minds can help everyone understand paths of action and create an emotional and psychological connection between your brand/game/ company/etc.. Your customers can loop back around on itself to create loyal followers who are just as fulfilled by the relationship as you are.

Compassionate Gamification

The rise of academic studies on the subject of compassion and altruism, like those developed in research groups like Ccare, EPARG, the Compassion Lab and others, show that western society recognizes deficits in social interconnectedness and mutual care, which results in loneliness, estrangementt and behavior detrimental to health. estrangemen

Social networks and location-based services generate shifting of this deficit by creating ways for people to interact, but the further development of such positive tendencies in online and mobile interaction is ultimately a software issue. This is because interaction systems are seldom designed to elicit such responses.

Compassion is made up of a three-fold process: a feeling of empathy or understanding of others’ negative feelings feelings or situations, caring for the other person (affective arousal) and readiness to act upon such feelings and diminish the suffering of others.

In gameful design, one needs to reevaluate current popular gamification strategies based on competition and winning. Designers have to take into account public humiliation through leaderboards and accumulation of points and virtual wealth in relation to the above three-fold process. Developers have to create alternative alternative design models that favor altruism – the motivation to increase another’s wellbeing irrespective of one’s own and positive social interaction.


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Emphatic feedback A social network directed towards mostly depressive individuals needs predominantly strong and contextual feedback. This would require a system that displays at least basic types of emotional intelligence. Research on affective computing has spotlighted ever-present interfaces for emotional sensing at a deeper level.

But in gamified systems more attention should be given to the social-emotional aspects of interaction during online communication. A good option could be to develop practices that favor emotional communication in web and mobile interface design, less state-of-the-art technological perspective but potentially more influential for social impact.

Use of psychology theories The debate surrounding gamification has revolved around psychology theories but further research is required, especially the transfer of effective knowledge between the fields of psychology and design. Techniques such as mood transfer, tension reduction, and social responsibility appeals are utilized to generate positive feelings and stimulate exchange and reaching out. Techniques from learning theories can also be employed.

Intrinsic motivation Intrinsic motivation are internal desires to perform a particular task. Simply, it is what people will do without external inducement. Extrinsic motivation rarely works for people suffering from depression. When designing Blues Buddies (a social network aimed to stimulate positive attitudes in depression sufferers), developers used the modified idea of situated motivational affordances or a motivator that encourages a person to act in a certain way. They isolated single interactions and developed them according to what motivated that person to per form the desired behavior in a social networking situation.


61

Questions

1. Which of the following is a concept used to address extrinsic motivation or external factors? a. Motivation b. Consequence c. Behaviorism d. Action

2. Which of the following is a stage in the feedback loop that refers to the result of a previous action? a. Relevance b. Evidence c. Action d. Consequence

3. Which type of compassionate gamification would require a system that displays at least basic types of emotional intelligence? a. Emphatic feedback b. Intrinsic motivation c.

Use of psychology theories

d. Compassion

4. Aside from consequence, what are the other three basic stages of the feedback loop? a. Motivation, action, consequence b. Psychology, consequence, action c.

Action, evidence, relevance

d. Feedback, evidence, action


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5. What is information about an action given in real time that can be used to guide people to better behavior? a. Intrinsic motivation b. Feedback loop c.

Emphatic feedback

d. Compassionate Gamification

6. Which of the following has been described as the reason or reasons for a particular behavior? a. Motivation b. Behaviorism c.

Evidence

d. Consequence


Chapter 5

Gamification in Education Objectives •

To learn about how Gamification works in Education.

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To discover the benefits and disadvantages.

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To study the samples of Gamification in Education.

Introduction

Gamification can achieve so much when used in education: it promises fun for students, a means for teachers to get and keep students’ attention, an inexpensive and easy source of material for administrators, profits for educational software companies, and an efficient way to engage, teach and test everyone. It could even help someone develop more common sense. But, with all this promise comes some warnings to make certain it is used properly.

Gamification can easily be oversold and implemented badly. Keep in mind three requirements it must have to ensure it is implemented successfully.

1. It should have good content

Motivationally and academically, gamification implementation in education should contain important content. So many games are ordinary quizzes and review multiple choice questions with scores displayed in what they term fun visuals, which are in gamification, erroneous in both motivation and education. As far as motivation is concerned all that occurs is you get to take another crack at the dragon if you get a correct answer. Either that or the rocket gets

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closer to the moon or any step that gets you closer to the game’s goal. The only real difference between that and the old practice of handing out gold stars is the former is a livelier visual bribe. Students see through this almost immediately. It gets worse as far as educating is concerned as it is easy to write multiple-choice questions and scoring almost always leads you away from what is important. Such structures make the trivial facts seem more important than overall principles. Therefore a game about American presidents would likely include Teddy Roosevelt’s having a bear named after him, Lincoln’s height or Washington’s wooden teeth than it is about how any of them shaped their office and their nation.

2. A Game should be seamlessly joined to content

The game you develop should integrate smoothly with your content. Teaching must be a requisite of the game.

The game should be integrated well with what you are teaching that you can’t play without learning or learn without playing. Whatever the game is supposed to be, teaching must be indispensable to the game. A game that could be used to teach any content, like Jeopardy, bingo, or charades, has a great big seam. Students can, and avoid the content either by trying to figure out how to game the system, or by just accepting their low scores and agreeing that they are not good at it. Either way, students lose the point of the game.

The difference can be subtle. Addition-and-subtraction flash cards for instance can be used as a race to the finish game, with players advancing a number of steps equal to the highest number on each card they get right. The problem with this is kids who hate Math can treat it as a gambling/guessing game, memorizing facts in isolation. The same kids might learn more Math skills and still have fun doing so by playing Monopoly, where addition and subtraction are not the point of the game but a crucial factor for measuring your progress.


65 If you use a game where you have to spell a word correctly to unlock a door in a dungeon, but the object of the game is just to see how many doors you can get through by spelling randomly chosen words, that’s not a seamless game. But if the word is critical to whatever you have to do once you get through the door, that makes it seamless because winning depends on understanding those words better.

3. It must be a good game

Although calling a game a good game is arbitrary, no particular player or designer can claim a game as good until it works best and achieves its intended goal.

This is where programming and education crosses over to art. In the end this requirement may be subjective as no one can really judge a game is good enough or even define what good is. Who would have thought a gym teacher’s invention of a game that began with throwing a soccer ball into an overhead peach basket would develop into the global institution of basketball? Why then did speedball, dodge ball and kickball not become just as big? There were many attempts at quest/adventure card games before Magic: the Gathering, and a lot of parodies of that genre before Munchkin, but ever since both games dominated their market niches rivalry between the two have not been serious. Play testing helps, but some player suggestions have actually ruined games.

Some general principles sometimes work but many successful games go against them. For instance noise and special effects are part of the attraction to the Call of Duty game, but not to Tetris. Social interaction is important to World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons, optional in Risk or poker, and an annoyance in Go or chess. Experts say these three factors are essential to gamification otherwise its application fails.


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Benefits of Gamification in Education

1. Video games can lessen disruptive behavior and enhance positive development in ADHD children.

One very healthful and helpful benefit of gamification in education is that video games can minimize disruptive behavior and enhance positive development in ADHD children. A study focused on the use of video games to help children with ADHD, showed that a video game designed to teach kids how to control their breathing and heart rate had a significant impact on their behavior. It certainly is contrary to the belief that video games make children hyperactive or that ADHD is a result of playing too many video games. Others may stress though that it would depend on how the game is created and that it has the three previously mentioned characteristics of successful gamification.

2. Effective game-based learning provides a student with a series of personalized tasks customized to achieve a predetermined goal

The student is rewarded for completing a task, and is also rewarded with a new learning opportunity – the ability to progress to the next and play another game. Gamified learning also provides incentives such as badges rather than an abstract grade on a worksheet for the student’s efforts. As a result it changes the way the student perceives learning since feedback on his schoolwork becomes more tangible and exciting in the gamified situation.

3. Students who actually developed their own video game experience improved their intellectual and social growth.

Research shows that children show cognitive growth when they are tasked to create their own game. Creating such a game would require them to possess and use knowledge accumulated earlier, create links between scenes, and manage their learning through trial and error. They will be forced to use logic, survival skills, and create new ideas and solutions to finish the game.


67 4. Gamification helps engage students in learning, keeps their attention and are motivated to learn.

Teachers found having kids with short attention spans do their preferred after-school activity in the classroom is effective. They further discovered gamification makes students respond better to the positive and immediate feedback that they receive in a learning game. More often than not, the difficulty of the level increases as the student continues playing, effectively drawing and keeping his attention at the same time challenging him.

Mathematics is one subject that benefits from gamification as it is full of repetitive problems, formulas, and exams. Deakin University research has indicated that incorporating games in the curriculum radically changes a student’s attitudes toward Math. It says more students were able to harbor positive feelings about Math and feel confident about different concepts. In the end there was more success with the subject since students showed more liveliness and motivation to learn it. Playing Math games appeared to help lighten the dreariness of repetitive problem solving.

5. Mature make-believe play provides the most beneficial context for children’s development.

Imaginative situations where children assume roles, use props, themes, and work together with other children, is one of the most critical opportunities for development. Various games provide such situations and offers an opportunity for the students to grow. Unquestionably it is also essential for kids to enjoy actual play in traditional social groups. Theorists argue that play is a continuously developing skill that children must be walked through. The classroom should also allow play-based scenarios, since they are considered a building block of learning. It is within this context that children build their initial skills for advanced educational understanding.


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6. Gamification of education presents students immediately with praise, encouragement, and reinforcement which are all positive motivators that may not be present in the usual classroom setting.

It keeps away the dreaded red scribbles and scratches they see on paper, which can be very discouraging and de-motivating. With gamification, even struggling students learn from their mistakes rather than feeling defeated by the giant, outlined, or sometimes circled red “F” on the top of their paper. In addition, education technology has the potential to personalize gaming systems to address the needs of particular students, regardless of his or her skill level. Students are not afraid to fail in a game-based, differentiated learning platform, because they can progress at their own pace without feeling judged or feeling anxious about keeping up with their classmate.

7. Play-based learning improves a student’s attention span.

Researchers looked at how teachers’ beliefs in early education impacted the classroom environment, and found out that when teachers have confidence in a child’s ability to learn by himself, the child/teacher relationship was stronger. In this case teachers can then assume a more facilitative role and observe the student as he actively learns. Educators also discovered that when students are allowed to learn through play, they spend less time on behavior management. They found it also extended a student’s attention span. They recognized that play-based learning shifted the focus of learning from the goal to the process.

8. Game-based learning urges students to set clear goals, persevere when faced with an intellectual challenge, and of course, celebrate their achievements.

An expert says gamification presents the opportunity to focus our energies on something we are good at or getting better at and enjoying it. In other words, gameplay teaches uncompromising optimism and is the direct emotional opposite of depression. Furthermore, digital gaming tools like the iPad provide students with the resources to manage their learning experience and actually own and love the results of their work. This effectively incorporates the gamification mentality into the classroom and can boost student achievement. More importantly it promotes a desire to learn.


69 9. Game simulations can help students hone their ability to come up with creative solutions or work out original solutions, and they may view a game-style coursework more as a challenge than hard work.

The most usually cited benefit of gamification is that it fosters student engagement, as a key to increasing student retention. Where effective, gamification promotes the formation of learning communities, giving new opportunities online or during course discussions to socialize or work as teams. In this sense, gamification has the potential to help build connections among members of the academic community, drawing in shy students, supporting collaboration, and stimulating interest in course content that students never explored.

10. Playing scary and violent video games help children master their fears in real life.

In the wake of numerous research on the negative impacts of video games, studies have been conducted to research positive psychological effects of game playing. It appears, whether they were aware of it or not, boys who had difficulty dealing with stress, fear, and anger that could have violent consequences, used video games as a safe alternative for the release of pent up emotion. Other results pointed to other effects such as the fun of unreality. It provided them with an outlet for experimenting with a world where natural laws are suspended and gave them the chance to enjoy the challenge, mastery of the game, and playing with different identities. These findings reveal that video games can be an alternate way to release negative emotion, and help children assuage their innate desire for risk and adventure.

11. The ordinary chess game makes kids smart.

The Youth Coordinator for the Ontario Chess Association has documented the benefits of chess, highlighting its positive effects on education. His research says chess makes students slow down, concentrate, use precise thinking, and use both inductive and deductive reasoning. They also recognize difficult and complex patterns. Many online chess games provide another method in which computerized gaming can have a positive impact on a child’s educational development. This does not discount the playing of chess in the conventional way as it can provide the same benefits as well.


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12. Music and movement enhance children’s language proficiencies during the preschool years.

Research indicates that children who involve themselves in some form of music from a young age show more competency speaking and communicating. Though a majority of modern education centers mainly on visual media for learning, auditory processes are critical for learning languages. The younger the child, the more important music becomes. Gamers know that background music is an essential part of many electronic games, which brings another benefit of gaming in the instructional context.

Disadvantages of Gamification in Education

What are the downsides?

•

Some stakeholders feel introducing game elements in learning trivializes content. Their concern revolves around possibilities that students will not be motivated as it has promised. Students might also see game elements as patronizing or they may feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled if their application does not make them feel the kind of satisfaction from winning that they expected. Some students may find the competitive element intriguing, but the same element may discourage others, especially those who have difficulty with course content. They might feel the competition makes learning more complex or that it will show their other classmates why they have so much difficulty in understanding the content.

•

Gamification can be deceptively difficult to apply effectively, and examples of failed efforts are easy to find. Students might fail to see the purpose of the game in relation to learning and instructors might have trouble keeping track of student progress.For example, awarding points to students whose blog entries accumulate the most responses might encourage some bloggers to enlist their friends to comment, without taking into account the quality of the content. What will drive them to do that are the extrinsic rewards rather than the quality of the work they submit. Furthermore, designers must carefully consider the administrative details of gamification, in case instructors get overwhelmed by the workload of tracking student


71 progress through points, tokens, badges and other game elements. •

A game developer believes motivation achieved between using actual games and gamification are at opposite ends of the continuum. It does not pose a problem when the activity involves routine work or chores since there is really no actual worry or need for motivation there. Strangely enough one researcher found that when the task rises to the level of even elementary reasoning skills or anything above mechanical tasks, the incentives start to work in reverse. The studies show that the greater the rewards, such as higher pay, in this case leads to poorer performance with things like creative tasks.

In economic theory, this result is contradictory but the results have been remarkably consistent. Another common misconception is that sparking competition by using leaderboards increases productivity and leads to long-term improvements. But there is research that shows the reverse side of this benefit saying that in some situations interest in competition dies down quickly especially for those who think they can never be in the running to win anyway.

Samples of Gamification in Education

Proponents of gamification see a lot potential for gamification in education because of an individual’s innate desire to learn, but some school organizations sometimes serve to be the obstacles to education.

If kids respond to play more positively than schoolwork which they consider the opposite, then there should be ways to let them learn from what they do best – play. This is why many educators are looking into a variety of new tools and techniques in education gamification.

The modern educational challenge is no longer considered as a routine process for presenting information while testing for retention and understanding. These days it involves tasks for engaging students, stimulating their interests, retaining their attention, and maintaining a positive attitude


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in a nurturing environment.

The key to these goals is working towards establishing and keeping a rich communications environment that encourages feedback and reinforcement, not only between the instructor/ teacher and students, but also between the students themselves.

There are many gamification samples that educators can use. These socially interactive mechanisms, managed correctly offer effective ways for fun learning situations. They include some ingenious approaches to improve the learning process and generate more effective educational environments.

1. DuoLingo: Learn a language while translating the Web. Duolingo is a massive online

collaboration which combines a free language-learning website with a paid crowdsourced text translation platform. The service is designed to help students learn a given language online, while helping to translate websites and documents.

Beginners start out with basic, simple sentences from the web, while advanced users receive more complex sentences. As one progresses, so does the complexity of the sentences they are asked to translate. Duolingo provides the learning and translation tools so students understand and memorize the words that they come across. Each student can also vote on the quality of the other students’ translations, providing valuable feedback for comprehension and learning. The top rated translations for each sentence are made available for public viewing and collection.


73 As students learn a language, they earn skill points when lessons are completed or web content is translated. Lessons associated with a skill are successively completed when a give number of translations are completed. Since web content is integrally more interesting than made up sentences, the translation assignments are more engaging.

The site also comprises time-based elements, such as skill points and time bonuses when questions are answered correctly within a given time limit. Incorrect answers cause a loss of points and lives, as well as the delay of leveling up. The system tracks each completed lesson, translation, test, and practice session to provide feedback to the student and plan future lessons and translation assignments to better address their needs.

2. Ribbon Hero: Epic game that teaches you how to use Microsoft Office. Ribbon Hero is an add-

in game, available as a free Microsoft download that helps teach users of Office 2007 and 2010 to use tools available in the new ribbon interface. The game can easily be initiated from any of the key Office programs, like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Once in the game, the user is presented with challenges which can yield points if completed.

It has been lauded as the best corporate education gamification sample in the market.

The challenges are grouped into four sections: text manipulation, page design and layout, artistic presentation, and a more generalized quick points section. With the first three sections, each challenge is designed to introduce users to a key feature and have them edit a sample document using that feature. The quick points section doesn’t offer specific challenges, but lists features instead. This can be outside the game to collect points. Half of all available points can be earned through the game challenges offered in the first three sections, while the remaining points must be earned from implementing the same features outside of the game.


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Microsoft has taken great care in designing the challenges by creating short, relevant tasks and providing immediate feedback and reinforcement to help keep the user engaged and interested. Reviewers say the difficulty level is manageable, yet challenging, and provides enough support to ensure reasonable success which encourages further play and development of Office skills.

Ribbon Hero can also track the user’s progress in learning how to use the Office features and tools, and adjust the challenges accordingly. Not only by following the game to progress, but by monitoring the features used outside of the game. The game can then adjust the order of training content so users see only features and tools that they haven’t seen before. Ribbon Hero can also link to Facebook, and each player can share their scores and compare their progress with friends on Facebook who also play the game. In essence, Ribbon Hero is a software tutorial within a game that can be socially connected.

3. ClassDojo: Turns Class into a Game of Rewards and Instant Feedback. ClassDojo is a classroom

management tool that can help teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It corrects or enhances particular student behavior and helps engagement through awards and recording real-time feedback.

Each student gets an avatar which can be seen in ClassDojo. Feedback and awards for positive behavior is easy for the teacher to give with a simple click on her mobile device or computer. This instantly reinforces good behavior and engages other students. Because feedback is quick, the resulting positive reinforcement helps students develop a sense of purpose in the classroom, which enhances intrinsic motivation over time. By letting students see the data on their own behavior, the class becomes less disruptive, creating a more positive learning environment.


75 The system also provides print or email reports for behavior-tracking analytics. These help engage parents and school administrators, all with a simple click on a mobile device, laptop, or tablet. No data entry is required. Teachers save time, freeing them up to devote more time to the student and delivering instruction.

4. Coursera: Interactive Ivy-League Education in Your Home. Coursera is an educational

technology and social entrepreneurship company that partners with top universities to make some of their online courses available for free.

Subjects include courses from the Sciences and Engineering to Humanities and Business. The courses are designed as a series of short video lectures on different topics and assignments, which are submitted on a weekly basis.

Progress is measured by completing assignments and tests online where the machine can grade and assess. In good education gamification spirit, the results are immediately sent to the student, as well as the instructional staff, providing feedback and reinforcement to the student. Leveling up, badges and other rewards systems are implemented in some cases.

Interactivity is stressed to urge student engagement and help in long-term retention of concepts. This also provides frequent feedback which enables the student to monitor his progress and assess his own understanding of the material. Interestingly, the most popular course on Coursera is the Gamification course.

5. KnowRe. KnowRe is an online adaptive Math learning platform, that aims to help students

succeed in Math by assessing, personalizing and engaging students with game-like features, attractive graphics and social learning.


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Knowre (beta) is a Math tool for both teachers and students who want to learn Math easily and quickly. It requires a true user login so that the platform can differentiate content on the basis of student and teacher. Knowre allows students to choose chapters from the giant map or they can choose a chapter which allows them to practice or challenge their learned skills. Educators can begin a course by clicking the map location or from the start button near the chapter. After completing a chapter educators can look for tests to check the ability of students, in relation to how many minutes he completes a question or test.

Conclusion

Combining learning institutions and gamification could be beneficial to students and teachers or administrators but it can also result in the opposite. There are significant ways in which gamification and schools could each make the other worse.

Gamification can motivate students to engage in the classroom, give teachers better tools to guide and reward students, and get students to commit completely to learning. It can provide ways for them to enjoy learning and mask the boundaries between informal and formal learning.

It inspires student to learn in the same way life lessons are learned. The challenges should also be considered because of their significance. The not so good ramifications could be that gamification might absorb teacher resources, or teach students that they should learn only when provided with external rewards. Conversely, playfulness requires freedom to experiment, to fail, to explore multiple identities, to control one’s own investment and experience. By making play mandatory, gamification might create rule-based experiences that feel just like school.


77 Gamification is not a universal cure-all, and it will need to provide more value to schools and therefore must be designed carefully. Gamification projects should address the real challenges of schools, centering on areas where gamification can provide the most value. These may be grounded in existing research, and address the potential dangers of gamification for both games and schools. Meaningful evaluations must also be created to find out if they achieve their aims.

As gamification use spreads throughout the real world, it will also impact schools everywhere. By leading with research-based, theory-driven gamification projects, the impact of gamification can be directed towards positive ones.


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Questions

1. Which requirement guarantees gamification success by making sure it achieved its intended intended objectives? a. It must be a good game b. A Game Game should be seamlessly joined to content c.

It should have good content

d. A Game Game should be integrate integrated d well well with teaching

2. How does gamification in education help ADHD kids? a. Provides tasks to reach a goal b. Lessens disruptive behavior and enhances enhances positive development c.

Improves their intellectual social growth

d. Engages students in learning and keeps their attention

3. Which sample sample of gamification in education helps students students learn languages while while translating translating documents and websites websites?? a. Ribbon Hero b. ClassDojo c. Coursera

4. Which sample sample of gamification of education helps teachers teachers improve improve student student behavior behavior easily? easily? a. KnowRe b. Coursera c. ClassDojo d. Duolingo


79 5. How does gamification in education benefit preschool kids in relation to music and movement? a. Chess game makes kids smart b. Enhances children’s language proficiencies c.

Scary video games teach children to master fear

d. Game simulations sharpen children’s problem-solving skills

6. What is the most commonly cited benefit of gamification that is considered a key to increasing student retention? a. Fosters student engagement b. Helps students work independently c.

Teaches students to avoid hard work

d. Helps students face their fears


Chapter 6

Gamification in Business Objectives •

To learn about Gamification in Business.

•

To understand its applications.

•

To study the benefits of Gamification in Business.

The Gamification of Business

Introduction Gamification can be employed successfully in business as long as it is designed correctly. It effectively engages people and motivates them to change behaviors, develop skills or solve problems. By leveraging some of the features used in real games, gamification can turn many other types of activities into games.

Currently, gamification is applied for customer engagement, employee performance, training and education, innovation management, personal development, sustainability, health, and wellness.

Nike built the Nike+ platform to engage fitness enthusiasts to boost their workouts to the next level. Khan Academy uses gamification to enhance the learning experience for students. Quirky uses gamification to crowdsource ideas from inventors for product development. These bright spots in gamification are both inspirational and instructional but may be overshadowing the reality of gamification in early enterprise implementation.

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Early Hype Gamification is close to its peak and like most new trends and technologies, the initial hype generates unrealistic expectations for success which results in a number of poor implementations. Like any new trend, gamification will move through the hype cycle from the peak of overblown expectations into the disenchantment.

While most theorists are optimistic about the long term impact of gamification, some are less optimistic of the short term effect. These people predict that by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will not meet business objectives, mainly because of poor design. This design should include defining business objectives, application definition, deployment and adoption. In the long term, as design practices advance and organizations get better at defining clear business objectives, gamification will have a significant business impact and become an important means for enterprises to engage audiences at a deeper level.

Organizations that focus more on business objectives will allow gamification to make the workplace more engaging and productive because it motivates employees to change behaviors. Predictions also say by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the main strategy to transform business operations.

To implement gamification successfully organizations need to consider the following precautions.

Do not Confuse Activity with Success

To date the hype surrounding gamification is filled with stories of companies leveraging this trend but not enough of its results. Experts say careful examination shows that many of the leading edge companies leveraging gamification easily describe the solutions they are implementing but

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are not too quick about relating the business results they have achieved. Undoubtedly there have been measured successes, but apparently there have been more accounts that simply describe what has been done.

Think of the Audience as Players not Puppets.

Apparently questionable, is the belief of many businesses that they can make people eagerly do their bidding just by slapping some meaningless badges, points and leaderboards onto their websites.

Doubts about came up in the Google News Badge campaign. About two years ago Google introduced Google News Badges which gave badges to readers of Google News. It showed what type of news they were reading whether it was politics or sports, etc. But Google has withdrawn that campaign as part of their so called spring cleaning efforts. Some say it could have involved more meaningful incentives.

Clearly Identify the Business Objectives.

Many businesses want to explore leveraging gamification because of all the hype. While identifying opportunities for leverage is not basically wrong, companies should be cautious about turning gamification into a solution looking for a problem to solve. To protect against this mistake, business leaders should make sure that when the opportunity to leveraging gamification comes up, they should define business objectives clearly first. Then they would need to conduct analysis of the suitability of gamification to achieving those defined objectives.

Design for Player-Centricity.

Leaders in gamification such as Nike, Quirky and Khan Academy have similar design characteristics, but most importantly the characteristic of player-centric design. Their key design point is to motivate the players to achieve their objectives. One thing some companies overlook is identifying


83 the player’s goals while defining the company’s objectives. The ideal for gamification is when business objectives seamlessly connect with player objectives. Gamified applications must be designed to motivate players to achieve their goals which should overlap with business goals.

Using Gamification to Engage Employees

More companies adopt gamification to enhance both employee and customer engagement. The problem with items used as rewards, is that they do not scale very well and people want increasing rewards for the same activity in order to feel motivated. It’s a common feature of humanity called habituation. Habituation means you’ve become accustomed to a stimulus over time and it no longer affects you as much as it did in the beginning.

Another common consideration is how gamification is appropriate with managing employees. Status, access and power are virtual rewards and so are recognitions of employee achievement. These are things that can scale cheaply and easily versus unspecific items and cash. That’s part of why businesses are attracted to gamification – it is extensible.

The other part of it involves making work progressively fun by leveraging the concepts of gamification. It’s about finding ways to align incentives and motivation.

This increases productivity and performance and can attract a higher-quality employee. The next generation of employees brings with them their increased technology skills.

Gamification Penetration

Gamification has been utilized in different ways in the workplace for some time now. Changes introduced come mainly from new sets of tools, technologies, design disciplines and frameworks


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that allow businesses to employ gamification in a more extensible and repetitive way. It also involves understanding the developing science of human engagement and interaction that generates better long-term results.

One of the most classic examples of gamification is Target’s approach. A cashier’s job can be an isolating job as the only time you may get feedback is when your drawer count is not incorrect. Target has engaged employees by encouraging them to get in the flow when checking out customers by making it more game-like.

Target stores introduced a little game for cashiers to play at checkout. It shows the cashier in red and green based on whether the item that was just scanned was done so in the most efficient time. Then they see their immediate score on screen and know how they fared against the ideal.

This gamification hits the point of this discipline. It is not about turning everything into a game. It’s about using the best ideas from games, like loyalty programs and behavioral economics, to drive the behavior that businesses want from their employees. The preference that people have of winning something is how achievement-oriented people see the world. People driven by achievement want some sort of payoff or prize, but people who are not winning-oriented are rewarded by feeling that they control their own destiny.


85 Before this application a cashier would only get feedback after check out if people complain that she did something wrong. Their boss then calls her and yells at her. The idea of this application brings the feedback as close to the action as possible and makes it as constructive and positive as possible.

Omnicare is more of an IT-centric organization that produces pharmacy management software. It is a kind of outsourced helpdesk for pharmacies.

Omnicare was experiencing long wait times at its helpdesk. Although its employees were experienced and knowledgeable about the service, the company wanted to improve efficiency by gamifying a solution. First, they put up a leaderboard and showed the reps the board. Then they also gave out cash rewards to employees with the fastest service times on the floor.

Unfortunately the strategy backfired, wait times increased and employee turnover shot up as people started quitting. Customer satisfaction also took a nose dive. The problem was the client did not take into account what was motivating the representatives. The helpdesk employees were technically skilled and felt they already had a sense of control over their own lives. When Omnicare introduced a scoring system the employees felt like Big Brother was watching them.

Omnicare revisited their gamification and changed the design of the system. Instead of setting goals for time and motion, they set up a series of achievements that reps could reach, a challenge given at the beginning of every shift. For example, a helpdesk support analyst could receive a challenge of finding three customers who have a specific problem with billing and help them with billing. As they progress through these series of challenges, they are given short-term rewards that recognize their achievement, not cash incentives. This tells you there is no one answer for all scenarios. Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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Bunchball worked with the Ford Motor company in Canada to help add gamification to its learning portals.

They wanted it to help sales and services teams become familiar with new car models, financing plans, technologies and options every year. After testing and implementing the methodology, Ford’s learning portal saw a 417% increase in use and its younger audiences, in particular, were more engaged.

It pulled their sales up, increased engagement from younger participants and increased customer satisfaction.

Tips on how to get your gamification project started. 1. Assign an employee as your point person to press your gamification idea forward. The best person for the job would be someone who can promote engagement internally. 2. Get your point person certified in gamification design. This is an important step and will provide the basic framework to get started. 3. Identify where the engagement issues are with your employees and/or customers. Using this gamification framework and methodology your point person learned, allows him to apply the knowledge against whatever engagement issues your company faces.

You can do a low-tech or a high-tech implementation. For example, a car dealership sometimes puts up a leaderboard that shows monthly sales. Many hotels hang leaderboards in the back office to show most rooms cleaned or best customer satisfaction rankings.


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Key Benefits Gamification Brings to Businesses

Gamification is a concept that has been used many times in business, education and in other industries but what may be causing companies not to implement it is the lack of success stories from huge companies.

It could also be because they do not see the ROI of gamifying their website or product. Companies who haven’t employed it probably just need that little push. Following are some reasons for gamifying business that enterprises would do well to explore.

The following key points emphasize why organizations should employ a gamification project.

1. Collects powerful customer data.

Gamification allows the company to collect important data from its consumers. Most gamification platforms require users to log in with a valid email address or social media credentials. From there your company is able to gather data on that person and see what they do on your website.

Each person is linked by clicks, points, badges and achievements, all of which generate large amounts of data. This translates to valuable customer information and insights for companies. Regardless of the type or the success of the game, data is still collected and that data can only benefit the company if it is analyzed properly. Businesses need to figure out how to use this because it provides real-time feedback.

Some gamification vendors offer analytics as part of their product. For example, Badgeville offers the Behavior Analytics software that measures customer engagement, behavior, growth and user activities. Bunchball has Nitro Connectors, which link their gamification platform to Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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enterprise software such as SAP, SharePoint or Yammer to collect activity and behavior from employees.

2. Gamification can be an educational tool.

Gamification introduces a new product in creative ways. You can actually let your customers sample your product in the form of a game designed to teach them how to use the product. It’s almost like a free trial of your product. An analyst says that games should give people a sense of achievement which is connected to motivation.

It’s almost like a free trial of your product. Adobe has implemented an onboarding program called LevelUp for Photoshop that teaches the basics of the software by giving assignments that can give the player points and badges upon completion. Those who have seen it say that it breaks it down into bite-size pieces and the audience sees its progression towards mastery. But bear in mind that if you give rewards you have to make certain it is for the right audience. A company that offers a discount in exchange for an email address could tempt others to just provide the address, get the discount and leave. He could even keep doing this over and over providing different addresses that could very well be bogus.

3. Crowdsourcing helps you solve complex business problems.

Another benefit you can get from customers logging onto your website is you can use them to give you feedback. Companies like Allstate and GE have turned to crowdsourcing to help them come up with answers to complex business questions.

Gamification can be a path to crowdsourcing if the company uses customer feedback from games and applies it as a solution to a business problem. Companies cannot design, test and implement innovation all on their own. In fact using an R&D department put up only for this purpose is reportedly obsolete.


89 “Games With A Purpose” is a gamification site that crowdsources information to better train computers to produce more accurate answers. A game called “ESP Game” involves two players. Both see the same image and type in various one-word captions for it. Once the two people agree on a caption, they get points and move onto the next round. The object is to agree on as many captions and earn as many points as possible in two minutes. The agreed-upon images are made into tags that get recorded so search engines have a better idea of what each image contains.

4. Gamification offers a way to give back to the community.

Through gamification some companies get an opportunity to give back to communities connected to their industry, in addition to finding solutions for their business. Opower, a Software-as-a-Service company that works with utility providers, has been using Facebook to encourage people to monitor and share their energy consumption and compete for the title of most energy-efficient.

RecycleBank rewards people with gift cards and discounts to stores and restaurants for who recycle paper or use less energy in their homes. It is their effort to help the environment.

5. Stay relevant to your customers.

Gamification can help remind your customers how important your website is to them. Companies have to keep content up on their websites regularly so their customers see them all the time. It’s very easy to gamify in a social environment or when you have a lot of content to keep the engagement fresh.

Games should bring people together, urge players to achieve a goal and give them a stake in the outcome. The rewards should be more than smiley faces and thumbs up images, but could be tangible rewards. There are many benefits to gamification but they are mainly strategic and even that will still evolve.


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Questions

1. To make sure gamification is successful, what should organizations do first when leveraging gamification opportunities come up? a. Business should be seamlessly joined to content b. Clearly Identify the Business Objectives c.

Learn a language while translating the Web

d. The Emergence of Customer Engagement Platforms

2. Which tip for starting a gamification project is a relevant step in providing the basic framework? a. Get your point person certified in gamification design b. Assign an employee as your point person c.

Identify where the engagement issues are with your employees

d. Encourage employees to develop skills

3. Which of the following can motivate people to change behaviors, develop skills or solve problems if designed correctly? a. Crowdsourcing b. RecycleBank c. Rewards d. Gamification

4. What is part of the reason businesses are attracted to gamification? It involves cheap scalability. a. It is flexible b. It is visible c.

It is extensible

d. It is compatible


91 5. Which of the following means you have become used to an incentive over time and it no longer motivates you? a. Gamification b. Habituation c.

Penetration

d. Acquisition

6. What key benefit of gamification in business states that regardless of type or success of the game, it still accumulates information? a. Gives back to the community b. Solves complex business problems c.

Can be an educational tool

d. Collects powerful customer data


Chapter 7

Real-World Applications Objectives •

To examine real world applications of Gamification.

•

To learn about some Gamification sites.

Real World Applications of Gamification

•

In the real world, gamification has been widely applied in marketing.

Over 70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies are poised to use gamification for the marketing and customer retention. In November 2011 Australian broadcast and online media partner Yahoo launched its Fango mobile app, which TV viewers use to interact with shows via gamification techniques like check-ins and badges. As of February 2012, the app had been downloaded more than 200,000 times.

•

Gamification has also been used in customer loyalty programs.

In 2010, Starbucks gave custom Foursquare badges to people who checked in at multiple locations and offered discounts to people who became mayors of an individual store. Some users have proposed using gamification for competitive intelligence, encouraging people to fill out surveys, and to do market research on brand recognition.

•

Gamification has also been integrated into Help Desk software.

In 2012, Freshdesk, a SaaS-based customer support product, integrated gamification features, allowing agents to earn badges based on performance.

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Gamification has also been used as a tool for customer engagement, and for encouraging desirable website usage behavior. Furthermore, gamification is easy to use for increasing engagement on social network sites. For example, in August 2010, DevHub announced that they had increased the number of users who completed their online tasks from 10% to 80% after adding gamification elements.

On the programming question-and-answer site, Stack Overflow users received points and/or badges for performing a variety of actions, including spreading links to questions and answers via Facebook and Twitter. A large number of different badges are available, and when a user’s reputation points exceed various limits, he gains additional privileges, including a higher end privilege of helping to moderate the site.

Gamification in ideation focuses on incentives. In the past, participants in a brainstorming session were given incentives in two ways. Participants were either rewarded based on their individual contribution or they are rewarded based on the group’s collective output. Neither is perfect. Rewarding participants based only on the group’s collective output encourages freeloading where all receive equal credit regardless of their level of participation or lack thereof.

Gamification has been widely used in education and training: •

Microsoft released Ribbon Hero 2 as an add-on to their Office productivity suite to help train people to use it effectively. It is one of their most popular projects.

•

The New York City Department of Education set up a school called Quest to Learn, centered on game-based learning, with the intent to make education more engaging and relevant to modern kids.

•

SAP has used games to educate their employees on sustainability.

•

The US military and Unilever have also utilized gamification in their training.

•

The Khan Academy uses gamification techniques in online education.

•

In August 2009, the educational location-based game Gbanga Zooh for Zurich Zoo was launched. Participants try to actively save endangered animals and physically bring them back

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to a zoo. Players maintained virtual habitats across the Canton of Zurich to attract and collect endangered species of animals.

Applications like Fitocracy and QUENTIQ use gamification to urge users to exercise correctly and improve their overall health. Users are given differing numbers of points for activities they perform in their workouts. They also gain levels based on points collected. Users can also complete quests and gain achievement badges for fitness milestones. Health Month adds facets of social gaming by allowing successful users to restore points to users who have failed to meet certain goals.

Gamification has been used as a tool for improving employee productivity. •

RedCritter Tracker, Playcall, and Arcaris are examples of management tools that use gamification to increase productivity.

•

Games like Foldit, have gamified crowdsourcing.

•

The ESP Game is used to generate image metadata.

•

Google Image Labeler is a version of the ESP Game that Google has licensed to produce its own image metadata.

•

Research from the University of Bonn used gamification to increase wiki contributions by 62%.

Gamification Sites

eBay

eBay has long used a points system allowing users to show their status on the site. The success of this system, which also issues badges to the best sellers, shows the importance of reputation as a reward to both buyers and sellers. Regular users know these are key game mechanics.


95 Mint

Mint.com uses indirect gamification mainly through progress bars and fun feedback. This helps members manage their personal finances. Members can also post details about their financial goals to increase their chances of reaching those goals. There may be no badges or prizes but the game mechanics is said to be effective.

MuchMusic.com

The Canadian MTV version MuchMusic.com gamified its site with a program called MuchCloser. Members gain points by watching videos, reading blogs, leaving comments and sharing content. As points increase, users receive rewards and trophies and become eligible for prizes and giveaways. The most active users are marked as important members of the MuchMusic community.

Samsung Nation

Samsung uses gamification in its social loyalty program to recognize and empower its most passionate supporters. Users earn points, level up, unlock badges and gain entry into contests and promotions for watching videos, commenting on articles, reviewing products and participating in user-generated Q&As. Top users appear on a leaderboard, and an activity stream keeps users updated on site activities.

sneakpeeq

Retail site sneakpeeq offers products including gourmet foods, accessories, apparel and more at discounted prices. The more you buy, share, love (similar to liking) an item, and peeq (viewing an item’s price), the more badges and rewards you unlock, and the more incentives and surprises you receive. Leaderboards make the experience more social and competitive.


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Xbox Live

Microsoft’s game platform Xbox utilizes a game within a game concept, using elements of gamification within its games. It is Similar to Shakespeare’s play within a play.

Gamification - Mobile

Foursquare

With this free mobile app, users get points and win rewards when they “check in” at various places and share their experiences with others. It uses points and badges for this. Users can also get special deals, such as a discount at a restaurant or a freebie for bringing friends. Foursquare also helps users move to the next level by suggesting actions the user should take. Checking in enough times can also make a user a “mayor” of the community which brings with it privileges, such as a special parking place.

GetGlue

GetGlue is a bit similar to Foursquare, but instead of checking in at favorite restaurants and shops, users check in while watching shows, listening to music, reading books or engaging in other entertainment-related activities. Users receive relevant recommendations, exclusive stickers (similar to badges), discounts, and other rewards.

Nike+

Is a service that encourages health and fitness activities. Users log their physical activity using a mobile app or other Nike gear. Rewards include NikeFuel, a term Nike uses to describe points. Users can also share accomplishments with friends and with other Nike+ members. Earning NikeFuel, unlocks awards, trophies and surprises.


97 Recyclebank

Recyclebank is a company that gives members points for doing “everyday green actions.“ This could be using less water, recycling, making greener purchases, using energy more efficiently or walking to work instead of driving. Members can take online quizzes about ecology and share information from the site with friends on Facebook, Twitter and mobile applications to earn more points. Users can convert points at participating local and national retailers to rewards such as gifts and flowers, books and magazines, or health and beauty items.

#Nwplyng

This music app rewards users badges they call records, for identifying and sharing their music preferences with friends via Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. They also give special artist records which a user can earn by sharing 12 of an artist’s lesser known tracks to unlock points and more music.

Starbucks

Starbucks’ program is really simple. The more coffee you buy, the more rewards you get and the more you fill up your cup. This visual aspect of reaching a goal by filling up the cup motivates users to accomplish the highest level of earning.

Viggle

Viggle rewards users for watching television and users earn points by checking in while watching their favorite shows, playing trivia and interacting live as the shows air. You also get points for sharing any shows, Facebook, or Twitter content.


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FuelGood

FuelGood gamifies the driving process and encourages users to decrease their carbon footprint. FuelGood monitors driving and offers tips for improving gas mileage. The feedback system helps the driver beat his personal best and offers different trips with similar distances to see how fuel consumption is improving.

Mobee

This gamification involves pairing secret shoppers with retailers. Mystery shoppers play games which they call missions to earn points towards rewards. You can earn points to get a free coffee in less than five minutes of playing.

Red Robin

Red Robin uses gamification in their loyalty program offering many different ways to interact and earn points. Their Burger Board Games allow users to really experience game mechanics while enjoying Red Robin products. Their Toss the Onion Ring game allows customers to earn points toward rewards. They also reward check-ins and social shares.

Other Applications Fruit Ninja Kinect, Neuroscience Research Australia

Players smash virtual fruit in this game which is used to help the elderly recover from medical problems, stay fit and even prevent devastating falls. As part of Neuroscience Research Australia’s iStoppFalls program, a slowed down version of the game is available on Xbox Kinect, allowing the elderly to play along with their grandchildren.


99 Fallen Angels, Lynx

Lynx involve commuters interacting with the reality game. Passengers who stepped on patches on the floor of the open concourse, triggered virtual angels falling to earth. Participants could then watch themselves interact with the virtual angel on a big screen overlooking the concourse. Branding was the main purpose of the gamification.

Coinland, Commonwealth Bank

The game was intended for children aged five to 10 years old. The game teaches them about the benefits of earning, saving and investing money through a series of tasks aimed at developing financial literacy skills. Children can also play with friends by adding other users to their buddy lists.

Dream Team, AFL

This game is for everyone and you get to play it free. Users choose a team of 30 players, and receive points based on the performance of those players to qualify for the prize pool. Participation rates in the game are high, and the AFL generates content around the game including a Dream Team show and news updates on player performance. Players also compete in public or private minileagues against friends to qualify for the grand prize of a Toyota FJ Cruiser.

Re-Mission, HopeLab

HopeLab developed this game specifically for young adults with cancer. Players of the game pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing side effects associated with cancer and cancer treatment. Messages delivered through this game are apparently effective that observers say it encourages patients to take their tablets and had better recovery rates than those that didn’t play.


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Sparx, New Zealand Ministry of Health and University of Auckland

SPARX is a self-help computer program to help young people who shows signs of depression. This 3D fantasy game was developed by teenage depression specialists from the University of Auckland to engage youth in a self-learning depression management program. It teaches cognitive behavioral therapy techniques by travelling through different stages of the role-playing game design to address different aspects of depression. Results from testing the game showed its marked effectiveness against medication and even face-to-face treatment.

Investorville, Commonwealth Bank

Investorville combines market data creative technology that gives users a tr y at property investing without risking their money. Banks can deliver complex messages about investing and give potential investors a taste. 100,000 visitors have clicked on the site and 23,000 of them have registered and entered their details into the game, resulting in 630 loans.

Jay-Z: Decoded, Random House Publishing Group (RHPG)

The campaign was launched to stimulate interest in reading books. RHPG launched the product with a unique social game engaging the curiosity of customers. They pre-released pages of the memoir, printed on various surfaces and hidden around the world. They were inside food wrappers and even in the silk lining of a Gucci jacket. The campaign targeted an audience of non-readers and encouraged them to read books. Players were tasked to find over 300 pages in 600 placements in 15 locations worldwide. Players had to assemble and decode the book together online before its release date.


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Optimal Applications Companies who want to jump into gamification all at once would do well to examine the following optimal environments for gamification applications:

1. Call Centers.

Using leaderboards is a good start and is actually a current practice in many call centers and is a simple gamification technique. This could improve morale and boost results. Dashboards are also used as motivators in call centers that mostly result in improved productivity.

2. Social media and knowledge sharing.

It is obviously more fun to participate in consumer-oriented social networks than corporate networks. Social networks where people can see pictures of their grandkids, check on high school crushes, and catch up on the latest puppy videos would be a more ideal environment to try out a gamification project. Employees might need some incentives to share information and expertise in a more enjoyable setting.

For example, a management consulting firm in New York called Bluewolf uses Salesforce. com’s Chatter platform as its internal social network. At the beginning of the year, the platform was gamified, with employees getting points when they post comments. They earn more points if the comment stimulates a conversation. They also get points for sharing reports to their outside social networks, or publishing a blog post, or making presentations on weekly knowledge management calls.

Employees can earn points and exchange them for flight upgrades, lunch with the CEO, and trips to the Salesforce.com annual conference. Challenges came up with the rewards employees would want to receive and new tasks for the participants to complete.


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The good news was results from Bluewolf say participation in the company’s social network increased 57% during the first quarter of the year and continued to grow in the second quarter. Inbound traffic to the corporate website also increased.

3. Crowdsourcing.

Appirio, a cloud solutions vendor trying to compete against much larger consulting firms, like Accenture and Deloitte, launched CloudSpokes two years ago. It is an online community where thousands of developers compete to solve programming challenges.To make it effective the company involved the developers themselves to check for loopholes in the contests and in judging the results. Strategists say it allowed participants to learn in a different way.

4. Training.

Gamification in training has been regular fare in industries for some time now. Learning games and simulations are effective for teaching complex skills and conveying large amounts of content. In fact, companies these days go beyond the mere quiz-style games.

Designing Digitally in Ohio is developing a massive territorial 3D immersive sales game which works with government agencies, universities and corporations, including the U.S. Air Force and TD Ameritrade. It has been described as multi-user Grand Theft Auto, but with salesmen. Business can look into best-selling games for ideas by analyzing the way they are structured and how they can be used as content.


103

Questions

1. Aside from leaderboards, which of the following are used as motivators in call centers that mostly result in improved productivity? a. Dashboards b. Gamification c.

Crowdsourcing

d. Rewards

2. Which gamification application teaches people how to use Microsoft Office effectively? a. SAP b. The Khan Academy c.

Quest to Learn school

d. Ribbon Hero 2

3. Which gamification site uses a points system and shows the importance of reputation as a reward to buyers and sellers? a. Sneakpeeq b. eBay c. Nike+ d. Viggle

4. Which area of education has gamification been commonly used and has been effective in teaching complex skills? a. Training b. Crowdsourcing c.

Social media

d. Call Centers


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5. When gamification is applied in ideation, what does it focus on? a. Crowdsourcing b. Incentives c. Dashboards d. Training

6. Which of the following activities does the gamification site SamsungNation give rewards for? a. Participating in user-generated Q&As b. Recommending unknown music c.

Updating sites

d. Creating blogs


Chapter 8

Trends and Future of Gamification Objectives •

To learn about trends in Gamification.

•

To study the future of Gamification.

Gamification Trends

Gamification is currently growing faster than any technology of its kind as organizations across market segments leverage challenges, goals and tasks, as well as points, badges and leaderboards, designed to engage employees and customers. With this evolution fundamental mechanics developed over the past few years will continue to be the essential sustaining elements of most gamification campaigns.

Mechanics are tools you use to achieve objectives. Tools such as leaderboards are not going to go out of style but they can be leveraged either very effectively or very badly, but none of the fundamental components of gamification are expected to just disappear in the near future.

2013 onwards will see the continued use of gamification mechanics or tools in retail. Organizations will continue to use mechanics such as leaderboards, badges and titles in the coming years. Experts forecast this year as pivotal for gamification in retail. More executives are discovering and understanding the growing integration and relationship between mobile platforms, social media and gamification for digital campaigns. They feel the potential for gamified behavior is just in its beginning phase, particularly in relation to product consideration and purchases in retail.

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Consumer behavior, the ways they share information via social media, and the devices they use to connect with brands and friends in places where retail is possible are just the tip of the iceberg. If the last couple of years showed its ability to grasp its place in the industry in the coming year will establish its secure hold.

A business expert not a gaming expert actually identified the many diverse opportunities where marketers can connect with consumers across channels. He predicts a more exciting time for retailers because gamification drives the consumer as a participant and not just someone sitting at a computer. A retailer can use gamification to engage customers when they’re in the store or out running errands.

One particular obvious area to engage customers is in communication devices. The increasing popularity of Smartphones across all age demographics is providing retailers with perfect opportunities to combine game-infused campaigns and strategies into actual physical stores. This may be practiced by certain sectors but a business expert says it is not per formed well.

The feedback one can get inside a store is instantaneous and one needs the ability to send very fast feedback to customers. In banking and retail, a customer will be rewarded points sometimes 90 days after the fact. That does not work anymore against some other stores or instantly received feedback on my phone.

Overall, experts predict no gamification tools will be unused or discarded this year but will in fact be used more and extensively as more robust tools especially as gamification establishes stronger ties with superior company performance.

The term “gamification” might not be frequently used, but the concept of data motivating people is just going to be good strategy. It would be a waste not to benefit from all the data that your employees and customers are generating. Business gurus say smart organizations will use Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

107 gamification to become even more successful, and predict it will become even more rooted in everything people do.

Future of Gamification

There are proponents convinced beyond a doubt of the future of gamification, but there are also those skeptical about its shelf life. Despite the confidence of some gaming and business experts there are those who are unconvinced. A look at the future of gamification might give insight to whether it could be useful or not. It is also noteworthy to remember that gamification should be integrated with other elements of business to become a successful application. There still are organizations not sure of the viability and longevity of gamification as a means to engage and motivate target audiences. Some enterprises have difficulty understanding the trend and its longer-term implications. A recent survey revealed 53% of people surveyed believe that by 2020, the use of gamification will be widespread and 42% expected that, by 2020, gamification will not grow into a much bigger trend, except in specific industry sectors.

Some skeptics still find it a challenge to understand and believe the power of gamification to engage users. Organizations have trouble understanding the mechanics and question the practicality and permanence of gamification not to mention the cost. Since marketing works in trends and buzzwords that have their peaks and bottoms it explains why they think it will be a short-lived trend. The term has only become well-known in 2010.

Strategists and decision makers need to understand the long-term impact of gamification and acknowledge the prospects that they can leverage.


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Some technologies that helped gamification evolve are: •

Mobile technology (Smartphones/tablets).

•

Cloud (Connecting digital networks).

•

Social (Online networks that have brought people together).

•

Location based services.

While the technologies cited above have helped gamification grow, the emerging technologies that follow will help keep gamification alive in the future. •

Augmented reality (apps that come to life).

•

Gesture control (controlling a smart TV with your hands).

•

Head mounted displays (Google Glass).

•

Wearable technology.

Organizations will be able to design new marketing strategies by combining the existing proven technologies and emerging technologies, one of which is gamification. It will enable many sectors and industries to seamlessly integrate technology into our daily lives, just like social networks and Smartphones have.

Future uses of gamification will establish emerging trends and available technologies and will more than likely impact the following areas:

Increasing Employee Performance

Predictions center around objectives of increased employee engagement, better productivity and reduced company costs. Gamification is expected to improve employee engagement and increase retention rates. It is also expected to improve productivity, both leading to more efficient workers and reduced costs for the company. Game mechanics is not a new concept used in the workplace, chiefly to entice with cash and extrinsic rewards, possibly commission incentives to increase sales performance. More sophisticated game methods and advances in technology can help


109 management align employee activities to support business goals, hopefully at a departmental basis.

They hope to make it an intrinsic motivator (social capital/self-esteem) which has been proven to produce better outcomes than extrinsic motivations or specifically money. Employee performance feedback can then be changed as a top-down and yearly process to a social, peer-based process done in real time.

Gamified Personal Development

Gamification can be used strategically for personal development by applying it in healthcare or organizations that promote health and wellness. Combining it with social environments can help its personal development as well.

It may be difficult to believe but gamification can benefit a personal trainer, football coach, or even a weight loss consultant’s business in the future. Gamifying services will reinforce your customer’s motivation and increase customer retention. One can do it by simple integration with social networks (Tweet your results/Share on Facebook), which could also increase their social recognition which helps intrinsic motivation. If you want a more sophisticated and investmentcentric approach to gamifying personal development, you can tap healthcare outfits or companies including gyms, spas, or hospitals. You can also use it in other types of businesses that promote healthier lifestyles, as they can integrate emerging technologies, as mentioned previously, into their services.

The Emergence of Customer Engagement Platforms

Game mechanics can be used in something as simple as grocery shopping, fostering loyalty to a particular company through rewards given to customers. One example is through cross branding and platforms.


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Common industries such airlines and supermarkets can actually use gamification to make their businesses better. Brands have recognized the significance of loyalty marketing with promos like Air Miles and other notable programs like Nectar points and Tesco Clubcard. This basic model of buying from a particular company to receive extrinsic rewards uses basic game mechanics. Consumers know about this and are probably already participants of many loyalty schemes. They might also get tired of the same loyalty scheme that gives them a “Store Card” where the investment outweighs the returns. An example of a customer loyalty platform that gamification can be integrated into in the future is gamified loyalty.

Gamified Loyalty or Cross Branding & Platforms use game mechanics in a program that allows consumers to use points or rewards across many other retailers and brands that are part of the loyalty program. One can create points that can be used as currency for exchanging goods, services or other rewards. The ability to attain and spend points from various outlets makes the rewards more significant to the consumer.

An Explosion of Innovation

The Department for Work and Pensions in the U.K. and Allstate have already leveraged more advanced game mechanics to motivate employee engagement in the innovation process and they expect it to continue. Predictions say more than 50% of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes by 2015. Benefits already witnessed from early users show a trend toward leveraging employees to push innovation and for it to accelerate.

Organizations are also starting to use gamification to control broader audiences in innovation. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US Defense Department recently announced its Fast, Adaptable, Next-Generation Ground (FANG) Design Challenge to crowdsource design and manufacturing processes for its FANG Vehicle. Quirky is crowdsourcing product innovation. It uses game mechanics to forecast product ideas with the greatest potential for success. Another example is FoldIt from the University of Washington, which recruits citizen scientists to solve complex problems in protein folding, and advances science in the process.


111 Predictions say gamification will play a major role in innovation management, by engaging a target audience and weighting the collective intelligence of the crowd to accumulate ideas, develop them and predict success using prediction market mechanisms.

Innovation management is a good way to introduce gamification in an organization. Vendors can usually help out organizations looking for individuals who have extensive experience in gamification in innovation. Practitioners see innovation management as a natural domain for gamification, and the advancement of innovation game design. A broader target audience participation and a greater number of organizations using this approach, will push gamified, crowdsourced innovations by 2020.

Innovation management and gamification closely complement each other. Organizations that want experience in gamification could use innovation management as an ideal application, because it has a low risk of problems and a huge opportunity for benefits to the business. Frequently vendors are those that possess considerable experience in leveraging gamification for innovation management.

Organizations can use the services of these individuals who can provide software to support idea management. Spigit and Brightidea are two samples of software that can provide such services.

The Design of Employee Performance

Game mechanics have long been applied to influence employee performance. Contests have been regular fare in that area. Using game mechanics to improve employee performance is far from a new concept.

For example, contests may be unsophisticated tools but are often used to push sales performance. More advanced game design techniques supported by technology can be employed to influence


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employee behaviors, such as fine-tuning exercises that support organizational goals. The most current applications of game mechanics in employee performance depend on monetary or other extrinsic rewards and competitive game theories, but it has only been successful up to a certain extent.

A survey discovered only 29% of employees are engaged at work, 52% were unengaged and 19% as disengaged. It has been said that intrinsic rewards work better than extrinsic rewards when creating higher levels of engagement and improved results.

Gamification takes advantage of intrinsic rewards such as social capital, self-esteem and fun for currency outweighing extrinsic rewards as motivators for improved performance. Competitive games will be employed less in employee performance and will be displaced by collaborative games designed to maximize business outcomes, in place of rewarding a few top performers. This moves employee performance feedback from top-down and regular to social, peer-based and real-time.

Game mechanics are applied in different ways to different types of work to drive different types of behavior. •

Scripted games are usually employed for low-skilled jobs like that of a service desk analyst. These include specific tasks and rewards to be accomplished. Social recognition within the workgroup and mastery of the tasks will motivate these workers. Scripted games may be beneficial for low-skilled workers but they can pose some risks.

•

With knowledge work like those of project managers or product designers, what would work are emergent game structures more than scripted games. Emergent games provide players with the goals, tools, rules and space to play, but their actions are not scripted, and most often, the process or outcome is unknown. Ideation or innovation management platforms commonly use them. This type of emergent game structure is effective for knowledge work where the outcome is indistinct, but the goal defined. If you want to extend this approach for complex goals you will need multiple players by using self-organizing teams.


113 Game design skills are now being replaced by top-down approaches using command and control management. Sources predict successful managers will become great game designers in the future who will engage employees through either scripted or emergent games to achieve defined business outcomes.

Even though employee-behavior design is an ingenious approach, organizations have to be careful about using employee-facing gamification applications. Employees must not feel manipulated or intimidated, but helped in realizing their objectives. Organizations have to clearly define the organizational objectives of high-interactivity applications, understand employee objectives and focus on where the two overlap. They should make sure applications are people-centric and allow employees to reach their goals aligned with organizational objectives.

The Globalization of Advanced Education

Difficulty in gaining access to advanced education is generally known as a problem in developing countries caused by mostly financial issues and is most often only accessible to those in the upper economic brackets.

A degree from an accredited university is commonly the key to entering the workforce, but trends including gamification could be changing that. Gamification together with other technologies is changing the engagement of students in learning, recognition of skills attainment, and access to advanced education.

Training and education programs have been using gamification for more than twenty years and has improved the engagement of students in the learning process. Game mechanics, like points, badges and integration in the social network, are used as a game layer for course material to fast track feedback and give social recognition rewards that increase student/player engagement in learning. Some course material is entrenched in game environments that include simulation, animation and storylines to engage student/players even more. This apparently results in better


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learning.

Globalizing education is important overall even if this trend does not incorporate game mechanics. Many courses offered by universities have recently become accessible online and free for anyone who has an interest in signing up. Coursera for instance, offers about 200 courses from 33 universities and more than half a million students have signed up. Class sizes often reach the tens of thousands, but the professors time commitments are lessened through on-demand video lectures, online tests and peer review of work assignments. Although most courses taken online at no cost do not provide course credits, sources say that may change soon.

Recognition of skills attainment is a concern as well. A major element of education is the broad recognition of the skills that have been acquired. These may be attained through higher education, work experience or independent study, but higher education institutions have control over recognition of knowledge attainment, and usually only provide that recognition (in the form of a degree) to students who have paid their fees and attended the classes. This could change soon.

For example, P2P University (P2PU) provides a collaborative learning environment for students to create course material on topics of interest to the community. While this is an important advance in providing education, another important one is the use of badges (a game mechanic) to recognize skills attainment. Using Mozilla’s Open Badges framework, collaborators in P2PU courses can gain recognition for skill attainment without the involving of a higher education organization. For now P2PU badges may have little recognition beyond the P2PU community, they say this could change in the coming years.

Experts predict 2020 will see gamification helping to advance global education, allowing access to a wider audience. Practitioners see gamification used in the near future to develop more engaging course material.


115 They say advanced education will be global, allow more equal access to education and more open recognition of skill attainment through badges. Alternate options to formal higher education can make education more engaging, more accessible to a wider group of people and broadly recognized.

Organizations need to assess gamified training applications for internal deployment, such as employee onboarding. They also need to encourage employees to develop skills using alternative resources.

Business managers and HR departments should continually assess quickly changing certification alternatives to find out when and if alternative certifications are accepted as a recognition of skill attainment.

The Gamification of Personal Development

Several gamified applications are currently available in the market for companies to use. These are designed mainly to modify personal behavior, but they are moderately simple, using only basic game mechanics.

They are frequently little more than reminder systems with some points and badges added to them. The more effective systems incorporate with social networks to reinforce motivation with additional social recognition. Some examples include gamified applications to coach people to lose weight, quit smoking, improve fitness, correct posture, manage personal finances, take medication and improve memory.

Game design approaches are predicted to improve to deliver motivation for personal d evelopment, with the use of personal development applications increasing significantly. This would be driven by new technologies such as enhanced reality and natural-language interfaces that allow a more


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natural interface.

Gesture control and emotion detection technologies will allow gamified personal development applications to measure your progress and modify it based on your status. Consolidating expert advice with gamified personal coaching systems, will provide a richer coaching experience.

For example, a simple gamified personal development system can tell you to do 20 pushups and gives you points for completing them because that’s what the program tells it to do. Incorporating these emerging technologies with expert advice in the future will allow a gamified personal fitness coach to tell you to do pushups, assess and correct your posture while doing those pushups, evaluate your efforts, and modify the number of pushups to match your level of fitness.

Gamification can benefit healthcare organizations, governments and other organizations that promote healthier lifestyles, improved personal finance or other lifestyle improvements for a deeper engagement of the target audience. They would have to identify the specific behavior change and the target audience, and begin to use gamification in applications that focus on these behavior changes. Experts say many of these cases would pose little risk and encourage organizations to begin developing and using applications focused on personal development now.

The Emergence of Customer Engagement Platforms

The biggest benefits of gamification today in business is customer loyalty and marketing applications with consumer brands. Samsung, Nike and Pepsi, are the forerunners of gamification.

Although big brands have the resources to develop customized gamification applications, there are many opportunities for coalition loyalty platforms to develop that combine loyalty programs from many retailers, services and brands. Some examples of these aggregators are Air Miles in Canada, Nectar in the U.K., and Shopcade and Womply in the U.S. But, these programs use only


117 basic game mechanics and extrinsic reward schemes. The opportunity for loyalty platforms is to urge members to engage more by using more intrinsic rewards and more advanced game design approaches.

Sources say that in less than ten years a small group of dominant loyalty platforms will emerge. The following factors are reasons why this will happen. •

Cross-brand sponsorship and participation — Loyalty platforms are appealing to consumers

if many of the retailers, services and brands that they already use are part of the same program. •

Aggregation of points and levels — By accumulating points, rewards can be more important,

and players can level-up by virtue of their total program involvement, rather than involvement with a single loyalty marketing program. •

Levels are broadly recognized — Becoming a silver or gold member provides recognition

and entitlement across the brand network. •

Players become loyal to the platform and the brand community — Brands that are not part

of the community are considered outsiders and are less attractive to consumers. •

Points become a transferable virtual currency — Points can be exchanged in different ways

for goods, services or other rewards, and can be transferred to other people. •

Platform consolidation will occur through network effect — Multiple customer engagement

platforms will combine to create a small number of dominant platforms.

Brands, retailers and service providers will have to monitor the development of loyalty platforms to identify emerging or existing loyalty management organizations that combine more advanced game design and game mechanics into their loyalty programs. Enterprises have to choose to partner with those loyalty programs because gamified loyalty coalition platforms will begin to develop. They offer both engaging game design methods and a critical mass of compatible loyalty partners.


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Final Thoughts… Industries will change as technology grows and becomes more accessible. The hotel industry has experienced most of these changes. The important message from gamification is to assess how relevant it is to your business. Large successful companies may be using it but it doesn’t mean that you have to.

What you need to look for will be specific to each industry. Look for early signs of impact of new technology, whether it be new processes or even a whole new business model. It would help to be aware of the changes taking place and most importantly the behavior change that it’s bringing with it. You can think about leveraging gamification for your benefit once you have realized this.


119

Questions

1. Which of the following are tools used to accomplish objectives in gamification? a. Campaigns b. Gamification c. Mechanics d. Behavior

2. Which of the following is a good way to introduce gamification in an organization? a. Innovation management b. Game mechanics c.

Advanced education

d. Personal development

3. In business today, which of the following are the biggest benefits of gamification? a. Personal development b. Customer engagement c.

Success in personal development

d. Customer loyalty and marketing applications with consumer brands

4. Which area will future gamification applications affect that could result in less company costs and better productivity? a. Increasing employee performance b. Gamified personal development c.

Performance evaluations

d. Increased customer activity


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5. Which of the following uses game mechanics to forecast product ideas with the greatest potential for success? a. Quirky b. Gamification c. Brightidea d. Education

6. Which technology will allow gamified personal development applications that will measure your progress and modify it based on your status? a. Game design technologies b. Gesture control/emotion detection technologies c.

Gamified social technology

d. Augmented reality


Chapter 9

Answers Chapter 1

Chapter 4

Chapter 7

1. c

1. c

1. a

2. a

2. d

2. d

3. c

3. a

3. b

4. d

4. c

4. a

5. c

5. b

5. b

6. c

6. a

6. a

Chapter 2

Chapter 5

Chapter 8

1. b

1. a

1. c

2. a

2. b

2. a

3. b

3. d

3. d

4. d

4. c

4. a

5. c

5. b

5. a

6. b

6. a

6. b

Chapter 3

Chapter 6

1. c

1. b

2. a

2. a

3. b

3. d

4. a

4. c

5. d

5. b

6. a

6. d

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Chapter 10

Index A

achievements achievemen ts 7, 23, 33-5, 38, 46-9, 68, 68, 84-5, 87-8 actual games 21-2, 29 advanced education 113, 115, 119 applications 9, 11, 14, 18, 37, 49, 49, 65, 70, 80, 80, 85, 94, 98, 112-13, 116 attention 16, 60, 60, 63, 67, 71, 71, 78

B

badges 7, 16-17, 19, 23, 23, 28, 33-5, 38-9, 38-9, 42, 47, 49, 52, 82, 87-8, 92-6, 105, 105, 113-15 Badgeville 18-19, 36, 87 behaviorism 8, 54-5, 61-2 behaviors 15, 23-4, 37, 49, 54-6, 54-6, 58-9, 62, 62, 66, 74, 84, 84, 87-8, 112, 112, 119 desired 11, 20-1, 23, 46, 55, 60 beliefs 66, 68, 82 book 1-3, 13, 96-7, 100 brands 1, 59, 106, 110, 116-17 Bunchball 17-19, 36, 86-7 business objectives 81-3, 90

122

businesses 9, 12, 15-16, 23, 23, 31-2, 35, 37, 42, 42, 75, 80, 82-4, 87, 87, 89-91, 102, 109-11, 109-11, 118-19 buyers 25-6, 94, 103

C

challenges 7, 11, 22, 43-4, 47, 51, 73-4, 76, 76, 85, 101 101 children 66-7, 70, 99 classes 49, 74, 114 classroom 67-8, 74, 76 collection 21, 25, 28, 40, 42, 72 community 15, 20, 47, 49-50, 89, 91, 96, 114, 117 companies 2, 18, 25, 35-7, 46, 54-5, 59, 82-3, 82-3, 85, 87-9, 92, 97, 97, 101-2, 108-9, 115 Compassionate Compassionat e Gamification Gamification 8, 53, 53, 59, 61-2 competition 7, 33-4, 37-9, 43, 45, 48, 50-1, 59, 59, 70-1 Constraints 7, 41, 51 consumers 21-2, 31, 31, 38, 46, 87, 106, 110, 110, 117 content 26, 49, 63-4, 69-70, 69-70, 76, 78, 89-90, 89-90, 99, 102 102 contests 95, 102, 111 context 1, 11, 16-17, 57-8, 67 control 44, 57, 66, 76, 84-5, 110, 110, 114 cooperation 7, 24, 24, 29, 43, 45, 50 Coursera 75, 78, 114 Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcin g 38, 88, 90, 102-4

123

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currencies 20, 28, 110, 112 customer engagement 12, 16, 16, 80, 83, 93, 119 customer loyalty 21, 116, 119 customers 15, 20-2, 25, 25, 31-2, 35, 35, 57-9, 84-6, 84-6, 89, 98, 100, 105-6, 109

D

Dashboards 101, 103-4 degree 36, 113-14 depression 60, 68, 100 design 22, 24, 24, 60, 60, 81-2, 81-2, 85, 88, 108 108 designers 16-17, 20, 59, 65, 70 developers 22, 59-60, 102 devices, mobile 37, 74-5 discounts 69, 88-9, 92, 96

E

earning 49, 97, 99 eBay 25-6, 94, 103 education 1, 8-9, 12, 63, 66, 68-71, 68-71, 78, 80, 80, 87, 93, 103, 103, 114-15, 120 education gamification 68, 71, 78 educators 12, 68, 71-2, 76 Emergence of Customer Customer Engagement Engagement Platforms Platforms 90, 109, 116 emotions 7, 42, 51, 69 Copyright The The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

125 Emphatic feedback 8, 60-2 employee performance 80, 111-12 employees 15, 20-2, 31-2, 35, 37, 46, 54, 81, 83-6, 88, 90, 93, 101, 105-6, 112-13, 115 engagement 14, 17, 30-1, 34-6, 74, 86, 89, 112, 116 Engagement Gap 36, 38-9 evidence 8, 33, 56, 58, 61-2 experience 20, 23, 42, 76, 95-6, 111 non-game 14-15, 20 extrinsic motivations 54, 60-1, 109

F

Facebook 23, 31, 74, 93, 97, 109 feedback 3, 7, 21, 25, 32-5, 38-9, 43, 45, 51, 61, 66-7, 72-4, 84-5, 88, 106 feedback loop 8, 53, 55-8, 61-2 Foursquare 17, 19-20, 48, 96-7 framework 40, 47, 51, 83 fun 16-17, 20, 22, 28, 36-7, 39, 64, 69, 83, 101, 112

G

game design 16, 18-19, 36 game designers 19-20, 113 game elements 18, 36, 40, 51, 70-1 game mechanics 14, 17, 30, 34, 43, 45, 51, 95, 108-14, 117, 119-20 Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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GAMIFICATION

basic 110, 115, 117 gamers 36-7, 70 games 14-16, 18-23, 28, 30, 32, 34-8, 40-8, 50-1, 53, 58-9, 63-6, 73-4, 77-8, 84, 87-9, 98-100 gamification, word 16, 18-20 gamification applications 1, 11, 37, 101, 103, 119 gamification design 17, 19-20, 86, 90 gamification elements 6, 12, 22, 40, 93 Gamification in Education 8-9, 12, 63, 66, 70-1 gamification platforms 18-19, 87 gamification projects 58, 77, 86-7, 90, 101 Gamification Sites 9, 89, 92, 94 gamification techniques 35, 92-3 gamified applications 19, 37, 81, 83, 115 gamified systems 40-2, 60 gamifying 23, 85, 87, 109 gaming 11, 15, 18, 70, 107 gifting 7, 48-9 goals 18, 21-2, 24, 32, 45, 47, 57, 68, 72, 78, 83, 85, 89, 94-5, 97, 112-13 goods 25-6, 117 group 44, 47, 93, 115

H

health 37, 59, 80, 94, 96-7, 100, 109 Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

127 humans 11, 24-5

I

ICD (Incentive-centered design) 6, 24-6, 28-9 incentive-centered design 6, 24-6, 29 incentives 20, 24-6, 28, 30-1, 34-5, 50, 54, 66, 82-3, 91, 93, 95, 101, 104 individuals 12, 15, 48, 52, 56, 111 industries 1, 11-12, 18, 49, 87, 89, 102, 106, 108, 118 information 1-2, 24-5, 32, 55-8, 62, 71, 91, 97, 101, 106 information security 25, 28-9 innovation 88, 110-11 innovation management 80, 111, 119 interact 50, 59, 92, 98-9 Interdisciplinary concepts 24, 28-9 items 19, 25-6, 45-6, 48, 50, 83-4, 95

J

job 15, 21, 31, 86

K

kids 64, 67, 69, 71, 79 knowledge 11-13, 66, 86, 101 Knowre 75-6, 78 Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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L

language 72-3, 78, 90 leaderboards 7, 16-17, 19-20, 34, 48, 52, 59, 82, 85-6, 95, 103, 105 learning 14, 16, 64, 66-8, 70, 72, 74, 76, 78, 113-14 leveling 34, 73, 75 levels 7, 33-6, 38, 41, 43, 48-9, 52, 60, 67, 71, 80-1, 93, 95-6, 116-17 leveraging gamification 82, 111, 118 log 3-4, 87 love 3, 49, 68, 95 loyalty programs 84, 98, 110, 116-17

M

material 44-5, 63, 75, 113-14 Math 67, 75-6 mechanics 11, 14, 23, 28, 46-7, 105, 107, 119 members 69, 95-7, 117 money 46, 49, 54, 99-100, 109 motivation 8, 20, 25, 33-5, 39, 53-5, 59, 61-3, 67, 71, 83, 88, 115 intrinsic 8, 55, 60-2, 74, 109 motivators 21, 24, 60, 101, 103, 112 music 70, 79, 96-7


129 N

Nike 80, 82, 96, 103, 116 non-game applications 11, 14-15

O

objectives 6, 8-9, 14, 21, 24, 30, 37, 40, 42-3, 47, 51, 53, 63, 80, 82, 105 online 3, 11, 50, 59, 69, 75, 100, 114 organizations 11, 23, 54, 81, 87, 90, 105, 107-11, 113, 115-16, 119

P

participants 14, 23, 36, 53, 93, 99, 101-2, 106, 110 paths 15, 40, 57, 59, 88 person 1-2, 15, 59-60, 87 personal development 80, 109, 115-16, 119 Pitfalls 6, 12, 30, 35, 38-9 platforms 17-18, 76, 80, 101, 109, 117 players 15, 19, 32-3, 35, 38, 41-9, 51-3, 56-8, 64, 74, 82-3, 89, 94, 99-100, 112-13, 117 playing 5, 21-3, 43, 64, 66-7, 69, 98 points 8, 16-17, 19, 21, 23, 48-50, 52, 57-9, 64, 70-1, 73, 89, 93-9, 101, 110, 115-17 Predictions 81, 108, 110-11 principles 24, 55, 64-5 prizes 46, 54, 84, 95 processes 14-15, 24, 34, 68, 110, 112 Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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product 2, 20, 24-6, 35-6, 39, 44, 87-8, 95, 100 productivity 31, 35, 38, 71, 83, 94, 108, 119 program 4, 13, 35, 95, 97-8, 110, 116-17 Progression 36, 39, 88 psychology 16, 24, 53, 60-1 Psychology of Gamification 8, 12, 53 psychology theories 8, 60-1 pushes 31, 45, 49, 87, 111

Q

quality 25-6, 70, 72 quests 7, 43-4, 46, 48, 93, 103

R

ranks 33-5, 38, 52 Real-World Applications 9, 12, 92 recognition 20, 25-6, 47, 54, 83, 113-15, 117 reinforcement 68, 72, 74-5 positive 30, 33, 53, 74 research 17, 60, 66, 69-71, 77, 94 Resource Acquisition 7, 43, 45 resources 68, 115-16 retailers 98, 106, 110, 116-17 Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

131 review 3, 11, 25, 63 reward system 31-2, 54 rewards 7, 15, 18-21, 23, 28, 31, 33, 35-6, 43-9, 54-5, 71, 88-90, 94-8, 103-4, 109-10, 117 extrinsic 70, 108, 112 intrinsic 19, 21, 28, 112, 117 Ribbon Hero 73-4, 78, 103

S

sales 20, 27, 86 samples 63, 78, 111 schools 44-5, 76-7, 93, 103 scores 45, 48, 52, 63, 74, 84 sellers 2, 25-6, 94, 103 services 2, 25-6, 36-7, 72, 85, 96, 109-11, 116-17 site 4, 18, 26, 32, 34-8, 49, 73, 93-5, 97, 100 situations 31, 59, 67 skills 44, 47, 73, 80, 90, 114-15 social media 31, 58, 101, 103, 105-6 social networks 17, 26, 59-60, 101-2, 108-9, 113, 115 software 17-18, 88, 111 status 46, 49, 83, 94, 116, 120 stories 19, 21, 81 strategy 58, 81, 85, 106 Copyright The Art of Service I Brisbane, Australia I Email: [email protected] Web: http://store.theartofservice.com I eLearning: http://theartofservice.org I Phone: +61 (0) 7 3252 2055

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student engagement 69, 75, 113 students 13, 15, 22, 45, 63-4, 66-76, 78-80, 113-14 subject 1, 59, 67, 75 success 67, 74, 81, 87, 91, 94, 110-11, 119-20 system 24-6, 31-2, 35, 60-1, 64, 75, 85, 94

T

target audiences 36, 107, 111, 116 teach 16, 63-4, 88 teachers 63, 67-8, 72, 74-6, 78 teaching 64, 78, 102-3 teams 8, 45, 50, 52, 69, 99 technologies 19-20, 81, 83, 86, 105, 108, 111, 113, 118, 120 emerging 108-9, 116 term 15-17, 106-7 tools 1, 5, 12, 43, 73-4, 76, 83, 93-4, 105, 112, 119 Transactions 7, 43, 46, 51 trophies 30, 95-6 Twitter 31, 93, 97

U

users 5, 11, 19-20, 22, 24-6, 28-9, 32-6, 38-9, 45, 49-50, 73-4, 87, 92-100, 107


133 user’s progress 34-5, 74

V

video games 16-17, 66, 69 virtual goods 8, 49-50

W

websites 14-15, 17, 23, 25, 72, 78, 82, 87-9 winning 44-6, 59, 65, 70, 84 work 3, 12, 16, 22, 24-5, 31, 44, 47, 65, 67-71, 97, 106, 110, 112 workplace 16, 42, 81, 83, 108


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Gamification Complete Certification Book

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