I talked a little bit about Gamification in my last post. I've made a course about it from the end of August until middle of October through Coursera and I found it really interesting.
Games are powerful things.
Gamification is a new business concept, which is growing up fast nowadays. We will say that Gamification is the "Use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts." And we can learn about psychology, design or strategy from them. What can we get with Gamification? Make a task, whichever it is, more engaging, motivate people, enjoy doing things that, otherwise, could be boring.
Think about points, badges, avatars... and many examples will come to your mind. Do you know Foursquare? Stackoverflow? There are many different examples of gamification everywhere these days. Some people use Gamification for their customers, others for their employees (Microsoft, eBay...), and other, just to motivate people, in a healthy or educational way, for example.
Do you want to know if Gamification is right for you? Kevin Werback, our Gamification teacher in Coursera, told us about four important points to take into account when you are thinking in applying Gamification:
- Motivation: Where would you derive avalue from encouraging behavior?
- Meaningful choices: Are your targer activities sufficiently interesting?
- Structure: Can the desired behaviors be modeled through algorithms?
- Potencial conflicts: Can the game avoid tension with other motivational structures?
Before you decide to using Gamification, think about these questions. And remember that Gamification is not as easy as it seems. You need techniques, you need to know different concepts, you need to understand many different and important things to get a successful result. If you get into a bit depth about Gamification, let's take a look at gamification.org or gamification.co, or if you prefer books, our Coursera teacker, Kevin Werbach, wrote one: For the Win.
