Quoting gamification wiki: “Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.”
However, the quotation I like the most is: “Using Game Design Elements in Non-Gaming Contexts”, which defines the whole scope in just one short sentence. To my mind, within this definition we encounter the 3 W of gamification: What, Why and Whom.
A lot has been set about this mainstream concept, but as usual, it is always more to the ad. I would like to share with you my latest experience after some testing and work regarding this topic.
Gamification is not for you
Being said that, you may well shouldn’t step forward into it after considering the following key aspects before laying out your gamification strategy:
- Define business objectives and KPIs. Even better if you have in front of your business plan displayed in a canvas (soon I’ll talk about its depth in the blog)
- Always stay focus, even rather obvious, is easy to forget the main business objective.
- Choose the trigger behaviors that are needed to be reproduced by your target users.
- Describe your players: who are they, what motivate them, which are their habits, preferences, tendencies, …
- Draw line loops: when the gamification would be effective when I will do it,…
- The secret ingredient: Fun. If we are talking about gamification we should add some fun to the formula, or at least something appealing and stimulating.
- Build, buy or take advantage of someone else’s tools. As one supplier told me once: “Someone has had the same need or asked for it before me, so there must be a path already walked”
Talking about abstract concepts is not appealing to anybody, therefore, I will place a case that I have recently analyzed. I must prevent you, is not one of those case studies from Cambridge but is part of my personal investigation methodology to discover new apps and get into their processes to find out what I might use in my job.
