Gamification in edcuation - a real life example

I am living in Spain since September and trying to give my best to learn Spanish, no matter if outside the university or within the classes.

Being just 4 people in class, we all have to participate but at the end it doesn’t matter what your answer is, they are no points for right answers. But in my last session things changed… Being 2 Germans and 2 Italians we split in two groups and everything we did turned out to be a Competition.

We played 3 games…

The first two have been related to “por/para” and each group had to create questions for the others. Every correct answer was worth a point and resulted in thinking more about answers and questions, simply to beat the others.

This kind of incentive resulted in a Leaderboard in which unfortunately the Italians have been leading.

But in the final game we still had the chance to turn it around. Every time one of the team members had to go to the board, received a sentence including the usage of “por/para” as well as past tenses, had to draw it while the other was trying to figure out the words, forms and order.

Due to being in a competition, trying to win the challenge with receiving the last missing points everybody was focused on the point and tried to be as fast and precise as possible.

Linking this real life experience to business we can see at http://www.duolingo.com how to use gamification in the education business. Loosing hearts for giving incorrect answers, practice against the clock and move up the “duolingo leaderboard” while learning Spanish at the same time…

By the way the German team won the game at the end but all of us gamified their Spanish J

Enterprise Gamification Design (5)

Step 5: Manage, Monitor and Measure

Managing, monitoring and measuring are essential elements in order to run a program. Indeed, gamification is and has to be run like that. The players motivation has to be monitored at the same time as the mission needs to be managed in order to achieve the goals aimed thanks to specific mechanics that have to be measured continuously.

However these three crucial elements are not alone. We also have to mention that in any enterprise, there are several ethical and legal issues that we have to take into consideration because they have a direct impact on gamification. Nowadays we often hear about users' privacy and users' protection. The same rules apply for workers. Though they can change from a country to another from a legal point of view. Any project undertaken in any company requires a certain level of ethic. Therefore, ethic in gamification becomes another crucial element of any project. Gamification is not a tool to manipulate worker, it is only used to motivate and engage workers.

Thus gamification can be identified as a process wherein the worker is considered as a player and wherein the goal of the process is to the player to feel positive emotions such as trust, fun and delight.

Enterprise Gamification Design (4)

STEP 4: APPLY MECHANICS

Now that everything is clear, it is the time to develop games mechanics. So, let’s see which mechanics are the best for enterprise software.

Points

They are the center of all mechanics, all the users’ actions are recorded as points. They have their own meaning in different platforms, for example, the points in Nike+app are miles that you have run in a specific period of time.

Badges

When the users are performing really well on the platform, getting virtual achievements in the process is the motivation behind. That is the way to engage the users to spend more time in the website, giving them badges if they complete a task or complete n task in a row.

Leaderboards

Now that they are spending more time on the website, it’s time to let them compete against other users or friends. This is one of the most powerful gamification mechanics, making users invite their friends to the platform and play with them.

Challenges

Users want to work to achieve something great and something bigger than themselves. For instance, the University of Washington’s center for game science worked together with the Biochemistry department and the result is Foldit. It allows users to play and complete various protein structures that will help researches to find different cures for several viruses around the world.

You can see here this innovative application in action.

Enterprise Gamification Design (3)

STEP 3: Understand Human Motivation

According Gabe Zicherman "Gamification is 75% Psychology and 25% Technology".There are two general types of motivations Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to internal source of motivation such as autonomy, mastery, belonging or learning, whereas Extrinsic motivation refers to external motivation such as money, rewards, fear of punishment, medals or trophies... 

To create effective gamifiaction, it is important to understand some main concepts and theories about motivation, which is a central value in the overall process of gamification. There are a lot of theories about gamification, you will find below few interesting links to help you: 

•        Brief Notes on Social Motives 

•        Self Determination Theory – Website about SDT

•        Four Key to Fun – by Nicole Lazzaro

•        Drive – by Dan Pink’s (motivation in the workplace)

Enterprise Gamification Design (2)

STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR MISSION

After knowing your players and their context, it’s time for the next step “understanding the mission”. To identify your mission, it is important to start figuring out the real business needs and outcomes that you want to achieve.

What is your current business scenario?

These are your needs, business processes, technological environment and actors that execute the scenario. A good business scenario enables vendors to understand the value of the customer’s organization of a developed solution.

What are your business outcomes?

You might want to increase your sales, the customer satisfaction or increase the number of users. Identifying the mission provides a clear scenario for the incorporation of a gamification approach.

It is very important to set the appropriate mission for your gamification project. Imagine you are a teacher and you are having problems with the student’s behavior in the classrooms. After Knowing your mission (Reduce Bad behavior) is time to search for the right tools to solve the problem. Many teachers have already solved this issue by implementing gamification. For example, there is an application called ClassDojo, a management tool that helps teachers improve behavior in the classrooms quickly and easily, and helps engagement by issuing awards recording real-time feedbacks.

For more information about how to use gamification in your classroom check "ClassDojo"

Enterprise Gamification Design (1)

Tired of simple mechanics such as points, badges, and leaderboard when you desire for implementing gamification into your enterprise software? How about changing to a different approach—a process called “Player Centered Design”.

“Player Centered Design” adopts the philosophy of “User Centered Design”, it puts player’s need at the center of the design and development of design. Instead of just encouraging users to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction goals in daily work, players seek voluntarily more challenges to increase their playing experience in the context of game, and they look for delight and fun more than satisfaction and efficiency, which enhances a lot more engagement and involvement of participants in the game.

The whole process provides an iterative and adaptive framework in terms of gamification, you may review it constantly and modify it as you need in the process of developing your own organization and business. 

The whole process includes 5 steps: 
1.Understand your player
2. Identify mission
3. Understand the human motivation 
4. Apply game mechanics
5. Manage, Monitor and Measure.

In this article we are limited to explain the 1^st step—understand your player.

STEP 1: Understand your player

Understanding your target users plays an important role in any success of process design. In the first step we need to create multi-dimensionality profile of the player including demographics, professional goals, pain-points, aspirations, and work culture and player type.

Through observation, online survey or social networking (LinkedIn), we may obtain information of demographics, professional goals aspirations, pain-points and work culture, here I want to talk more about our player type.

According to Bartle test of Psychology, which identifies players into four groups based on their game preference. They are achievers, explorers, socializers and killers.

• Achievers tend to gain points and status. The frequent flier statuses appeal to Achievers. Ten percent of players are of this type.
• Explorers love to discover new aspects of the game. They do not mind spending time doing repetitive task to unlock new levels of the game. Ten percent of players are of this type.
• Socializers play for the joy of interacting with others rather than for the game itself. Facebook games appeal to socializers. The majority of players (as much as 80%) fall into this category.
• Killers are similar to Achievers in that they like to win points and status. However, they go one-step further and find joy in seeing others lose. Less than 1% of players are of this type.

Once figure out the player type of your users, it becomes easier to design your gamification enterprise software. For example, if your main players are socializers, then games which enable community collaboration may be more suitable than leaderboard.

Since we need to consider several aspects of players during the process of designing this process, there is a template that facilitates us to create a player persona — an important part of creating an effective gamification strategy for your enterprise application.

Please follow our gamificater’s step and We’ll keep you updated about Enterprise Gamification.

You want to gamify your business? Be part of the GSummit Workshop: San Francisco, 12th November 2013

You want to gamify your business?

Make the first step and be part in the GSUMMIT Workshop in San Francisco on 12^th November 2013.

Learn about the design process that can help you create a more engaging, funny, sticky and viral product, service or business process. It doesn’t matter from which background you are, in which field you are working in or if you are a global leader or startup – Gamification can help you overcome your challenge.

The Workshop offers two options:

• Online Pass – talk to experts, see all videos and be part of the Q&A from everywhere in the world
• Live Workshop – join Gabe Zichermann (Founder of Gamification.co) and many more experts to benefit from their hands-on expertise and achieve your “Certificate in Gamification Design (Level 3)

If you want to gamify your business – register here: http://global13.gsummit.com/sanfrancisco

And benefit from a gamified way of thinking by knowing:

• How to use game mechanics to involve your audience
• How to integrate the gamification architecture in your team
• How to apply the gamified way of thinking to problem solving
• Many more…

GSUMMIT GLOBAL 2013 - Engagement, Loyalty & Gamification

A summit for Gamification? Yes sir!

For some years, people gather in cities across the world but also just in front of their computer at home or at work to attend the "GSUMMIT". The GSUMMIT is simply a summit designed to reveal and explain the last news and trends regarding gamification! Through some conferences, gamification gourous give their opinion about how to fight back the crisis and win new customers thanks to the gamification process.

Learn more about the GSUMMIT on www.gsummit.com!

The next conference will take place the 12 of November 2013, and you can still subscribe to attend it online. Don't miss it!