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 (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.