I have heard the word Gamificaiton a lot in recent time. This buzzword has been in the air since quite some time and I had this in my mind to explore what is this and what it is all about?
I explore this and writing it here from a very basic point of view.
Before you think about Gamification, read the word carefully – GAMIFICATION. It starts with GAME. All of us have played some sort of game at some point of time. So what are the common things you have noticed while playing games.
The purpose of Games is to engage the users more and more and more. You must have heard about teenagers or might be knowing someone who is crazy about video games or computer games or mobile games. Why? What is in these games that people are so addict about?
The answer is these games encourage players to engage more and more to it. All the games have some kind of point system, rankings, different levels, scores, dashboard which shows the achievement of the user playing the game and at the same time they shows the leader or highest scorer or top ranker of the game. The point to show the winner or highest scorer is to challenge the player to beat the highest scorer or achieve the highest level or get to the highest ranking. So there is competition – a natural instinct of human side which is being used to engage player. Once a player achieve the highest level there is a sense of accomplishment; again a natural instinct of human side.
So in a way games are very much using the natural human instincts. Gamification is very much like games. It is using the game-like thinking and mechanism to engage users more and more. Just like you solve a puzzle or complete a level in the game, in gamification you do learn to solve the problem, learn interactively and when you achieve a task you move to next level and task
On a very high level gamification can be applied to any process or task. What is needed is a plan and presentation. If you are an organization and want to apply gamificaiton to a program or process or to a department, you have to put in place collection of all the task or process that is required in the program. Then you add some points or rewards to successful completion of tasks. You have to add different levels so that once a person achieved the required points; he can be moved to next level. All in all what you are doing is increasing interactivity with the user of the program. that you want people to
Today Gamification is used in many areas such as Sales and Marketing, Art, education, customer retention and Customer loyalty, mobile and many more. There are many examples that are happily shared in the internet where gamification has lead to the success of program or process.
Language Quality Game – An example how Microsoft applied the Gamification for the success of Windows 7.
Dropbox and Linkedln has applied gamification techniques to their success stories.
