Gamify

1. Gamification: Motivating People to Achieve Their Goals

Gamification is about motivating players to achieve their own goals, not the organization's goals.

Redefining engagement. Gamification uses game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. Unlike traditional games or rewards programs, gamification focuses on intrinsic motivation, tapping into people's desires for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Key elements:

• Game mechanics: points, badges, leaderboards
• Experience design: game play, play space, storyline
• Digital engagement: interaction with computers, smartphones, wearable devices
• Goal alignment: enabling players to achieve their goals, benefiting the organization

Gamification breaks larger goals into smaller, manageable challenges, encouraging players as they progress. This approach can be applied to customers, employees, or communities of interest, driving behavior change, skill development, and innovation.

2. Beyond Fun: Gamification Engages People Emotionally

Gamification engages people at an emotional level, which is far more powerful than typical transactional engagement strategies.

Emotional vs. transactional engagement. While many organizations focus on quantitative engagement metrics, gamification aims for qualitative, emotional engagement. This deeper level of engagement is more effective in motivating lasting behavior change and commitment.

Intrinsic motivation factors:

• Autonomy: ability to direct one's own actions
• Mastery: desire to improve and progress
• Purpose: connection to something larger than oneself

Successful gamification taps into these intrinsic motivators, creating experiences that resonate with players on a personal level. By aligning player goals with organizational objectives, gamification can drive meaningful results while satisfying players' emotional needs for growth, achievement, and contribution.

3. The Sweet Spot: Aligning Business and Player Objectives

If the player's goals are aligned with the organization's goals, then the organizational goals will be achieved as a consequence of the player achieving her goals.

Finding shared goals. The key to successful gamification is identifying where player goals and business objectives overlap. This "sweet spot" ensures that players are intrinsically motivated to engage with the solution, while the organization benefits from their actions.

Steps to alignment:

1. Define clear business outcomes and success metrics
2. Identify and understand the target audience
3. Create player personas to represent different motivations
4. Define player goals and analyze overlap with business objectives
5. Design the solution around shared goals

By focusing on this area of overlap, organizations can create gamified solutions that feel authentic and valuable to players, rather than manipulative or forced. This approach leads to higher engagement and more sustainable results for both players and organizations.

4. Designing the Player Experience: A Step-by-Step Approach

Successful gamification is a process of composing an engaging experience for a target audience.

Player-centric design. Creating an effective gamified solution requires a structured approach that puts the player's needs and motivations at the center of the design process. This differs from traditional software development, which often focuses solely on functionality.

Player experience design process:

1. Define business outcomes and success metrics
2. Define the target audience
3. Define player goals
4. Determine the player engagement model
5. Define the play space and plan the journey
6. Define the game economy
7. Play test and iterate

This process ensures that the solution is built from the ground up to engage players emotionally and motivate them to achieve their goals. By continuously testing and refining the experience based on player feedback, organizations can create solutions that evolve and remain engaging over time.

5. Changing Behaviors Through Gamified Solutions

Gamification can play an important role in implementing change by defining a clear transformation path with simple steps and encouragement along the way.

Guiding behavior change. Gamification is particularly effective in motivating people to adopt new habits or overcome existing ones. By breaking down large goals into smaller, manageable steps and providing constant feedback and encouragement, gamified solutions can guide players through the change process.

Key steps in behavior change gamification:

• Set clear, meaningful goals
• Use triggers to prompt action
• Take baby steps to build momentum
• Find kindred spirits for support
• Enlist social support from friends
• Build complexity over time
• Repeat until new habits are formed
• Keep the experience fresh

Examples like Nike+ for fitness, Opower for energy conservation, and HeartChase for promoting healthy lifestyles demonstrate how gamification can drive significant behavior changes across various domains.

6. Developing Skills with Gamification: The Future of Learning

Gamification motivates people during the long process of learning and extends the classroom to provide learning opportunities to geographically dispersed students of varying abilities.

Reimagining education. Gamification is transforming how people acquire and demonstrate skills. By making learning more engaging and accessible, gamified solutions are democratizing education and challenging traditional models of skill recognition.

Key aspects of gamified learning:

• Breaking learning into small, achievable steps
• Balancing challenge and skill level
• Providing immediate feedback and recognition
• Encouraging peer collaboration and support
• Using badges as microcredentials to certify skills

Platforms like Khan Academy and Duolingo demonstrate how gamification can make learning more effective and enjoyable. As this trend continues, it will likely lead to more open and flexible models of education and skill recognition, potentially disrupting traditional higher education institutions.

7. Driving Innovation: Harnessing the Power of the Crowd

Gamification can provide the structure to engage, motivate, and focus the innovation activities of the crowd and leaves players free to innovate within that space.

Crowdsourcing innovation. Gamification offers a powerful tool for organizations to tap into the collective wisdom and creativity of large groups. By creating structured environments for idea generation and development, companies can drive innovation at scale.

Common steps in gamified innovation:

1. Enlist players from diverse backgrounds
2. Solicit ideas within defined parameters
3. Enable community-driven idea selection
4. Facilitate collaborative idea development
5. Provide transparent paths to implementation

Examples like the Department for Work and Pensions' Idea Street, Quirky's product development platform, and Barclaycard Ring demonstrate how gamification can transform innovation processes, leading to more diverse ideas and greater stakeholder buy-in.

8. Common Pitfalls in Gamification Design

One of the traps in gamification is the tendency to focus on the points, badges, and leaderboards rather than the meaningful achievements they represent.

Avoiding superficial implementation. Many organizations fall into the trap of thinking gamification is simply about adding game elements to existing processes. This misunderstanding can lead to ineffective solutions that fail to engage players or drive desired outcomes.

Common pitfalls to avoid:

• Focusing on extrinsic rewards over intrinsic motivation
• Creating inappropriately competitive environments
• Failing to balance skill and challenge
• Targeting the wrong audience with misaligned imagery or rewards
• Mandating participation rather than encouraging opt-in
• Adding unnecessary work to existing processes
• Neglecting to prevent "gaming the system"

Successful gamification requires a deep understanding of player motivations and careful design of the entire player experience. By avoiding these pitfalls, organizations can create more meaningful and effective gamified solutions.

9. Managing Successful Gamification Projects

The greatest risk in gamification is poorly designed solutions, and the largest barrier to success is the lack of gamification design skills within organizations.

Unique project requirements. Gamification projects differ from traditional IT initiatives in their focus on player motivation and engagement. This requires a diverse set of skills and a different approach to project management.

Key considerations for gamification projects:

• Assemble a multidisciplinary team (designers, psychologists, marketers, etc.)
• Choose the right technical approach (custom, purpose-built, or platform)
• Invest in promotion to achieve critical mass of players
• Plan for continuous iteration and improvement
• Focus on benefits realization and communication of success

Organizations should be prepared to invest in developing internal gamification design skills or partner with experienced vendors. Effective project management can help mitigate risks and ensure that gamified solutions deliver meaningful business value.

10. The Future of Gamification: Transforming Engagement by 2020

Computers will not only know where you are, they will see what you are doing, sense your mood, learn your habits, understand your needs, and provide you with the information you need, whenever and wherever you need it.

Emerging technologies. By 2020, gamification will evolve alongside advancements in areas like gesture control, emotion detection, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. These technologies will enable more seamless and personalized gamified experiences across various domains.

Potential future applications:

• Democratization of learning through gamified MOOCs and microcredentials
• Addressing complex social issues through participatory policy development
• Personalized coaching powered by AI and wearable technology

As gamification matures, it will likely become an integral part of how organizations engage with their stakeholders, potentially transforming areas like education, public policy, and personal development. Organizations should begin exploring how these trends might impact their engagement strategies and start building the necessary capabilities to leverage gamification effectively in the future.

Last updated: March 21, 2025