Gamification is becoming easier to implement and because of this it may be seen as easy to succeed with as well. But the L&D landscape is littered with failed initiatives as unrealistic expectations are laid on ill-conceived implementations. This session discusses the common pitfalls encountered when implementing a gamification strategy and lays out the key questions you need answer to ensure that the dice of gamification are loaded in your favour.
Seminar offered by Andy Jones, Learning Innovator & Thinker at Honeyboot & Lemon, for i-lovelearning.com.
12. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What
3. Why
4. Who
5. How
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13. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why
4. Who
5. How
6. What
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14. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who
5. How
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15. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who are your users?
5. How
6. What
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9. What
16. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who are your users?
5. How are they going to collaborate?
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18. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who are your users?
5. How are they going to collaborate?
6. What is the context or narrative?
7. What
8. What
9. What
19. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who are your users?
5. How are they going to collaborate?
6. What is the context or narrative?
7. What mechanics are you going to use?
8. What
9. What
20. 1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who are your users?
5. How are they going to collaborate?
6. What is the context or narrative?
7. What mechanics are you going to use?
8. What is the communication plan?
9. What
21. 1
1. What are you going to gamify?
2. What are your success criteria?
3. Why are you going to gamify?
4. Who are your users?
5. How are they going to collaborate?
6. What is the context or narrative?
7. What mechanics are you going to use?
8. What is the communication plan?
9. What reporting will you do?
Alexandra, Photographer: “He wanted his picture taken. I raised my camera, he moved his plastic cup away and started playing with his toy bike. He immersed himself in his own world, where no plastic cups or coins existed, and where there was only his awesome flying bike left.”
As children we all want to play. It’s the brain’s favourite way of learning.
As we get older, our view of games can change. We stop playing and start ‘work’.
94% of organisations feel their learners don’t always eagerly engage with courses to improve work performance
87% feel their organisations don’t always give clear, positive and compelling reasons to take online learning
Which reaction would you rather get from your learners?
A powerful way to move towards the goal of creating more engaged, creative and positive learners is using Gamification.
But there are lots of Gamified solutions out there that have lost a lot of their sparkle. LinkedIn profile completion…? Mine has been like this for years and I’ve stopped caring.
There are 4 reasons why gamification fails:
Poor Strategy - failure to narrow down behaviours, goals, audience and needs
Lack of alignment to business goals - 91% organisations learning platforms don’t align to business goals.
Weak design - promoting wrong behaviours, devaluing learners
Unrealistic expectations - unfocused use of ‘one size fits all’ solutions
We believe there are 9 questions for your gamification strategy to answer in order for it to be successful. We call them the ‘6 What, Why, Who and How’ questions.
Do you know what project or course you will start with and pilot? You need to define that very early on.
How do you know you’ve succeeded? What are you aiming at? Is it aligned to a business goal?
Is it because it’s the latest trend? Are you aiming to build a team together? Increase effectiveness of learning? Drive compliance training?
Is your audience young or old or mixed? What’s their attitude to gamification features? Will they play? How will you help them play? Can you get into their shoes? You need to think as a designer, not an L&D professional. Speak to people here about design thinking in more detail.
No one should play alone. There needs to be a way to play or compete with others. A leaderboard is the most simple, but it becomes super charged when there are shared goals.
This is DomiNations. It’s a civilisation building game. Good enough fun and addictive enough. You build your little world and get more resources from raiding (and destroying) others. You can join an alliance and donate troops to other members.
But the game exploded again with the introduction of wars. Alliances fought other alliances. Suddenly my alliance all started contributing, swapping tips, strategies and moral support. There is a shared goal now. Utterly meaningless in any semblance of the real world, but everyone participates.
90% of organisations don’t always give a context or narrative to their learning. But we know that with learning, context is key. Creating a context for your gamification is just as important. It gives the users a reason to be there.
Points, levels and badges? How about challenges and stories?
“Tell her about it, tell her all your crazy dreams…” sang Billy Joel. So how will your learners know what they need, what to expect and what they can achieve if you don’t have a strong and exciting communications plan?
The final one - but a very important one. It ties right back into figuring out your success criteria. Feedback, analysis and reporting are the way that you are able to prove success
So Gamification is a powerful tool to light up the learning in your organisation. It needs careful planning, design thinking and a bit of hard work but seeing the users engaged and immersed, and seeing the business results, makes it worth it.