The document discusses gamification and its potential to increase engagement. It notes that over 70% of global organizations will have gamified applications by 2014. Gamification can drive engagement, leads, sales, adoption, usage, loyalty, and employee productivity. Techniques include badges, leaderboards, levels, reputation systems, and virtual currency. Examples are provided of companies that have successfully used gamification, such as Huffington Post. Key takeaways include framing gamification around business goals, creating a clear progression path, experimenting, and keeping the end goal in mind.
What kind of concepts? A few definitions:A game is structured play, usually for fun.Gameplay is interaction inside of a game.Game Mechanics are constructs or tactics commonly used in games to encourage gameplay. These are things like badges, points, leader boards, levels, challenges, achievements and virtual sheep you can put on your virtual farm.Game Dynamics are strategies commonly used in game design based on psychological motivations. These include things like “Appointments,” in which someone does something to gain a reward, “Avoidance,” in which someone does something to avoid a punishment, or the “Free Lunch” dynamic, in which people feel they are getting something because of their behavior.Currencies are ways to give people incentives based on various motivations in a digital world: the need for financial reward, the need to do good, the need to help one’s community, the need for recognition and influence, the need for pleasure.
Gamification is “using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems.”.
Employee PerformanceSales ProductivityClaims ProcessingTask based systemsCall Center ProductivityCollaborative softwareSocial collaborationConnectionEducationCourses/TrainingForums ContributionSurfacing ExpertisePlatform AcceleratorISV’sPartners
achievement "badges" achievement levels "leader boards" a progress bar or other visual meter to indicate how close people are to completing a task a company is trying to encourage, such as completing a social networking profile or earning a frequent shopper loyalty award.[7]virtual currency systems for awarding, redeeming, trading, gifting, and otherwise exchanging points challenges between users embedding small casual games within other activities.FunChallengingRewardingAddicting / Suspense Status
Let’s say you’re an amateur photographer who has just purchased a fancy new camera and now you want to be able to manipulate all the photos you’ve taken. You download the massive Photoshop 30-day trial from the Adobe website, then run through the install process, and then finally, launch Photoshop. And what do you see? A blank white canvas, and an overwhelming assortment of menus and panels. It’s daunting, to say the least.Many people will stop right there - not knowing what to do, not gaining any understanding of what Photoshop is capable of, and most importantly, not buying Photoshop when their 30 days is up. And that’s where LevelUp comes in: LevelUp for Photoshop is a game of missions — and points and rewards — that guide you along the way of learning basic Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 software skills. If you are a photographer and are just starting to use Photoshop, this is the game for you.The hypothesis being that if you can get new users exposed to 5-10 key functions of Photoshop (red eye removal, smoothing, object removal, etc.), and feeling a sense of mastery around those functions, that more people will buy at the end of the trial. So LevelUp walks users through a set of missions that expose users to those functions, and gives them goals to work toward (levels, points, badges) along the way. Any points earned can be redeemed for a chance to win a copy of CS5.5 Master Collection and several other prizes. Adobe is current split-testing LevelUp amongst trial downloaders who have self-identified as amateur photographers, but if you follow this link, you can download the LevelUp plugin yourself. Try it out! You will need to have Photoshop CS5 installed, and you can always download the free trial.
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Training on IWE: http://iwe.cisco.com/html/index.html#url=/web/socialmedia/training“Test out” quizzes: targeting July for launch, will send further communication when availableMust register for classes through EMS to participate and get creditClasses are 30 or 45 minutes long, INCLUDING 10-15 minutes for Q&A at the end of each presentationA recording of each course will be available 5 days after live session. You may take the VOD version of each course in Cisco’s Education Management System
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Start with the “big picture” – how does this fit into the overall business goals? Will this initiative hurt/cannibalize a higher level initiative, etc?Do your homework – research what’s already out there and set realistic expectations about budget, resource and infrastructure needs. Don’t reinvent the wheel, don’t underestimate the time, effort and resources this effort will takeMake it relevant to your business - avoid the shiny object syndrome, gamify only what makes sense Always think why your audience should careClearly outline the benefits of participatingBe smart about rewarding – reward but don’t over-reward, make incentives meaningful Create a clear progression path – people’s main motivation is PROGRESSIONMake the experience engaging – and funStay engaged – you will need to manage this experience for your users on an on-going basis, have a plan for that and execute on this planExperiment – pilot new ideas, see what’s working/not working, learn and adjust
Harvard Business Review, 2010 study: People are motivated by a sense of progress – a progress plan is critical to success