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the gamification toolkit is a follow-up
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to the book for the win that I also
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wrote with Dan Hunter and for the win
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introduced the concept of gamification
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using Game Design Elements and
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techniques to motivate people in
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business and we heard from lots of
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people in companies that they were
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intrigued by this idea they got the idea
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about how they could use game design
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principles but they wanted uh to dive
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deeper they wanted to understand in
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Practical terms what are these game
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elements these pieces of games or design
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patterns that we talked about how do you
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apply them and what are some more
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specific examples of uh companies that
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have taken these tools and used them
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successfully for motivation so that's
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fundamentally what the gamification
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toolkit tries to
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do one of the key takeaways uh in this
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book and in all the work that I've done
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on gamification
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is that it's not as easy as it looks
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these are powerful techniques we're
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seeing lots of examples in e-learning in
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marketing in management in Innovation
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all these contexts of companies using
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Game design principles and game elements
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but you can't just uh take some and
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sprinkle them on to a process you need
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to think in a systematic way about what
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are the tools that you have available
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and then how can you apply them in the
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right way to achieve your goals so one
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of the key key uh aspects of this book
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The gameification toolkit is to lay out
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a pallet to show people just some of the
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range of different items and design
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patterns that you can take from games
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and get some inspiration of different
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ways that you can go and apply them to
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serve whatever your business need
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is one of the examples we talk about in
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the book is Du lingo which is a language
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learning site
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and du lingo very quickly has become the
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most successful language learning site
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on the internet in fact they have
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something like 60 million users so they
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are teaching languages to more people
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than the entire United States public
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school system and you go and look at
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what they're doing compared to other
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sites there's plenty of other things out
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there that will teach you languages the
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key differentiator is gamification they
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have a virtual currency they have
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achievements in the game they have
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missions they have little rewards and so
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forth uh all sorts of systems that are
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implemented in an integrated way to
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reinforce your engagement to reinforce
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your sense of excitement about the
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learning experience and uh frankly I
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think that the
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gamification even though you wouldn't
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call it a gamified service per se it's a
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language learning service the
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gamification is really the
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differentiator that's helped them
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succeed gamification can help to trans
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form a business but fundamentally
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gamification involves understanding
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psychology understanding design
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principles and understanding how we can
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leverage data so it's not that
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gamification is some new thing that's
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going to cause us to do business in a
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totally different way the reality is
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gamification Taps into what makes us
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human we're engaged by games we respond
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to some of these game elements not
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because it's some cool new idea that
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someone came up with but because it
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relates to our basic human drives our
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motivation for Mastery our desire to be
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connected to something broader than
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ourselves our response to a desire for
00:03:40
achievement and so forth so
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fundamentally gamification is a tool
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like lots of business tools where if you
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have a goal and you can Define really
00:03:50
well what that goal is and you can
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understand what the population of people
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are that you're working with whether
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that's your customers your employees or
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some other group and then think
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creatively about how to tie in ways to
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achieve that goal going beyond the very
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traditional mechanisms that we have it's
00:04:08
not just saying we want to motivate you
00:04:10
to do this job by paying you more it's
00:04:12
thinking very broadly being informed by
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psychology and being informed by data
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about how we can excite and engage
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people in very powerful ways so that's
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really how it can ultimately be
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transformative but I always caution
00:04:26
people because there's a tendency to
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think oh this is some great new
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technique that will take something that
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people hate to do and make them love it
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no if you hate to do something you still
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hate to do it but even in activities
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that some people and in some cases um
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they seem boring or uninteresting you
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can find uh ways to make them seem
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engaging and ways to actually make them
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engaging if you tie them into something
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that motivates
00:04:57
people the biggest pitfall using
00:05:00
gamification is thinking that all you
00:05:02
have to do is drop in some game elements
00:05:04
so we'll give people points for
00:05:06
something and they'll get really excited
00:05:07
just because the points are there and
00:05:09
what we've seen time and time again is
00:05:12
the services that just do that maybe
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they'll get some initial engagement
00:05:17
people will sort of get excited or at
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least some people will get excited but
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then it dissipates very quickly and
00:05:22
that's not necessarily the end of the
00:05:24
world if what you're trying to do is
00:05:26
just stimulate some initial adoption and
00:05:28
then you have some great value
00:05:29
proposition down the road but most of
00:05:31
the time what companies want is ongoing
00:05:34
engagement so what you need to do first
00:05:36
of all is step back and take a broader
00:05:38
look at what the tools are and that's
00:05:41
really what the gamification toolkit
00:05:43
adds is it gives you a perspective on 30
00:05:46
different game Elements which even
00:05:48
aren't all the ones that are out there
00:05:50
but gives you a sense of possibility so
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you're not just going and using the same
00:05:54
elements over and over again and then
00:05:57
what you need to do is have a process uh
00:05:59
and in our first book for the win we go
00:06:02
through a six-step process to identify
00:06:05
the goals identify the processes
00:06:08
identify uh the people involved and so
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forth um and ensure that when you're
00:06:12
deploying gamification you're doing it
00:06:14
in a thoughtful way in a way that uh uh
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generates data that you can use to
00:06:20
improve the system and in a way that you
00:06:22
can have some confidence will give you
00:06:23
some sustained
00:06:28
engagement I think of gamification as a
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fairly horizontal technique it can work
00:06:34
any place you have people and there's a
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desire to motivate or engage them that's
00:06:41
just about anything you can think of um
00:06:43
and so there are examples that we're
00:06:45
seeing of gamification everywhere from
00:06:48
uh entertainment type sites to uh supply
00:06:51
chain and Logistics in very established
00:06:54
industrial companies um in uh virtually
00:06:57
all parts of the world there's adoption
00:06:59
of gamification so I think it's a
00:07:01
misnomer to think that there's one
00:07:03
perfect place for it again the question
00:07:05
is identifying the goal and then using
00:07:08
the right tools for that objective in
00:07:10
the context of your organization there's
00:07:12
not going to be one right way to do
00:07:14
gamification every case some
00:07:16
gamification examples for example look
00:07:18
very game likee they've got bright
00:07:20
colors they seem kind of fun they're
00:07:22
things that show up on screen and pop
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and so forth some gamification is very
00:07:27
understated um it's very oper irational
00:07:30
um because that's right for that context
00:07:33
so I think pretty much anytime you have
00:07:35
something where motivation makes a
00:07:38
difference There's an opportunity to
00:07:40
look at gamification as a technique and
00:07:43
then again the question is figuring out
00:07:45
is it right for this particular problem
00:07:48
what are the right ways to do it and how
00:07:50
do I systematically think about ensuring
00:07:52
that this is the best technique for the
00:07:54
problem I have at hand
00:07:59
we're in an interesting phase right now
00:08:01
with gamification about three or four
00:08:04
years ago there was a lot of excitement
00:08:06
so you had all these consultant showing
00:08:08
up and saying this is this great new
00:08:09
thing it's amazing it'll change all of
00:08:12
business um and uh not a lot of actual
00:08:15
adoption at that point there were just a
00:08:16
handful of examples that everyone would
00:08:18
point to and so uh Dan Hunter and I
00:08:21
wrote our first book for the win partly
00:08:24
to give people a broader perspective to
00:08:26
organize this space and say all right
00:08:29
what is really going on here and what
00:08:31
are serious ways to apply gamification
00:08:33
what we're seeing now is most of those
00:08:37
um uh Consultants who are hyping this
00:08:40
have gone away uh because again lots of
00:08:42
companies have found that if you just
00:08:44
throw some game elements on somewhere
00:08:45
it's not going to have sustained
00:08:46
engagement so we're seeing now article
00:08:48
after article saying gamification is
00:08:50
dead oh that was an old fat oh it's
00:08:53
failed that's not at all what I'm seeing
00:08:55
when I go out and talk to companies and
00:08:57
I go out and look at the market actually
00:08:59
there has never been more adoption and
00:09:01
never been broader adoption um I'm
00:09:03
seeing examples in gamification again in
00:09:05
companies in every industry and all over
00:09:08
the world what we need now is more data
00:09:13
we need uh more research from people
00:09:15
like me and other academics to help
00:09:18
identify best practices so when you get
00:09:20
the organizations that say okay I get it
00:09:23
I'm sold on the concept but I want to
00:09:25
see the evidence I want to see numbers
00:09:28
that say this is the right solution for
00:09:29
my situation this is not we've got bits
00:09:32
and pieces of that uh but we need to do
00:09:35
more um and so a lot of what I'm focused
00:09:37
on now is partly uh trying to do that
00:09:40
research but partly trying to pull it
00:09:42
together um because the challenge of
00:09:44
gamification is it's at the border of a
00:09:46
lot of different fields so you have
00:09:48
people looking at gamification from the
00:09:50
standpoint of marketing you have
00:09:52
gamification researchers in human
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computer interaction uh you have
00:09:56
gamification researchers in management
00:09:58
um in all these different business
00:10:00
fields and so uh part of the role that
00:10:03
um I see myself playing is trying to
00:10:07
bring those people together and bring
00:10:09
that research together and help to
00:10:11
translate it for organizations who are
00:10:13
just trying to make sense of all this
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[Music]
