You all remember playing games as children: soccer, baseball, checkers, tic-tac-toe, crossword puzzles, Clue or Monopoly. What about the modern day computer-based FreeCell, Fitbits®, and Minecraft? Have you wondered about the latest Pokémon Go that’s hit the news? It’s caused so much distraction that there are accidents and injuries.
What is it about these games that drives us go back to the game again and again?
“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.
You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.”
– Mary Poppins
How can we leverage that fun, or that desire to play, into our everyday tasks? It’s a fine dividing line. While we want to capture the enthusiasm in our daily lives, we must also be adults and be serious to get the task done. It’s nice to be so engrossed in the task, but we don’t want to be injured (physically or mentally) doing so.
There are two kinds of motivators: extrinsic and intrinsic. When a person has extrinsic motivators, the work is for material benefits such as money, rewards and points. Intrinsic motivation means that the person’s behavior is driven by internal feelings like happiness, eagerness to learn and excitement. Gamification uses both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators to build success.
eLearning Industry identifies the following benefits to gamification:
Gamification can be used to fulfill most learning needs including on-boarding, product sales, customer support, soft skills, awareness creation, and compliance.
At Innovatia, we used a gamified system where the objective was to help our technical writers assess and improve 8 core skills and foster a change in behaviour. The system included a daily activity of around 10 minutes and 5 assessment activities. The training program is mapped into a story narrative and each core skill is represented by a different theme. Dedicated avatars, leaderboards, badges, weekly winners and email notifications kept the interest alive.
It worked! The game attracted high levels of interest and participation levels of 95% consistently. The technical writers requested topic announcements before-hand and additional reference materials to improve their game.
Have you been curious about gamification, or maybe you’ve seen or experienced the benefits first-hand? Comment below, and let us know what you think!