Player Centric Gamification Design

There are fundamental questions that encourage a creative gamification design. You should ask yourself these questions before you begin the gamification process as well as throughout your design and roll out stages.

For example... "What causes some employees or customers to engage in a gamified process, while others disengage in frustration? Why is it that some gamification mechanics appeal to some people, but have no effect on others?"

Others have tried to simplify the human tendency to play, but our willingness to invest time and energy into a process or experience ultimately comes from our core motivators. 

Using a rigid scientific protocol, and leveraging statistical and computational methodologies, Stephen Reiss, PhD has identified 16 basic needs that impact our personalities and the choices we make, as well as why we would engage in one activity but not another. His findings have been supported with an expanding dataset of over 80,000 people across cultures on four continents. 
   
Most psychological categorization efforts have attempted to push people into groups, usually the four archetypes from ancient Greek mythology. The Reiss Motivation Profile goes the opposite direction; it demonstrates how, exactly, we are unique from each other, even those within our archetypical subgroups.

In this brief clip from the Gamification World Congress, I explain the Sententia design process that systematically matches your participant's "why" with the appropriate gamification mechanic(s).

 
At Sententia our "Why" is to make business processes more compelling by making them more fun.

Or to bring it where we live - it's because of the look in his eyes.
In the short video clip below you can see the look in his eyes. Do you see it? Do you see the wonder, excitement, and unabashed joy?

That is the look this beautiful child has when he knows he’s going to learn something new. Not yet of the age to understand what any of this means, he somehow knows… “this is going to be FUN!” With no words yet in his vocabulary, it is a steady stream of oooh, oooh, oooh. He seems to thrive on this thrill of learning something new.

My hope is he never loses that thrill. That he never sees learning as tedious, dull, or boring… too difficult, time consuming, or unimportant. 

Learning should be fun!

I have that same hope as a designer and facilitator of adult and corporate learning programs. Even if at face value the subject matter looks as if it is merely a perfunctory, checkbox training – it is up to me to design and deliver the content so that the participants get, “that look.”

Will you join me?

For more gamification articles with ideas on gamification design for corporate learning programs:

• What Can We Learn from The Walking Dead for Corporate Training?
• Gamification Simplified
• Why You'll LOVE Low-Tech Gamification for Corporate Training

About the Author: Monica Cornetti
Founder and CEO, Sententia
www.SententiaGames.com
www.monicacornetti.com

A professional speaker and gamification designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You, writes The Gamification Report blog, and hosts the weekly Gamification Talk Radio program.