Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things

Instead of motivating people, a poorly designed gamification strategy can drive them away.

In "Gamify," you get a first-hand look at the 20 percent of companies who are using this strategy successfully. The author shows you exactly what these organizations are doing right, and provides tips and strategies that will make your own gamification project a success.

This book is valuable because it's backed up with in-depth analysis and research. The author, Brian Burke, is research vice president at Gartner, a technology research firm. He's an expert in enterprise architecture, and he's been a leading researcher in gamification for several years.

It helps that the author makes it clear, time and time again, that gamification won't solve every problem, and it won't be useful for all organizations. This strategy has its limits. There are plenty of times when gamification won't do your organization any good, and these situations are explained in detail.

This book is written for managers and decision makers who want to use gamification within their organization to motivate their team or customers. And, the author makes an important point early on. His goal in "Gamify" is to show you how to use this technique to empower others, and help them achieve their goals. It shouldn't be used to manipulate people, or as a stepping stone to achieving your own goals.

When you apply this strategy correctly, it will drive your business results and engage others. But you have to start the process with the right intentions.

So, keep listening to find out why intrinsic rewards are most effective for gamification, how to get started on designing a gamification strategy, and how to choose the right currency for your game.

"Gamification" is divided into two parts. Part one dissects the concept of gamification and examines its value. You get to see when gamification is useful, and when it should be avoided.

Part two shows you how to design a successful game experience. Here, you learn how to develop a player-centric design, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

It can be hard to picture what gamification looks like in real life, so let's start with an example of how one organization used this strategy to help sick kids.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, also known as SickKids, treats thousands of children with cancer each year.

SickKids is Canada's leading research hospital for children. It needs to gage the effectiveness of its pain treatments so it can use the best ones on its patients. This information is shared with hospitals around the world.

The challenge is that the hospital needs daily reports from the kids themselves on their current level of pain. But the kids aren't always up to filling out pain journals, mainly because the treatment is so painful. This inconsistent reporting makes it impossible for doctors to identify the most effective treatments.

So, the hospital used gamification to solve this problem. They developed the "Pain Squad," an iPhone app to collect information about pain. Kids are enlisted on a special task force, and their mission is to hunt down pain.

The game's designers knew they had to do more than just create a game to make this process fun. They had to engage these kids on a deep, emotional level to inspire them to take part, even when they weren't feeling well.

As players, the kids were promoted to a new rank the more pain reports they sent in. They start off as a rookie, and rise up the ranks, finally becoming a chief. The hospital enlisted heroes from Canada's leading police television shows to motivate kids throughout the game.

The SickKids app illustrates an important aspect of gamification. The strategy primarily uses intrinsic rather extrinsic rewards – broadly speaking, internal rather than external motivation. This is what differentiates gamification from other reward programs.

Intrinsic reward systems have three key elements. First, they offer autonomy. Users are able to direct their own progress. Second, they include mastery, which means users have the ability to get better at something that matters. Last, they have purpose, inspiring and empowering users to be part of something bigger than themselves.

The best gamification strategies include all three of these reward elements. The SickKids pain management app included all three, which is why it was such a great success.

One of the biggest mistakes that people make with gamification is that they focus on getting players to achieve the organization's goals rather than the players' goals.

The author says that your gamify strategy has to put your players' motivations and goals first, and make them the primary design objective.

Nike provides a great example of this. It developed Nike Plus, which tracks each person's movement and miles using an iPod sensor and special shoes. The sportswear company also created the FuelBand, which tracks any kind of movement, and turns those movements into NikeFuel points.

Both of these programs inspire athletes and everyday people to move more and achieve their fitness goals. Nike wins too, because more and more people are getting involved in the game, which strengthens the brand and increases sales.

One chapter we really like is chapter four, which looks at how you can use gamification to help people build skills, especially with corporate training.

There's a great example here about how one company, NTT Data, used gamification to transform their internal training. The game solution they created helps team members collaborate on leadership projects, recognize and reward the achievements of others, and compete with each other as they progress through the game.

In NTT's training game, senior managers submit relevant trivia questions that pop up randomly. They could be about a recent acquisition, a global strategy, or anything else related to the organization. This puts players into contact with executives they might never have a chance to interact with otherwise, and adds more interest to the game.

This game is still in its early stages, but it's already paying back NTT's investment. Fifty people in the program have taken on new leadership roles, players have contributed 220 ideas for improvements, and 30 new ideas for existing projects. NTT's referrals have also gone up by 30 percent.

So, let's say you want to use gamification in your own organization. What do you need to do?

You have to start by developing a player-centric design. This means you focus on designing the player experience around user goals.

First, think carefully about your business objectives. While gamification needs to empower your users and help them meet their goals, it also needs to help your organization meet goals as a secondary purpose. So, write down what success looks like to you.

You next need to figure out your success metrics. Some organizations have vague goals when it comes to gamification. For instance, they might want to "improve customer engagement," or "drive innovation." But those goals aren't specific enough to be meaningful.

Be clear about what you want to achieve with gamification. For example, you might want to increase your web traffic by 20 percent in six months, or launch seven new innovation projects by the end of the year.

Your next step is to get to know your target audience. Who are they? What are they using your company or organization for? What do they truly care about? Your goal here is to identify your users' hidden needs, so you can design a program that meets those needs.

You might have more than one target audience, and that's OK. You can help keep these different targets clear by creating player personas. These are "pictures" of each different type of player that define their motivations, goals, personality, and objectives. You can use player personas to drive your discussions and decisions, and create a better experience for users.

Once you understand your user and their goals, you need to design a solution that meets their needs as well as your own. This is the structure of your game, and it can be challenging to figure out what will work best for your organization. Fortunately, there are several different models to choose from.

For instance, will your game be collaborative or competitive? Will users compete against each other or work together to achieve their goals?

You also need to think about your reward system. Will players receive intrinsic or extrinsic rewards? The author says that most gamification programs use an intrinsic reward system, but some organizations have used both reward systems successfully.

There are several other questions to consider when designing the basic structure of your game. We thought this was a valuable addition to the book, because most people would be unaware of all the possibilities until they got further into the planning process. Being able to see all your options in the early stages of your game's design helps you make the best choice. It also saves you time, money, and resources down the road.

The author addresses one common misconception about gamification when he talks about the play space. This is the platform or approach you're going to use with your targets to help them achieve their goals.

He says that many people assume games need to look like games. But most gamified solutions do not have elaborate virtual worlds or platforms, like a traditional video game.

Instead, most gamified solutions are fairly basic. They show player profiles, progress, and all the tools players need to engage in the solution or end goal.

You also need to think about your game's economy. This consists of the incentives and rewards that your players will earn for performing specific tasks or meeting targets within the game.

There are four basic economies you can use for your game. These are fun, things, social capital, and self-esteem. Some of the currencies that show players' progress in these areas are points, tokens, badges, and leaderboards.

The author includes a really useful graph that illustrates how different currencies can help players advance in each of these four basic economies.

For instance, to help a player increase his or her self-esteem you can use currencies like mastery, progression, leadership, and praise. To help a player build social capital, you can use groups, status, reviews, and likes.

Your last step is to test your game with focus groups to see how your target audience reacts. And don't worry, you don't have to have a fully functioning game in place to do this. Instead, start testing your idea with simple storyboards, and make adjustments based on what your focus group says.

As you can imagine, designing a gamification strategy can be lengthy and complex, and we've only discussed a fraction of the steps the author covers in the book.

But despite the intricacies of the process, the author does a good job of keeping it accessible and easy to understand. He uses a fictitious company to illustrate each step, which he then discusses in detail.

By breaking this huge project down into manageable steps, you don't feel overwhelmed by how much there is to do. As you go through the book, just take it one step at a time.

We really like the case studies the author includes throughout "Gamify." These do a great job of illustrating all the different ways you can use gamification, and they stretch your imagination and show you what's possible.

Our only criticism is that the book would have been even more useful if the author had included some workbook-style questions or exercises. As it is now, the author tells you in logical steps what to do. But some in-depth questions and exercises would have really helped readers put these ideas into practice.

But, that's a minor criticism. The book is valuable as it is, and the author makes this concept accessible to a wide variety of readers. All in all, we have no trouble recommending this book.

"Gamify" by Brian Burke, is published by Bibliomotion.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.