Business Gamification For Dummies E-Book

Kris Duggan

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 349

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The easy way to grasp and use gamification concepts in business Gamification is a modern business strategy that leverages principles from games to influence favorable customer behavior on the web in order to improve customer loyalty, engagement, and retention. Gamification can be used by any department in a company (HR, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Support, etc.), for any web-based experience (mobile, website, retail, community, etc.). Business Gamification For Dummies explains how you can apply the principles of this strategic concept to your own business model. * How gamification evolved from Farmville/Zynga and Facebook and is now something that can be applied to the work environment * How to build a successful gamification program * How to entice and retain customers using gamification * How to drive employee behavior inside your organization * Real-world illustrations of gamification at work If you're interested in learning more about this exciting and innovative business strategy, this friendly, down-to-earth guide has you covered.

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Business Gamification For Dummies®

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About the Authors

Kris Duggan, CEO of Badgeville, Inc., is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building innovative, fast-growing companies. He is dedicated to helping new brands increase user engagement through social gaming and loyalty. A sought-after speaker on gamification, analytics, and user engagement, Kris is a thought leader who specializes in innovative ways to incorporate game mechanics and social loyalty programs into web and mobile experiences. Prior to founding Badgeville, Duggan worked in leadership roles at a variety of successful companies, including WebEx, and across a wide variety of verticals. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife Leah and two sons, Colin and Aidan.

Kate Shoup, during the course of her career, has authored more than 25 books, including Starting an Etsy Business For Dummies, What Can You Do with a Major in Business?, Rubbish: Reuse Your Refuse, Webster’s New World English Grammar Handbook, and Office 2010 Simplified (all published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), and has edited scores more. Kate also co-wrote a feature-length screenplay (and starred in the ensuing film) and worked as the sports editor for NUVO newsweekly. When not writing, Kate, an IndyCar fanatic, loves to ski (she was once nationally ranked), read, craft, and ride her motorcycle. She also plays a mean game of 9-ball. Kate lives in Indianapolis with her lovely boyfriend, her brilliant daughter, and their dog.

Dedication

For Colin and Aidan.

— Kris Duggan

For Heidi-bird, as always.

— Kate Shoup

Authors’ Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Maynard Webb, an early investor in Badgeville, a tech visionary, and an overall inspiring human being. You saw the opportunity for the gamification market before anyone else did. You’ve been an incredible mentor and advocate for me personally. I’m proud to be associated with your legacy. Many thanks goes to Kate Shoup, who was able to organize and herd the brilliant freneticism that is the Badgeville team and turn it into accessible, palatable content for readers. And Tim Chang, who’s earned the right to be called the “Godfather” of gamification — you’re always a step ahead of where the market is and have always shaped my views on the “where is this all going?” question. In addition to believing in Badgeville and investing in our success, you are an amazing speaker and advocate for gamification. I’m proud to consider you a friend and a business ally. Thanks to my parents — you guys both believed in me from the beginning. Dad’s been an entrepreneur for a long time. And Mom, I’m sure you would have backed anything that your son was going to do, but I feel fortunate that the idea I had (and you believed in) turned out to be a good one! And thanks to Leah, Colin, and Aidan: Many sacrifices are required to get a new company off the ground, particularly one that’s grown as fast as Badgeville in the last two and a half years. It’s meant a lot of early mornings and late nights, not to mention all the travel. Amidst all the success, I’ve cherished making it home for dinner as many nights as I can, and catching the kids’ baseball games.

— Kris Duggan

Although much of any writer’s day is spent alone, desperately pulling words from the ether, no book could be completed without a team of very smart people — and this book is no exception. Indeed, I have many people to thank for their considerable efforts.

First, thanks to Kris Duggan, gamification expert extraordinaire. I simply would not have been given the opportunity to write this book were it not for Kris. In addition to Kris, several other Badgeville folks were extraordinarily helpful with this project. They include Chris Lynch, who, in addition to fielding countless questions throughout the writing process, possesses exceptional beer pong skills; Sam Chou and Joseph Dang, who prevented my suicide by agreeing to help me run down permissions for the various images used in this book; Lily Alvarez, for helping me gather several of said images; Jenny Berthiaume, who graciously gave me the “keys to the kingdom” of Badgeville’s internal documentation; Tony Ventrice, for his extensive input on the subject of gamification in general and frameworks in particular, as well as for his efforts as a tech editor; Anita Flad, for making the necessary arrangements for me to hang in the Badgeville offices for a spell; Adena DeMonte, for her help with the final chapter in the book; and Havy Nguyen, Steve Sims, Tim Piatenko, Chris Duskin, Caroline Dangson, Paul Reeves, and Robin Krieglstein, for their willingness to share their extensive knowledge on various facets of gamification. Really, you guys rock!

In addition, several people at Wiley were instrumental to the publication of this title. First, thanks to my acquisitions editor, Stacy Kennedy, who was so gracious in giving me the opportunity to work on this project. In addition, my development editor, Corbin Collins, not only helped me usher this book from brain to page, he was a joy to work with. Thanks, too, to my proofreader, Evelyn Wellborn, who saved my bacon more than a few times. And thanks to Wiley’s excellent production and composition staff. You guys are major pros!

Finally, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart my amazing family, who I not only love but like: my beautiful daughter, Heidi; my beloved partner in life, Olivier; my wonderful parents, Barb and Steve Shoup; my beautiful sister and specimen-like brother-in law, Jenny and Jim; my adorable nephew, Jake; and of course, Fergus the dog. I love you all like crazy.

— Kate Shoup

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Business Gamification For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/businessgamification to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Basic Training: Grasping the Basics

Part II: Decisions, Decisions: Choosing a Gamification Framework

Part III: Getting Your Gamification Program Off the Ground

Part IV: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Basic Training: Grasping the Basics

Chapter 1: Gamifi-wha? Introducing Gamification

Paging Mr. Webster: Defining Gamification

Best behavior

Real-world gamification examples

What Gamification Does

Proof Positive: Does Gamification Work?

Who’s on First: Who’s Using Gamification?

Gamification in politics

Gamification in healthcare

Gamification in nonprofit

Gamification in HR

Developing a Gamification Program

Pinpointing your business objectives

Identifying desired behaviors

Choosing rewards

Selecting game mechanics

Choosing a framework

Deciding to build or buy, and choosing a provider

Assembling your gamification team

Configuring and deploying your gamification program

Using analytics to track your progress

Chapter 2: Head Case: Understanding What Makes Users Tick

Just Your Type: Identifying Player Types

Outie or Innie? Understanding Extrinsic Versus Intrinsic Motivators

The Fogg Behavior Model

Competition Versus Cooperation

Key Club: Motivating Key Behaviors

Recognizing users

Conferring status

Establishing identity

Identifying specialization

Giving positive reinforcement

Giving rewards

Maintaining relevance

Harnessing competition

Responding to challenges

Visualizing progress

Breaking things down into baby steps

Chapter 3: Object Lesson: Establishing Business Objectives

Public Consumption: Considering Consumer-Related Objectives

Increasing engagement

The loyal we: Inspiring loyalty

Increasing customer conversion

Building a community

Employee Relations: Exploring Employee-Related Objectives

Speeding up business processes

Sell! Sell! Sell! Enabling sales

Knowledge is power: Encouraging knowledge sharing and collaboration

Adoption of new technology

Aiding with onboarding

Improving training and education

Chapter 4: Target Practice: Targeting Desired Behaviors

Turning Valued Behaviors into Valuable Behaviors

Simple Minds: Comparing Simple and Advanced Behaviors

Matching Behaviors with Customer-Related Business Objectives

Behaviors that foster engagement

Behaviors that inspire loyalty

Behaviors that increase conversions

Behaviors that build community

Aligning Behaviors with Employee-Related Business Objectives

Behaviors that speed up business processes

Behaviors that enable sales

Behaviors that encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration

Behaviors that help with onboarding

Behaviors that improve education and training

Bad Dog! Identifying Behaviors You Want to Discourage

Chapter 5: You Win! The Rewards of Rewarding

Types of Rewards

Conferring recognition

Giving privileges

Giving monetary rewards

Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges! Actually, maybe you do

Naming badges

Designing badges

Choosing rewards

Addressing cost

Social versus solo

Exploring context and value

Considering the CRM life cycle

Rewarding on the valued/valuable behavior spectrum

Identifying When to Reward

Rewarding during the onboarding phase

Rewarding during the mid-game phase

Rewarding during the elder-game phase

Chapter 6: Game On: Understanding Game Mechanics

Here’s the Skinny: A Brief Intro to Game Mechanics

Get to the Point: Understanding Points

Weighting points

Keeping context in mind

Identifying point types

Exploring multiple point systems

Follow the Leader: Working with Leaderboards

Level Up: Exploring Levels

Mission Control: Using Missions, Challenges, and Quests

Mission basics

Exploring Activity Feeds and Notifications

Defining the Context

Exploring Anti-Gaming Mechanics

Implementing cool downs

Rate-limiting players

Count-limiting players

Part II: Decisions, Decisions: Choosing a Gamification Framework

Chapter 7: Freeze Frame: Understanding Gamification Frameworks

Introducing the Six Gamification Frameworks

Matching a Framework to Your Business Objective

Comprehending the Social Loyalty Framework

Experts Only: Exploring the Community Expert Framework

Pyramid Power: Pondering the Competitive Pyramid Framework

Break It to Me Gently: Identifying the Gentle Guide Framework

In Good Company: Understanding the Company Collaborator Framework

I Challenge Thee: Exploring the Company Challenge Framework

Take Your Pick: Pinpointing Which Framework Meets Your Needs

Chapter 8: Customer-Facing Frameworks

Exploring the Social Loyalty Framework

Understanding the social loyalty framework’s mechanics

Identifying popular use cases

Social loyalty framework case studies

Expert Witness: Understanding the Community Expert Framework

Identifying community expert mechanics

Exploring popular use cases

Community expert framework case studies

The Great Pyramid: Exploring the Competitive Pyramid Framework

Identifying competitive pyramid mechanics

Exploring popular use cases

Competitive pyramid example

Chapter 9: Employee-Facing Frameworks

Gentle Giant: Exploring the Gentle Guide Framework

Identifying gentle guide mechanics

Exploring popular use cases

Gentle guide example: Safety and efficiency

In Good Company: Understanding the Company Collaborator Framework

Identifying company collaborator mechanics

Exploring popular use cases

Company collaborator example: Improving retention, productivity, and knowledge sharing

Deloitte: Company collaborator framework case study

Challenge Response: Exploring the Company Challenge Framework

Identifying company challenge mechanics

Exploring popular use cases

Company challenge example: Reducing injuries

Part III: Getting Your Gamification Program Off the Ground

Chapter 10: Choosing a Gamification Provider

Decisions, Decisions: Deciding Whether to Build or Buy

Buying: Identifying Gamification Providers

500Friends

Badgeville

Big Door

Bunchball

CrowdTwist

Gigya

IActionable

Seriosity

Building: Finding Open-Source Resources

Chapter 11: Key Expertise for Your Gamification Team

Recognizing Key Stakeholders

Bringing Together Business Champions

Assembling Your Nerds

Gathering Creative Types

Identifying Nice-to-Have Team Members

Chapter 12: Ready, Set, Go! Configuring and Deploying Gamification Elements

Design of the Times: The Design Stage

Identifying business objectives

Designing a gamification program

Developing Nation: The Development Stage

Creating a site

Defining behaviors

Creating rewards and levels

Adding widgets

Adding missions and tracks

Testing 1, 2, 3: The Testing Stage

Live It Up: Going Live

Stay Safe Out There: A Word on Security

Network-related security features

Platform-related security features

Chapter 13: Analyze This: Understanding Analytics

Understanding Analytics-Related Activities

Tracking behaviors

Measuring behaviors

Aggregating data

Data analysis

Reporting your findings

Identifying Key Metrics

Working with user metrics

Exploring engagement metrics

Viewing retention metrics

Viewing metrics on a dashboard

52 Pickup: Picking Your Metrics

Q&A: Answering Critical Questions with Analytics

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Using the Behavior Health Index (BHI)

Chapter 14: What’s Next: The Future of Gamification

Digging into the Pew Report on Gamification

Tracking the Trends in Gamification

Big data

Segmenting Data

Portable reputation

Social listening

The merging of online and offline worlds

The subtleization of gamification

From game to narrative

Part IV: The Part of Tens

Chapter 15: Ten Additional Gamification Resources

“Building Web Reputation Systems” by Randy Farmer and Bryce Glass

“Persuasive Technology” by B. J. Fogg

“Reality Is Broken” by Jane McGonical

“Total Engagement” by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read

“Gamification by Design” by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham

“Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely

“Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini

“The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg

“Switch” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

“Drive” by Daniel Pink

Chapter 16: Ten Great Gamified Sites and Apps

eBay (www.ebay.com)

Foursquare (www.foursquare.com)

GetGlue (www.getglue.com)

Mint (www.mint.com)

MuchMusic.com (www.muchmusic.com)

Nike+ (www.nikeplus.nike.com)

Recyclebank (www.recyclebank.com)

Samsung (www.samsung.com)

sneakpeeq (www.sneakpeeq.com)

Xbox Live (www.xbox.com)

Appendix: Supercharge Your Sales Team with Gamification

Cheat Sheet

Introduction

Welcome to Business Gamification For Dummies!

Does this sound like you? Your organization has low retention or dismal conversion rates. Your customer communities are ghost towns. Your loyalty program is stagnant. Sometimes, it feels like customers have forgotten about your brand altogether.

Or maybe one of these problems is more familiar: Your employee onboarding process is slow as molasses. Your people don’t collaborate. You have an employee churn rate higher than Mt. McKinley. Folks just don’t perform — a problem that isn’t helped by the fact that your expectations of employees have increased over time, and the systems you expect your employees to use have become more complicated.

The truth is, all these problems stem from a single cause: lack of engagement. In fact, lack of engagement — whether among customers or employees — can really do a number on your organization. On the customer side, customers who aren’t engaged tend toward disloyalty; with ample choice, they fraternize with your competitors as much as (or more than) they do with you. And on the employee side, folks just don’t perform.

Wouldn’t it be the bee’s knees if you could find some way to engage these people so they start performing the behaviors you want them to perform? Well, we have good news for you. You can. With gamification.

Gamification enables you to drive, measure, and reward high-value behaviors, whether by customers or employees. Game mechanics leverage design and behavioral psychology principles inherent in today’s social games to drive and reward specific user behaviors in business environments. You can employ smart gamification elements — such as points, achievements, levels, leaderboards, missions, and contests — to drive desired behaviors on virtually any website or enterprise application. Gamification is less about games and more about figuring out what motivates people to perform — not to mention turning the mundane into the fundane.

This book is your entrée into the wide world of gamification. In it, you’ll discover how gamification works, what tools it uses, and how effective it can be at improving business for you. Are you ready to get started? If so, game on!

About This Book

Above all, Business Gamification For Dummies is a reference tool. You don’t have to read it from beginning to end; instead, you can turn to any part of the book that gives you the information you need when you need it. And you can keep coming back to the book over and over. If you prefer to read things in order, you’ll find that the information is presented in a natural, logical progression.

Conventions Used in This Book

To help you navigate this book, we include the following conventions:

Boldface highlights key words in bulleted lists.

New terms and words are emphasized in italics.

Web addresses appear in monofont.

When this book was printed, some of the web addresses we mention may have broken across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that we didn’t include any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. If you want to visit a website whose URL has been broken, just type exactly what you see in this book, as though the line break didn’t exist.

Foolish Assumptions

When writing this book, we generally assumed that readers were interested primarily in learning the ins and out of gamifying digital properties — websites, apps, and so on — rather than real-world ones. Although we do discuss applying gamification principles to events such as conferences and the like, and we touch on the ways real-world problems can be solved through broader gamification principles, our main focus is on the gamification of zeros-and-ones type environments.

We also assume to a degree that readers are more interested in low-cost or even no-cost rewards — think virtual rewards (which, when used correctly, can be as powerful if not more powerful than monetary rewards) — than monetary-based rewards. (You’ll learn more about the various types of rewards in Chapter 5.)

How This Book Is Organized

Business Gamification For Dummies is organized into four parts, and the parts are divided into chapters. This section gives you a quick preview of what to expect from each part so you can turn to the part that interests you most.

Part I: Basic Training: Grasping the Basics

As you embark on your gamification education, you’ll quickly discover just how easy it is to get overwhelmed. The focus of this part is to inoculate you against gamification-related anxiety. In Chapter 1, you’ll find out just what all the gamification fuss is about. In Chapter 2, you’ll delve into the psychology of your users to find out what makes them tick. Chapter 3 is devoted to helping you pinpoint your business objectives, and Chapter 4 helps you determine what behaviors are likely to drive those objectives. In Chapter 5, you’ll discover the importance of rewarding users, as well as what types of rewards are available to you. And in Chapter 6, you’ll explore the various game mechanics employed in gamification. With these gamification basics under your belt, you’ll be primed to use gamification to its fullest potential!

Part II: Decisions, Decisions: Choosing a Gamification Framework

Regardless of whether you want to use gamification to increase customer engagement or encourage collaboration among employees, your next step is to determine just how to implement gamification. To aid in this, we’ve identified six gamification frameworks — holistic programs designed to achieve a specific business objective. Chapter 7 provides you with an overview of each framework — social loyalty, community expert, competitive pyramid, gentle guide, company collaborator, and company challenge — comparing and contrasting them. Chapters 8 and 9 offer more details on each of these frameworks in turn. Although you are not bound to use any one of these frameworks, gaining an understanding of them can help you assemble your own gamification program.

Part III: Getting Your Gamification Program Off the Ground

In this part, you get practical advice on how to get your gamification program off the ground. Chapter 10 provides the 411 on whether to build your own gamification program from scratch or partner with a provider. You’ll also get solid info on which providers are out there, at the ready. In Chapter 11, you discover exactly who belongs on your gamification team; Chapter 12 covers the basics of configuring and deploying your program. Chapter 13 is all about analytics, providing just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what kind of data you can gather with gamification. Finally, Chapter 14 offers a glimpse of where gamification may be heading from here on out.

Part IV: The Part of Tens

In this part, we offer our (admittedly unsolicited) opinions on good books for further reading as well as sites and apps that get gamification right. Chapter 15 features a list of excellent books covering more about gamification and related topics, such as reputation systems, as well as the larger topics of motivation, persuasion, change, habits, and human behavior. If you’re ready to expand your knowledge in these fascinating areas, get reading! Chapter 16 offers a look at several sites that feature smart gamification. Oh, and there’s also an appendix that shows you how to supercharge your sales teams with gamification.

Icons Used in This Book

Icons are those little pictures you see in the margins throughout this book, and they’re meant to draw your attention to key points that help you along the way. Here’s a list of the icons we use and what they signify.

Some things are so important, they need to be set apart for emphasis. This icon — like a string tied around your finger — is a friendly reminder of stuff to commit to memory and use over the long haul.

When you see this icon in the margin, the paragraph next to it contains a valuable, practical tip about using gamification.

This icon highlights things you want to avoid. An important part of achieving success is simply eliminating the mistakes; the information marked by this icon helps you do just that.

This icon highlights information that may be interesting if you want to really drill down to another level of technicality, but that can be safely skipped without jeopardizing your understanding of the topic at hand.

Sidebars

Sometimes, we have information we want to share with you, but it relates only tangentially to the topic at hand. When that happens, we put that information in a sidebar. Even though it may not be mission-critical, we think you’ll still find it worth knowing.

Where to Go from Here

Glance through the table of contents or index and find the part, chapter, or section that flips your switch. That’s usually the best place to begin. If you’re just trying to get a sense of what gamification is about, you’ll want to start with the chapters in Part I. If you kind of already know something about gamification and are ready to look at some of your options and how they might work, check out Part II. If you’re itching to get going and launch your own gamification program, Part III is ready to step you through the process of building it. If your program is up and running but you’re a little unsure about the analytics side of the equation, you’ll want to flip right to Chapter 13.

After you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll want to invest some time considering your business objectives, the behaviors most likely to drive those objectives, and the mechanics most likely to drive those behaviors. With that information in hand, you’re well on your way to developing a gamification program.

Play on!

Part I

Basic Training: Grasping the Basics

In this part . . .

As you embark on your gamification education, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. This part is devoted to helping you stave off any gamification-related anxiety. In addition to discovering what all the fuss is about, you’ll find out just what makes your users tick and consider what business objectives you want to achieve through gamification. We help you determine what types of behaviors might drive those objectives, and you’ll explore the various types of rewards available for your program. Finally, you’ll survey the game mechanics common in many programs. With these basics under your belt, you’ll be primed to use gamification to its fullest potential.

Chapter 1

Gamifi-wha? Introducing Gamification

In This Chapter

Defining gamification and seeing what it does

Answering the question: Does gamification work?

Checking out who uses gamification

Developing a gamification program

Gamification. Say the word, and chances are the response will be, “Gamifi-wha?” It’s not even in the dictionary — meaning, ironically, that you can’t use it in a game of Words with Friends.

The fact is, the term just hasn’t made it to the mainstream vernacular — although we’re confident it soon will. Before August 2010, almost no one searched for the term gamification on Google. Starting in January 2011, however, searches have spiked. And according to Gartner, Inc., by 2014, more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application. Some experts project that the gamification market will grow to $2.8 billion by 2016!

In this chapter, you’ll find out what gamification is, how it works, and who’s using it. You’ll also discover the basic steps involved in launching a gamification program.

Although the word gamification may be new, games themselves are not. Far from it! Indeed, games have been played for millennia. Witness the 3,000-year-old set of dice unearthed at an archaeological site in Iran, and the fact that people in China have been playing Go since about the same time. Games are an integral part of all societies the world over.

Paging Mr. Webster: Defining Gamification

So what does gamification mean? Simply put, gamification refers to the use of game mechanics and rewards in a non-game setting to increase user engagement and drive desired user behaviors. (You’ll learn all about rewards in Chapter 5, and game mechanics in Chapter 6.) You can use gamification to increase such things as stickiness, sharing, content creation, purchases, and so on.

Best behavior

In part, the idea behind gamification is to tap into people’s innate desire to play games to influence how they behave and what they do. (This innate desire explains why games are big business. In 2010 alone, digital games generated $25 billion in sales.) It’s about making things fun — something that game makers have known for decades, but that the rest of us are just figuring out.

More than that, though, gamification is about tapping into what really motivates people and then using a variety of techniques (discussed throughout the book) to inspire them to perform desired behaviors. As an added bonus, with gamification, the desired behaviors that users perform are recordable — and when you have data, you have an opportunity to act on it.

Sound creepy? Fair point well made. Yes, gamification can certainly be used to promote behaviors in which people might not otherwise engage. But the best gamification programs operate by rewarding people for behaviors they are already inclined to perform or are required to perform, increasing their engagement and enjoyment. In other words, gamification makes things more fun.

If you’re feeling skeptical, consider this: If you’ve tucked a frequent shopper card in your wallet in the hopes of someday getting one free sub, purchased a plane ticket using airline miles, been Employee of the Month, or earned your black belt in karate, you’ve already seen the effects of gamification. All those are real-world examples of gamification in action. Honestly, if you think about it, this type of gamification is everywhere — and it has been for a while. What’s new is that gamification is now being applied to websites and software applications. That’s the kind we focus on in this book.

This book strives to teach you to apply gamification techniques to every facet of your business, to help you meet your business goals.

To be clear, gamification isn’t about creating a game. Don’t get us wrong — games are great. But slapping a game on your site probably won’t help you attract more users. Rather, with gamification, you use game mechanics to enliven an existing experience — say, a community-based website, an employee training program, or a weight-loss program — making it more fun and engaging.

Real-world gamification examples

Want to see some other examples of real-world gamification? Visit www.thefuntheory.com. An initiative of Volkswagen, the site is dedicated to changing people’s behavior for the better by, well, making things more fun. Examples include a seat belt that’s fun to use; a bottle bank arcade machine to boost recycling efforts; a speed camera lottery that enters drivers who are obeying the speed limit into a lottery, funded by fines collected from speeders; a “piano staircase,” which lights up and plays sounds to encourage people to bypass the escalator; and the “world’s deepest bin,” a trash can that uses sound effects to create the illusion that the bin is insanely deep, to encourage people not to litter.

Volkswagen isn’t the only organization trying to solve problems by making things more fun. Another great example comes from the University of Washington, where researchers have developed Foldit, an online puzzle that enables people — anyone, including you — to contribute to important science research simply by playing. Has it been successful? Well, if you call gamers discovering in 10 days how a key protein may help cure HIV— something scientists had been researching for 15 years — successful, then yes, the game has been successful. (See Time’s website for a nifty article on this amazing result: http://techland.time.com/2011/09/19/foldit-gamers-solve-aids-puzzle-that-baffled-scientists-for-decade.)

Similar movements, called serious game movements, are percolating in other areas, too: military training, corporate training, first-responder training, civilization simulations, ecology simulations, public-policy campaigns, and more. All these serve as further examples of gamification.

What Gamification Does

Does your organization have low retention or dismal conversion rates? Are your customer communities ghost towns? Is your loyalty program stagnant? Have customers forgotten your brand altogether?

Or maybe your problems are on the employee side of the equation. It could be that your onboarding process for getting new employees set up is slow. Or maybe your people just don’t collaborate, share knowledge, or keep records the way they should. Maybe you have a high employee churn rate.

All these problems stem from a single cause: lack of engagement. The fact is, lack of engagement — whether among customers or employees — can really do a number on your organization.

Here are two ways lack of engagement can hurt:

Customers aren’t loyal. The Internet has leveled the playing field, inundating customers with choices. Thanks to this ample choice, they often flee to competitors.

Employees under perform. Under utilizing the technology you provide, employees fail to optimize business processes.

In response, most organizations have simply invested in more technology — lots of it. Like, $1 trillion (that’s trillion, with a t) between 2007 and 2012 alone. Even so, here’s the stubborn reality:

54 percent of customers are inactive in loyalty programs.

69 percent of customers don’t use online communities.

50 percent of employees don’t adopt enterprise software.

88 percent of employees don’t use social software.

What’s missing? Simple. Your ability to measure and influence behaviors that matter to you. Enter gamification.

Gamification enables you to drive, measure, and reward high-value behaviors by customers or employees. Game mechanics leverage design and behavioral psychology principles inherent in today’s social games to drive and reward specific user behaviors in business environments. Smart gamification elements — such as points, achievements, levels, leaderboards, missions, and contests — can be employed to drive desired behaviors on virtually any website or enterprise application (see Figure 1-1).

Your customers and employees, like anyone, crave attention, recognition, approval, and rewards. With gamification, you feed this craving and in the process convert customers into loyal fans and employees into highly effective collaborators and advocates.

Gamification: The intersection of psychology and technology

One way to think of gamification is as the intersection of psychology and technology. Most successful gamification programs rely to some degree on behavioral psychology — understanding what motivates someone to engage with certain elements on a website, app, or what have you.

In the past, the people who designed websites and software applications were concerned with simply developing technology — say, to automate a business process or to make it more streamlined. They weren’t so worried about making sure people would actually use it. Nowadays, it’s about humanizing the technology and applying psychological and behavioral concepts to increase the likelihood that the technology will be used and used properly.

It’s a little like ergonomics. Sure, there were hammers before. But when someone thought to shape the handle so it was easier to grasp, and to add rubber to make the handle grippy, so it wouldn’t slip, suddenly the hammer became easier and more pleasurable to use. Similarly, technology designed with psychological and behavioral concepts in mind is simply more delicious.

Illustration by Wiley, Composition Services Graphics

Figure 1-1: With gamification, you can drive desired behaviors across your technology investments to get the value you wanted.

People really crave recognition, and their reputations are important to them. Gamification enables you to tap into those motivating forces. When done correctly, it’s amazingly effective.

Proof Positive: Does Gamification Work?

Yes, gamification works. Next question.

Oh — you want evidence. Fair enough. Here are a few specific examples:

Beat the GMAT (BTG): The world’s largest social network for MBA applicants, BTG launched a social network called MBA Watch as part of its effort to build a high-quality community of MBA candidates. In an attempt to motivate and influence users to share insights and knowledge techniques in solving problems, BTG used various gamification techniques, including badges and leaderboards. The results: A 195 percent increase in pages visited, a 370 percent increase on time spent on site, and 50,000 activities performed by 8,000 users.

Sneakpeeq: This purveyor of up-and-coming style, home, and living brands sought to redefine the way people shop by gamifying its website. As users explore the site, they are awarded points for performing various specific behaviors, including sharing on Facebook or Twitter, peeqing at a product page to see a special price, and loving products. Top users at the end of each shopping day are rewarded with site credit, which they can redeem at any Sneakpeeq store. The results: a 70 percent month-over-month lift in peeqs, a 590 percent lift in social shares, a 935 percent lift in loves, and a 3,000 percent lift in buy clicks.

Interscope Records: This American record label, which manages dozens of artists and bands, sought to encourage people who visited its websites to post, comment, watch videos, share content, and perform other high-value behaviors. By applying smart gamification, Interscope enabled a 40 percent increase in comments, an 18 percent increase in shares, and a whopping 650 percent increase in engagement.

MuchMusic.com: MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent to MTV, received millions of visitors each year on its website, MuchMusic.com. But Much needed a way to foster more repeat visits. Enter gamification. Using game mechanics, Much began rewarding visitors for performing such actions as signing up, leaving a comment, uploading content, voting on polls, and so on. The company also devised various missions to generate engagement with specific shows and campaigns. The results: In the first month, more than 23,000 users created accounts on the site — a 21 percent increase, with nearly one in three returning on a daily basis. In addition, more than 325,000 behaviors were rewarded, and nearly 120,000 achievements unlocked.

All that being said, gamification is not necessarily a panacea. If your business or product is lousy, or if you’re at the bottom of a dying industry, gamification alone can’t save you. It’s a little like the lipstick-on-a-pig analogy. No matter how much lipstick you put on a pig, it’s still a pig in lipstick. At the end of the day, people look for value. If your value proposition sucks, gamification can’t make it suck less.

Remember the old slogan of BASF, the German chemical company? “At BASF, we don’t make a lot of the products you buy. We make a lot of the products you buy better.” That’s kind of what gamification does. It doesn’t make your offering; it makes your offering better.

Who’s on First: Who’s Using Gamification?

So what are some of the industries that are already using gamification? Here are just a few:

Retail and e-commerce

Politics

Healthcare

Nonprofit

Human resources

World-class retailers, e-commerce communities, and consumer brands — including Footlocker, Samsung, Bluefly, Barnes & Noble, General Mills, and Dannon — rely on gamification to meet key business objectives.

Gamification in politics

In an attempt to engage constituents of varying age groups, some political cam-paigns have begun to tap into gamification. For example, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s campaign website (www.barackobama.com) ran a contest— the prize: dinner with the president and First Lady — to persuade site visitors to donate. Perhaps an even more overt example was the Obama campaign’s G.O.P. Debate Watch site (www.gopdebatewatch.com), where Democratic supporters could play a game in which they pledged to donate each time a Republican candidate used a word from a pre-designated “hot list” during the debate (think Obamacare, flat tax, socialism, and so on). Gamification is also used by political campaigns to foster competition among canvassers — in a fun way.

North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue took gamification of politics to a whole new level with the launch of her Balance the Budget Challenge, a game, complete with a friendly dog character, in which players must find the right mix of choices to get the state’s deficit to zero (see Figure 1-2). Numbers are based on real data, and the proposals included in the game — which pertain to education, social services, public safety, general government, jobs, and more — are the very same proposals the governor herself had to entertain when preparing her own budget.

Image courtesy of the State of North Carolina

Figure 1-2: North Carolina’s Balance the Budget Challenge.

Gamification in healthcare

Healthcare is one area where gamification has really taken off. Indeed, loads of health insurers, including UnitedHealth Group, BlueCross BlueShield, and Aetna, have launched initiatives to gamify their offerings. For example, Aetna’s online social game, Mindbloom, helps members improve health and wellness and lead a more balanced life.

In addition, several startups have emerged, using gamification in an attempt to make fitness more fun. Here are just a few:

Nike+ (http://nikeplus.nike.com/plus) enables members to track activities, compare results, set goals, and improve performance — as well as receive training tips and tricks from world-class coaches. Games, challenges, and virtual competitions with friends help users stay inspired.

With Fitocracy’s free iPhone app (downloadable from www.fitocracy.com), users can log their workouts and receive points for them. As they do, they earn achievements and badges, as well as take on new challenges. Engagement is further promoted through the use of social tools. For example, users can add friends, join groups, follow others, chat, comment, and compare results.

GymPact (www.gym-pact.com) helps members stick to their workouts by rewarding them with cash when they do — paid for by members who fail to work out as promised.

With HealthRally (www.heathrally.com), members can reward friends or family members for meeting fitness goals, or ask friends and family members to reward them.

A service called EveryMove (www.everymove.org), currently in beta, will enable members to earn rewards such as discounts on health insurance by achieving health goals.

Gamification in nonprofit

The nonprofit world has used gamification to great effect to build awareness of critical causes and increase engagement.