The popular concept of the last period is “Gamification“. Gabe Zicherman and Christopher Cunnigham, who came up with this definition, define gamification as follows: “The use of game thinking and game rules to engage users and solve problems.”
We need to explain the word “play” a little bit. In English, we translate the words “play” and “game” as play. These two concepts are different from each other. Play is an entertaining activity that we use to spend our free time. Game, on the other hand, are enjoyable activities that have rules, have a specific purpose, and are limited in time. The concept of gamification also comes from the word game and we can say that an environment without game mechanics is made fun by including game mechanics.
We can use gamification to make our working life fun and change our routines. With the gamification we will do with our colleagues in our workplace, you can enter time with a sweet competition while having a more productive and enjoyable time. We have compiled 5 gamification stages that you can use in this regard.
Understanding gamification in 5 questions | Enkronos
1. Determining the goals of gamification
When using gamification, we can choose goals that we can do in our workplace and that will make our working life and environment easier. When setting these goals, it is important that we choose goals that are measurable, quantifiable and can be done in a short time.
For example, if there is a common kitchen at work and you do not have a staff member who takes care of the kitchen, you can set behavior change goals such as putting dirty glasses in the dishwasher, making and serving coffee and tea to colleagues, reporting people who park in the wrong place in the parking lot, protecting stray animals near your workplace, organizing cultural events to socialize with your colleagues at work, which will both improve your working environment and change or change your behavior with your colleagues (such as parking vehicles in the parking lot correctly).
2. Identify Intrinsic Motivators
For gamification to be successful and for everyone to enjoy participating, you need to focus on intrinsic motivations rather than extrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivations are necessary for gamification to continue and they should be in your gamification. However, if you can meet the actual process by contributing to your colleagues’ internal well-being and motivating this well-being, you can provide a great enjoyable and fun gamification.
3. Identify Gamification Mechanics
You can decide what you want to do in your workplace and what methods you will use to do it. It is the gamification mechanics that provide competition and increase the enjoyment of your gamification by involving more people. You can add the element of chance to your gamification, for example by adding a die. By setting challenges, you can heat up the competition and encourage mutual play. Mechanics will ensure that your gamification spreads among employees and is used continuously. For this, you can think about your own work environment and choose the ones that are ideal for you. For example, you can place a large wheel of fortune at the entrance of the workplace, and the spinner can also be required to complete the task within a given time limit. You can develop and add such examples.
Literature and Examples: Enterprise Gamification | Enkronos
4. Create an Avatar
With a little work with your colleagues, everyone can create an avatar for themselves. Even a certain template is prepared as an example and each participant can customize their avatar by drawing it. Thus, while continuing with their avatar in gamification, they can also make changes to their avatar whenever they want.
5. Gamification Wall (Points, Badges, Leaderboards)
You can dedicate a wall in your workplace to gamification. On the wall you can display the names of the people who perform tasks, the tasks they have done and the badges they have earned. The points should be determined by the tasks performed and luck factors, and it should be indicated in advance which tasks, challenges and how many points they will earn. We should be careful when using badges. While badges can be used effectively in Foursquare, in many other applications they do not come close to the same effect and can also have a negative impact. Therefore, it is useful to be careful. It would be nice to have every participant on the leaderboard. However, it is necessary to renew and restart this table in certain periods so that those below do not get disconnected from gamification. For example, it could be started weekly or monthly.
Would you like to create a gamification project for your business? Contact Enkronos today.
