Top Gamification Examples in Europe. How gamification is reshaping businesses. By Doug Palmer, Steve Lunceford and Aaron J.
Patton > Photography by Matt Lennert Wayne Lin points at the onscreen scoreboard for his new application that allows friends to compare and discuss their household electricity use. “Energy consumption is not something people usually talk about,” he says.1 But on this app people are talking—a lot. Users are leaving tips, providing support, sharing successes and having fun as they challenge each other to reduce their energy usage.
Lin is the director of Product Management at Opower (pronounced Oh-Power), a company that has built a customer engagement platform to help deliver energy efficiency programs to the electric utility industry. “Our goal is to foster an environment where people talk about their energy use in ways their friends can relate to. Opower’s new product is more than an online report. Opower is not alone in the attempt to improve energy efficiency with a new approach. 26 Elements of a Gamification Marketing Strategy. Games are everywhere.
More and more businesses are using gamification to create brand awareness and drive user engagement. Gartner, Inc. predicts that more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application by 2014. In the last few years, we’ve also seen an increase in the number of companies that deliver gamification services and solutions including Bunchball, BigDoor Media, Badgeville and Gigya. “Gamification typically involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.”
(From Gamification Wiki) What follows is an A-Z guide of 26 elements you should be aware of when you consider a gamification marketing strategy for your business. #1: Achievers (Bartle’s Types) Understanding the ways in which people may interact with a game can be essential information for designers. Nicoholas Yee does a nice job of summarizing Bartle’s types. Richard Bartle's four player types. #2: Badges as a Reward Kevin Warhus writes, 9 Strategies to Gamify Your Startup. Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, a non-profit organization that promotes youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment.
The YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs grow businesses. Gamification is hot right now. More and more startups and established brands are building mobile apps and platforms that offer awards, badges and other fun ways to reward and recognize influencers. It's a great way to build a community organically around a product or service and impact customer retention. But like any shiny new marketing strategy, gamification won't necessarily yield more sales — or better engagement — unless it's applied thoughtfully, in a way your users can relate to. I asked a panel of successful entrepreneurs for their best tips for successfully "gamifying" a brand. 1. . - Brett Farmiloe, Markitors 2.
. - George Mavromaras, Mavro Inc. | Praetor Global LLC. The Elements of Player Experience. Video games are breaking out of the roles they've traditionally occupied and are moving into spaces where they collide with UX design.
There are games that serve as social glue between old friends, and games that bring strangers together to collaborate on solving problems. There are games that help people meet their life goals, and games that let people reward others for meeting theirs. There are games that facilitate creative self-expression, help people understand the news, train doctors to save lives, and advocate for human rights. As they expand into these realms, the lines separating game design from software UX design are growing fuzzier and less important.
Since both UX and game design are forms of human-computer interaction, they inherently share some common theory, objectives, and practices. A Playful Model One of the most familiar and useful frameworks in UX design is Jesse James Garrett's The Elements of User Experience, but that model is specific to the Web. A Gamification Framework for Interaction Designers. Gamification is a hot topic.
Missed it? On Google Trends it first appeared as a blip in late October 2010 and then took off in January so quickly that it appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition in March. Investors seem interested, and it already has a sold-out conference and a fast-growing list of agencies that will help you “do gamification.”