Gamification - Project 2

[The prompt: Create a gamified system for a city government to increase fitness & decrease insurance costs]

Most people realize that exercise and fitness are important to good health and quality of life.  No one likes to be sick or unwell, but sometimes the choices people make contribute to an unhealthful lifestyle and they need the structure of a program to make changes.  Creating a gamified system to provide extrinsic motivation and rewards is a way to encourage healthful habits, and when people start to feel the physical improvements in their lives, they will continue the behaviors for the intrinsic value.

For the employees of the city of Werbachia, I propose adding an activity reporting feature to the automated timeclock that the city uses to track attendance and hours.  This will be a low-cost, uncomplicated way for employees to report their daily physical activity and this data will be reported back to users in a weekly progress update that tracks their progress against themselves & against an average of the other city employees.

The game elements of this program include:

• checking in
• points for the different categories of activity (more for strenuous activity or muscle strengthening, fewer for light activity or cardio)
• badges for completing activity goals
• feedback (in the weekly report to track & compare progress)
• quests (a monthly newsletter will give activity suggestions and directions for completion of goals)

At the outset, primary motivation to record activity and encourage increased exercise will be extrinsic. By linking the activity report to the automated timeclock, every employee will have 4 opportunites per day to log their exercise (clocking in & out for the day and in & out for lunch). Because the city uses the same system for all employees, this will relatively simple & cost efficient to implement and maintain.

Every week the employees will receive a progress report which will give them feedback.  They will be able to see their own progress over time and compare their progress to that of the group of city employees as a whole.  The individual employee can choose to share this information with their peers, and this gives the user flexibility and control over the "game". This feeling of engagement is critical to a successful gamified system.  Those who are motivated by self-improvement will be pleased and those who are motivated by cometition with peers and the main group will be pleased as well.

Physical fitness is, well, physical and the more the city employees utilize the system and work to increase their activity levels to progress in the "game", the more they will become fit and feel more healthy and energized.  This good feeling becomes an intrinsic motivator for the user to continue to progress.  What was once a requirement becomes a good and rewarding habit.  In this way, using a gamified system to initiate & encourage increased physical fitness using external motivation leads to the creation of a desire to continue the habit for the intrinsic reward of health and happiness.

Gamification - project 1

The prompt: Provide reasons why gamification could be a useful technique [to sell breakfast pastry].

My submission: Gamification can be a useful technique to reach the goal of increasing the market share of Cereals Inc in the breakfast ready-to-eat market. Incorporating game elements to our product can make the experience more fun for our customers and can increase consumption and brand loyalty.

A primary goal of gamification is to engage people in everyday activities (customer engagement). By adding the right game-like components to our marketing plan, users will begin to associate our pastry with a fun and engaging experience they will want to repeat (easy fun).  We also want them to share with their friends and family, which will encourage more people to try our product in addition to the positive feeling that customers will get from sharing the information (people fun).

Games appeal to men and women equally, and the majority of people in the young adult demographic are comfortable with gaming (broad appeal).  Finding game elements and techniques that will catch and hold the interest of the consumer is becoming the new normal and the product that is fun to use will have an advantage.

It is also possible to use gamification to recognize and reward good habits. This could be as simple as eating breakfast every day or a more complex idea such as enabling users to track thier eating, nutrition and exercise patterns.  A sense of satisfaction from posting progress or meeting goals is another element of fun that gamification can provide.

The applications of gamification are many, but our goal is a simple one: for our customers to feel that choosing a breakfast pastry from Cereals Inc is more than just a meal, but rather a fun and rewarding experience they would like to repeat.