Gamification

As Gamification Gamification or ( more rarely Spielifizierung ) refers to the application of game- typical elements and processes in play foreign context. These game elements typical to include experience points, high scores, progress bars, rankings, virtual goods or awards. By integrating these playful elements an increase of motivation of people is to be achieved mainly to be met otherwise little challenging, perceived as too repetitive or complex tasks. Initial data analysis of gamifizierten applications are partial significant improvements in areas such as user motivation, learning success, customer loyalty, ROI or data quality.

Term

Gamification is the application of game design principles and game design thinking games mechanics to play foreign applications and processes to solve problems and engage participants. The aim is to increase motivation of users to increasingly interact with the applications or accept desired behaviors. Gamification helps to make techniques for user engaging and retaining them longer to the application by showing a clear way to master the application, but also promote the independence and freedom of choice and help to solve problems. Gamifizierte applications take advantage of the tendency of people to participate in games and activities to do in this way, which would normally be considered boring to answer such as tax returns, expense reports or surveys, shopping and much more.

Until September 2010, gamification has been mainly used in the advertising and entertainment area as a means of customer loyalty. Gamification is however more applications in areas such as fitness and health, ecology and sustainability, training programs, online shopping or in the education and training system.

The Gamification one uses, among other things the following typical elements:

• Visible status ( progress bar only): The user wants to see the progress of their own work clearly, for example in the form of certain attributes or the so-called " badges " or a percentage. This creates transparency in the performance of a partial or total abandonment, a key element of motivation.
• Ranking: If the user also view the status and progress of other, a first type of competition arise. So Google introduced on its map service Google Maps in the mobile version for smartphones in February 2012, a ranking of friends at check -ins at certain locations a. The more the person visited a site, the higher they rose up in the rankings.
• Quest: A task that must complete within a certain time the user - often a mystery or a simple hard work. In many instances, quests build on each other to train skills and experience. These tasks can also be completed with others sometimes. Then the pure gain expertise will not only strengthened, but also the capacity for teamwork.
• Transparency of the result: The user should know the outcome of an action before. In the case of gamifizierten application this would experience points, prices or other Commendations. Thus, the user can evaluate and appreciate what his next action will bring him myself. Here, the idea is to present a higher goal (see " Deeper meaning " below).
• Feedback: All user activities should result in a visible rating, best immediately. By avoiding negative feedback and striving for positive feedback of the user learns.
• Deeper sense ( " Epic Meaning" ): As the user act in a goal -oriented, the goals should lead to a strong motivation, so be particularly desirable. The work within the group can already be perceived as meaningful.
• Group work ( " Community Collaboration" ): The joint work on the solution brings users together. So can be solved ( up to the entire community ) some tasks only by cooperation of multiple players. This motivates users to socialize among themselves to the formation of a self -organizing system (online community ).
• Cascading Information: The user should see in the task currently to be solved only for him important information; he is not to be distracted and overwhelmed by incomprehensible details. In particular, educational games use the element " Cascading Information" to convey learning content continuously and build on each other, without anticipating future content.