Martin Bråkenhielm, CEO and founder of BizPart Engage, gives his view of Gamification and share his journey for creating the world’s first out of the box Engagement Platform that as an example handles the Engagement Management for the resellers of the Nordic part of one of the biggest conglomerates in the world.

First it was Pong. Then Atari 2600. Later on I got my Commodore 64 with a tape station followed by the Amiga 500. I remember how in my earlier years I got hooked on video games. I disappeared into another world, determined to make it to the next level. I tried time and time again until I overcame the challenges. What I found most appealing was probably the strategic and tactical elements. I laid up a plan, trained hard and executed my strategy.

When I grew older it was sports that got my full attention. I dreamed of becoming a professional golfer and practiced 7 days a week, determined to make the dream come true. How game dynamics positively affected me was something I would take with me into my professional career.
Starting my own company was always the obvious choice. I was raised to look up to entrepreneurs as successful and independent visionaries. I set out to help people to realize the potential of cloud-based services and founded Alien Interactive in 1999. And my vision was bigger than that. I wanted to find a way to offer people what games had offered me; the enjoyment of motivation, determination and deep engagement. The word gamification was not yet heard of but I was fascinated by the thought of making an engaging game out of less exciting work-days. But over ten years ago, without the adoption of technology we see today, it was even harder for people to understand that idea than the potential of cloud services.

In the first part of this treatise we focused on how people and organizations are rated today through a variety of scores. This part focuses on the purpose and composition of a Gamification Score and why this is a more accurate measure to rate individuals and entities.

The Purpose of a Gamification Score

It should come as no surprise from what we have learned so far, that gamification data contains extremely valuable data. For organizations, for recruiters, and of course for the players, the value will be tremendous. By recording the players activities, achievements, and progression through the systems, finding the right player (read: employee or team member) for certain challenges (read: positions) becomes not only easier, but also more reliable. No need to trust references that cannot be verified anyways. No need to rely on résumés that can be total inventions. Even if some of the information in résumés can be checked from educational institutions (like graduation, grades, certifications), obtaining them may require effort – and as we’ve learned from a recent high-profile case – even CEO-candidates for internet-search behemoth Yahoo! were not properly vetted.

While I don’t want to downplay the importance of personality and chemistry between the people hiring and the potential new hire as a crucial criteria for how well they will probably go along, employers still want to base their decisions on better facts than are available today. And we know that we humans are innately biased when it comes to selecting. We are more likely to hire people that are more similar to us. That’s where a gamification score can serve as a better basis for making rational decisions.

Applying gamification to healthcare and fitness is more common that expected. A recent wave of fitness applications and devices to monitor activities indicates of where gamification will go for the fitness sector. But also the healthcare sector can profit from gamification, as any improvement in a patients healing, or prevention of falling sick, can bring down costs. The following article introduces a wide variety of concepts where gamification has been applied.

Patient Interaction

Health

Helping people understand when to take and how much of their prescription is the goal of the smartphone app that the San Francisco-based startup Mango Health launched in 2012. When the player follows the schedule with taking medications and supplements, the application rewards points with.

A video game is targeting to improve executive functions deficit for ADHD children. Akili Interactive Labs developed this game that was at the time of writing undergoing pilot studies, and the company is aiming at getting FDA approval for this new treatment through a video game.

Fighting childhood obesity with a game is what the non-profit Hopelab tries to achieve with Zamzee. By walking, running and other physical exercises teenagers can earn “pointz“ and redeem them for toys or gift cards. An accelerometer clipped to the pants monitors the activities. Via USB port the data can then be uploaded and be compared via rankings.

The main scientific purpose of this bachelor thesis is the analysis if the implementation of game elements in mobile learning applications influences the user experience. Furthermore, the concept of gamification, which implies that game elements are implemented in non-game applications, will be elucidated and potential positive effects on test applications analyzed.

A questionnaire and two separate test applications were created in order to give an elaborate answer to the leading question, which asks if gamification has an influence on the user experience of mobile learning applications. Building the test applications specifically for this purpose allowed avoiding confounding factors like differing designs or basic functions as well as addressing the majority of smart phone users by programming it as a website rather than as a mobile app.