Author Archives: Ruairí Ó hAilín
Engagement through Gamification
Posted by in Apps | Mobile | Software | Telecom | Uncategorized - (2 Comments)One of many interesting talks at last week’s DevDays Mobile/iPhone developers event, was a session entitled “Engagement through Gamification” by Chris McClelland of Ecliptic Labs.
Not a completely new idea, but great to spend some time listening to someone who has put a good deal of thought into it. I’ve read about people using games controllers for education and other non-game applications, but here the focus was on the social interactions in gaming and taking those into the “real” world.
The idea is that people are more likely to participate in a community if they are engaged using some or all of the basic human triggers common in games – the desire for reward, status, achievement, self expression or respect whether it is driven by competitiveness or even by altruism. Chris went on to give examples of social media companies who use these triggers in their products and also to outline some software frameworks that can be used to provide much of the functionality if you don’t want to build your own.
A question to readers of this blog – are there elements of gamification that you could use to engage your customers further? Apart from the obvious areas of social media and elearning, could it apply to enterprise applications? Should you incorporate a leaderboard into your next release?
Reference: Chris recommended a book called Total Engagement on the subject of gamification.
DevDays: Mobile developers from across the island gathered in Belfast and Dublin last week for DevDays 2010 (http://devdays.info). I attended the Dublin session although the agenda was similar at both events. There were talks on Facebook integration from Tapadoo.com, Connected/Mobile Health solutions, Card Payments in iPhone Apps separate to the AppStore, adding location to your apps from OS3.ie , good/bad product strategy from Des Traynor of Contrast and the importance of good design.


