When talking about using gaming elements to motivate, train or even hire employees, one of the most important aspects of the success of the project, is the design of the game. When designing a gaming strategy for the workplace much emphasis must be put on the design of the gamification idea, mechanics and software. One of the main reasons that gamification fails at improving employee engagement and motivation is a wrong design.

“Design is a huge part of successful gamification. Designing a game experience, rather than a “gamification” experience takes work. Kapp adds that just adding gamification elements such as points, badges and leaderboards to a project will fall flat unless those items mean something.” (O’Connell, 2015) According to Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner, “poor game design is one of the key failings of many gamified applications today. The focus is on the obvious game mechanics, such as points, badges and leader boards, rather than the more subtle and more important game design elements, such as balancing competition and collaboration, or defining a meaningful game economy. As a result, in many cases, organizations are simply counting points, slapping meaningless badges on activities and creating gamified applications that are simply not engaging for the target audience. Some organizations are already beginning to cast off poorly designed gamified applications.” (Gartner, 2012)

Make it look and feel good

The designers of the game obviously can’t forget the importance of the interface. “Without engaging graphics or a well-designed experienced, gamification cannot be successful. The user interface or the look and feel of an experience is an essential element in the process of gamification. How an experience is aesthetically perceived by a person greatly influences his or her willingness to accept gamification.” (Kapp, 2012, 11)

If the interface is cluttered, difficult to use or just plain unattractive, players will not be enchanted with it and fail to get excited about the prospect of using it. I also believe that in some digital services, for example in health care applications, the gaming aspects should be presented subtly, since they are not the focus of the service experience.

Don’t forget the user’s motivation!

When designing the game mechanics, it is important to remember to consider the target audience and what ambitions motivate them. This means understanding both their intrinsic (personally rewarding) and extrinsic (external reward) motivations. According to Pihl, “the problem is that the proponents of gamification don’t actually understand the substance of games. In their enthusiastic fervor they have mistaken some of the least important parts of games – things like leaderboards, points and badges – as the essence of games.” (Pihl, 2012)

I belive this is the problem of many digital services and applications that use gaming elements and the reason for their failure.  It is not enough to just gamify all mundane jobs and except to increase productivity and employee motivation. “The real challenge is to design player-centric applications that focus on the motivations and rewards that truly engage players more fully.” (Gardner, 2012)

Sources:

O’Connell, A.J. (2015) ‘All Work and Some Play: A Guide to Gamification In Workplace Training’, SkilledUp.com (19 March 2015) available: http://www.skilledup.com/insights/work-play-guide-gamification-workplace-training (Accessed 28 Dec 2015)