Last two years I've been involved in initiating and implementing Gamification. And what a learning experience it has already been! It all started with a simple problem. After leading a group of developers for couple of years, I noticed that we could use more binding as a group. This was difficult to achieve given the fact that we were placed at different locations and worked for different customers. The feedback from the group made this problem very clear and I set out in search to address this problem. I remembered the TED talk from Gabe Zichermann where he talked about games providing engagement. And I thought: let's try and see if it really works.
With a small core team, we designed a game; very custom-made, fit-for-use for our group. The design and implementation of the game kept the core team engaged and the rest of the development community liked the fun aspect of it. But stuff like this doesn't remain hidden. Soon people from the rest of the organisation found out and before we knew it, the game was rolled out to the whole of our Netherlands business unit.
The game is simple and revolves around badges like most gamification projects. But what makes it special is that customization. It is tailor-made. We introduced events to go with the game - pure gamification events! They are fun and bring people from all over the organisation together. We created a game we wanted to play!
After 2 years, we are now a Gamification special interest group which attracts people from all corners of the organisation having different roles. What gels this group is the drive to study effects of Gamification and how to implement it in different situations. All of this is done after office hours. We have achieved Engagement!
Looking back, I'm very happy with getting to know and experimenting with Gamification. I will be implementing it in every context where I see a possibility.
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