Gamification at work: Designing engaging business software

Abstract

Gamification is a buzz word in business these days. In its November 2012 press release, Gartner predicts that "by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations". In the same report, they also predict that "by 2014, 80% of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives, primarily due to poor design". What is gamification? Does it belong in the workplace? Are there design best practices that can increase the chance of success of enterprise gamification efforts? Janaki Kumar answers these questions and more in this paper Gamification @ Work. She cautions against taking a "chocolate covered broccoli" approach of simply adding points and badges to business applications and calling them gamified. She outlines a methodology called Player Centered Design which is a practical guide for user experience designers, product managers and developers to incorporate the principles of gamification into their software. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.