So, gamification
is a funny word to me because it reminds me of the silly words
we used to make up as kids. I grew up
in Chennai, South India and my native language
is Tamil or Tamil. As you may know
British colonized India for more than a century
and many kids like me went to English medium schools
where we were talked to speak perfect English which we did for the most part
but every now and then
we needed our own native language to make a point
so get's be inventive we came up with a look around
we would take a comer work we would added English suffix to it
and come up with tankless the most popular suffixes
fly and using this technique we could anger by anyway
so when I heard the word game if I
it made me smile each thought to me
like that needed Leslie Kean games past
the colonial all arts at work so I became curious
I research did applied it to my work which is designing business software
and last year in collaboration with my colleague my you heard a
published a book guinea pig Asian at work
now the kid the would give the cation still makes me smile but now
I believe it's more than a technique it is a mindset
that has the potential to transform
our workplace and I'm happy to talk to you today about
what this game is a cation doesn't belong in the workplace
and leave you with some practical ideas that you can try
when you get back to work so let's begin imagine
your favorite game it can be a sport
a board game on an online game
and reflect on why it is your favorite
is it challenge the game presents D is like the sense of achievement
you get when you play the game or is it the %uh pressure
do you like the connection and a competition
you get with your friends and you play or is it simply the feedback
with games give us lot more than what we get into real life
now give this occasion
is not the same as game design it is
about carefully selecting the elements the love about games
like talents connection competition feedback
and adding them to a non-game context
to solve a problem are to engage an audience it is a tool
to motivate people to change their behavior through positive
reinforcement so let me give you some examples so then we drive down the
street
and ego about the speed limit the risk
getting a ticket right in Sweden they tried a different approach
when you drive at
or below the speed limit you get entered into a lottery
where you have the chance to win the proceeds of those who are speeding
by fifty focusing the attention
on the non speeders and giving them positive feedback today
good law-abiding driving behavior they were able to lower the average speed
from 35 225 kilometers an hour
we all know that fitness exercise
is good for us but knowing something is good for us and
actually doing it are two different things sometimes seems negative feedback
like guilds to get ourselves to exercise now the game mechanics and fitness
trackers
like Fitbit are Apple watch give us feedback on how we are doing
I love us too said a positive goal which is very important
it can access to a community of our friends who can't cure
are time to us to motivate us to reach our goals
game occasion
is a standard feature in in hybrid or electric cars today
because these cars requires a driver DT cinemas driving behavior
to minimize the fuel consumption so car manufacturers
are using game based techniques game mechanics to give feedback to the driver
on how they're doing some manufacturers like Nissan Leaf
are connecting the driver to a community of other leave drivers to see
the regional ranking or the number of trees they have saved
so my husband he drives a hybrid car
and he isn't intense competition
with a group of his friends desi
who can go the farthest on one gallon of gas
and he doesn't want me to drive his car because he's afraid that I might know
what his numbers
so these are ways in which businesses are using
game based techniques to connect and engage their customers
externally but businesses are also using similar techniques
to engage and motivate that employees see you can ask I do serious work
how can't play and work makes
no well
if you ask that question you reveal your assumption
that the opposite of play is work research does not support this
assumption
according to Brian Sutton Smith
a plate the artist the opposite of play is not work
but depression human beings
love to work human being fluff dip play and get this occasion just gives us an
opportunity
to combine the two this notion
that play and work our opposite to one another
is a legacy on the industrial age very clocked into work and be clocked out to
play
our workplaces have changed significantly since then
you have transitioned to the information needs and we are now
at what dan because the conceptually the expectations on us
as employees has changed as well in the industrial each
the may be told precisely what to do how to do it and is expected to execute
efficiently
now where expected to bring
our creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to work
and help our businesses you know it because
that's what constitutes sexist today said to be successful as an employee
in this new reality we
have to be engaged in the mission of the company and make good decisions every
day
to further this mission at the time
when the need for employee engagement is at an all-time high
the numbers tell a different and sobering story
according to the Gallup employees engagement so they have 2013
13 percent of employees
engaged at work that means yes psychologically
committed to the cause of the organization and the link to make a
positive contribution
bulk of employees sixty-three percent
I'm not engaged that means the are
unmotivated and underling to make a contribution
and worst of all 24 percent
are actively disengaged yet i'm happy
on productive and liable to spread
their negativity business leaders are taking a look at these alarming numbers
and are willing to try new ways to
engage and motivate their employees and games occasion just offers us
a new way by questioning our assumptions of work and play
now I did not envision our entire workplace
chant transforming into one big game at least not yet
but I do see some appropriate
areas will be can focus are Inc game vacation efforts internally
let me give you three examples an engaged workforce
hola an engaged workforce
requires an educated workforce and companies that cannot afford to send
employs two weeks of training
are turning to e-learning and e-learning
is a perfect use case for game with a cation because
it allows employees to set their own learning goals
take the training at their own convenience and get incentivize for
doing so
usually that is an online and offline component to this training
so employees can't view the
videos online and take the online training independently and come together
locally for project-based learning and collaboration so the flipped classroom
that Salman Khan from Khan Academy talked about
for school children is happening in the workplace is well
we've heard about the mid
of the surface he's a Greek mythological character
with condemned to push this heavy border
up a hill only to see a drawdown again and again
there are some jobs in the company
that make us feel excessive because they're difficult
all rapid to death but they need to get done for the sake of that business
game application of assess a week to encourage employees
doing such difficult all reparative task the job of a call center agent
is not easy they have to listen to customer complaints
all day and resolve them as quickly as possible
and
asa products get increasingly complex it's very difficult for one
agent to know all the answers to all the question so agents rely on one another
for their areas of expertise so many companies are offering
game if I call center solutions where agents can often
to get feedback on how they're doing celebrate their success
and getting sent to life for contributing content
to the company's knowledge base additionally
companies are fostering this communities are their customers
met their members can answer each other's questions
this reduces the number of calls to the call center
by crowdsourcing answers from the community
and moreover members who gives smart
or helpful and says get peer recognition
and bragging rights be all have unique skills
and talents that be willingly give to our
employers just to be part of a good corporate citizen
like these efforts are unnoticed
109 and therefore on motivating so give this occasion of Isis away
to recognize employees who are going beyond their job description
so Microsoft was able to leverage the sentiment to improve the linguistic
quality
all the Windows operating system which is available in many different languages
throughout the work they do have a team of professional translators
but be found that these translations were somewhat inaccurate
because they missed the local context so Microsoft challenged
their bilingual employees who did double check
the translations are the translators so they played the translation quality game
sewed and employees what recognized for the efforts and a
in the best employees were where on but recognized
now and most of all
employees does very proud to improve the quality of their software
in there own native language so these three examples
fostering a culture of learning encouraging employees who are doing
tough are rapid iv tasks
and recognizing in place we're going beyond their job descriptions
I just three of the many possibilities you may be able to think about other
ideas
bees on your business needs and that type of that type of behavior
you want to encourage in your organization you should know
the data critics have gay mitigation and the sea
that'd exploits the employees and it it many plates them to do things against
their will
my perspective on this is very simple ethics and morality govern all aspects
of who we are
and what do you do and gains occasion is no exception
in the words of Jean mechanical a game designed by Anya
iffy use the power of games to give people
and opportunity to do something that they want to do
we are doing good if the use the power of games
to get people to do something they do not want to do
we are doing evil designing successful games occasion systems
is not easy it requires a deep empathy
and respect for the player a clear understanding of the mission
and insight on how to motivate the player towards the mission
thinking like a game designer inspires us to consider the products emotional
qualities
as the less functional months and this type of thinking
have broad implications be on product design it can be applied
to physical and digital experiences as well so
I grew up in India but now I work in Silicon Valley for German company
I lead a team called the design and going to Vision Center
we had an in house design agency where we work with our customers directly
on their strategic user experience and innovation projects
so we use a methodology car design thinking and the invite our customers
to come to us in workshop setting to go innovate with us let me share with you
some other games
we play with our customers in these workshops first
our customers may be hesitant are skeptical
so we use warm up games to engage them in the process
one such game is a marshmallow spaghetti game
so we divide the participants into team and yes using marshmallows
and uncooked spaghetti that participants build towers
and the team with the tallest tower defense to this kind of friendly
competition
helps break the ice and gets the participants engaged in the workshop
before the prototyping face we played a
paper airplane game that participants build
paper airplanes however East participants can only use one hand
this quickly reinforces the point that they have to learn together
to work together to be effective before put our vision workshops
where the object is innovation we play
the word association or improper King the participants had to quickly say
are act out the first word that comes to mind based on the last word
spoken this helps unleash their creativity
had staked themselves less seriously and just
overcome their fear of failure by giving it a go so we have a number of such
schemes
in a in our arsenal and the youth and selectively
based on the goals at the workshop by the fees are the workshop be fine that
even the most skeptical but dissidents are at their creative best
when they give themselves permission to play have you ever been
in a boring meeting they did in stock on time
nor end on time and everybody spoke at the same time
never yes let me share with you
a game based technique that we use in our workshop
to a it in our meetings to help solve this problem to make sure that the
meeting starts on time
we strike a gong everyone has the meeting in their calendar
but the strike they're gone to just indicate that the meeting is about to
start
to limit the time of the meeting we set the timer to 15 minutes
to make sure that no one speaks on top of each other
we have a rule that anyone holding an angry bird plush toy
can speak when they're done speaking
week throw the bird to the next person who has something to say
so we race to beat the clock and we celebrate than we do
we've been playing these meetings game for over a year now
and in a recent survey the team members spent in that one of the things that
they love about the team
is that we read on this meeting so here's my gift to you
who
with I believe there's a Dominique in the audience
yes you think
in one of your workshop end let me know how it goes
action select ended with the words
of Mary Poppins for every job that must be done
there is an element of fun you find that fun
and snap the jobs again so gay mitigation is a funny way
but if be adopted as a mindset we have the potential
to transform our workplace so what do you get if i
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