An experiment with gamification

I have been interested in gamification for a while – and I think it’s the future of education. I am definitely going to take a walk down that road – as soon as resources are gathered.

But what is gamification?

It is basically making a game out of generally mundane things that we need to do, but do in a lethargic, bored sort of way. Gamification seeks to make such tasks interesting, rewarding and fun.  Like submitting bills, doing grocery, doing administrative things, house maintenance, reading books, learning new languages, going to the gym, quitting smoking – all of these are very necessary, but difficult to do because there is lack of immediate rewards, or involves monotonous activity that keeps a lot of people away. What if suddenly these activities could become part of a game? What if you were competing against a lot of people, getting points, rewards, attention of other people and recognition for accomplishing these otherwise boring tasks? That is Gamification.

If you don’t believe me….just think of Farmville. A series of meaningless, ultimately boring actions would be undertaken by millions of individuals just to compete with each other in a fictitious world.

Clearly, games can be used to make people do what they will not do otherwise.

What about filing a consumer complaint?

How many times do you feel cheated, or shortchanged by service providers and well-known brands? Do you talk about it or fight it out with them?

Consumer complaints serve a very important role in a free market society – it makes information available, and provides deterrence against consumer malpractices.

I understand that it is not always worth it to go to the consumer court and file a case that would take months to fight. What about making an online complaint?

There are actually a number of websites that are working into this domain – the one most well known have been started by an entrepreneur-lawyer Ankur Singla (Akosha.com).

Recently, I got a mail from the team at Shoutout.co.in  – Santosh AR and  Purushothaman wrote in about their venture that seeks to make consumer complaints more engaging.

Something they wrote greatly caught my attention.

What if we could make games out of our pitches, advertisements and brochures? Gamification of marketing, basically. To limited extent, ShoutOut seems to have achieved this. I found it very interesting. It appears to be a slideshow of pictures – scrolled rapidly to get a motion like effect.

Folks over here – have you been thinking about this? How can we make our marketing messages, prodicts/service descriptions more gamefied? What are the technologies involved? What are the recent developments in this area?