|
SAP is having a contest to come up with a gamification solution. How would you do it? From the article at SAP: "The game is on! The SAP Gamification Cup at SAP Labs in Palo Alto started yesterday. CTO Vishal Sikka and SAP Labs Palo Alto managing director Barbara Holzapfel invited 2,000 employees on the campus for an opportunity to unleash their innovative spirit, collaboration, and creativity in the area of user experience and user engagement: The SAP Gamification Cup. In the next weeks employees will form teams and focus on creating software prototypes that reflect a gamification approach and outcome. How can we make the travel expense system more engaging and fun, how the leave request, how can we nudge people to be more compliant with time reporting, or how can we onboard them slowly on complex software and not frustrate them? Or are there ways to make the UI of manufacturing processes way more gameful with avatars or 3D worlds like FarmVille or SimCity? And what about racking users achievements and better identifying experts and the best users like we do on the SAP Developer Network? As Vishal and Barbara stated in their SAP Gamification Cup announcement "We’re in a new era of enterprise software, one where customers are increasingly considering the usability, design and overall experience in their decision making about whether to purchase SAP software. If SAP is to thrive, we need to revolutionize customers’ experience with our software." Customers and partners are looking to gamification for inspiration, that's why it is critical that SAP understands how and where in the development of our software gamification can best be applied. SAP is dedicated in leading the industry by exploring gamification and bringing innovation to customers. The SAP Gamification Cup will culminate in a DemoJam on June 14th. Each team will have 6 minutes to demo their solution and winners will be selected by a jury of external experts (including a leading expert Gabe Zichermann from Gamification.co) and SAP executives. The winners will go to SAP TechEd in Las Vegas, where the SAP Innojam this year will have gamification as a topic. " Excerpts from the Source: http://bit.ly/kcsdLN |
|
While gamification can be fun and a useful tool for compliance or engagement, putting it into a product just because it is the hot new thing is just silly. I spent 12 years in manufacturing IT, and worked with plant floors around the globe. I have implemented SAP, and honestly do not hate it. The only part of of thee above gamification plans that make much sense at all are making the UI more approachable ( does not have to be gamified to do this) and the identification of experts or leaders. Again, this does not have to be gamified. Travel reports are annoying enough, gamifying them is just a bit patronizing. This is a bit like making a foursquare travel report. But we all know how annoying foursquare can be when you check into the same place over and over again. Most business travel is to the same few places, not lots of new and exciting places. Really, when you have been traveling for business, do you want to come home and "earn badges" or do you just want to fill in the report fast and go see your spouse/partner and kids? |
|
"To gamify" something (like in this case SAP) doesn't necessarily mean making a game out of it. But looking at games helps definitely to learn its "game-design" and so to learn how to build up an comfortable process to interact with software. The success of games are not their avatars or virtual 'vegetables'. It's the way of communicating with its users. That's where a good feedback loop comes into play: Showing personalized data to the User --> Creating a relevance between this data and the user --> giving her choices what to do --> action --> showing the new (because of the 'action') changed personalized data --> and so on. Providing a great feedback-loop often is the key for successfull interaction between user and 'tool'. Second, there is the question how to 'design' the software in order to make the user comfortable by using the program. That's where game-mechanics often show us great opportunities. If it's a status bar, leaderboards, Points, Badges or others, it depends on the individual character what will work best. So, gamifying a process doesn't necessarily mean to creat a game but to apply game-dynamics, game-mechanics and game design in an appropriate way! Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with SAP so I'm not able to give a suggestion at the moment especially for this program. But eventually I'll try it in a few days ;-) A good game is a unique way of structuring experience and provoking positive emotion. It is an extremely powerful tool for inspiring participation and motivating hard work. And when this tool is deployed on top of a network, it can inspire and motivate tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of people at a time. It's all about a clear goal (delete lines; Tetris), arbitrary restrictions (it becomes faster, just little time) and instant feedback (visual, audio or both). In my experience working with data almost ever had a lack of great visual feedback. Here is an example from medical data http://infosthetics.com/archives/redesign_medical_information.jpg On the left you can see data how it is actually displayed and on the right the same data re-designed. If the user understand data better, know their context and the relevance within a company or process we'll create a better understanding about the importance of this data. This will create a better engagement and therefore a more satisfying work. Or what about some status level? For using SAP software efficient, effective and in an appropriate way concernning the context, you can achieve different status level by time? The same way like you can achieve the belts for six sigma? Is this the right track? Attention: The key to gamification is to spur action that generates real value for the end-user; it should support, not manipulate. So, if the player is a new customer, game elements might make it fun to learn how to use key features of your product or service; if the player has already mastered your offering, the game needs to satisfy deeper needs. Begin by defining clear goals and the actions you want your clients or staff — i.e., the players — to take that move you toward those goals. Then you must figure out how to apply game mechanics to promote that behaviour without turning players off. |
