“Gamification enables you to drive, measure, and reward high-value behaviors by customers or employees. Game mechanics leverage design and behavioral psychology principles inherent in today’s social games to drive and reward specific user behaviors in business environments. Smart gamification elements—such as points, achievements, levels, leaderboards, missions, and contests—can be employed to drive desired behaviors on virtually any website or enterprise application”
Kris Duggan and Kate Shoup in their book “Business Gamification For Dummies.”
Hmmm… Sounds interesting. Can gamification, ie the use of gaming concepts to solve problems and motivate users, be incorporated in OSS tools to allow more efficient operations? Afterall, that is the ultimate goal of these complex applications known as Operational Support Systems right?
From the same book comes, “Nike+ (http://nikeplus.nike.com/plus) enables members to track activities, compare results, set goals, and improve performance—as well as receive training tips and tricks from world-class coaches. Games, challenges, and virtual competitions with friends help users stay inspired.”
If I make a few subtle changes as follows, does this list of features sound like a perfect scenario for improving efficiencies from your OSS order entry teams, fault rectification teams, field work-force, network designers, etc?
“OSS vendor enables users to track activities, compare results, set goals, and improve performance—as well as receive training tips and tricks from team leaders. Games, challenges, and virtual competitions with colleagues help users stay inspired.”
In a way, gamification is akin to Darwin Theory as activities are done repetitively, being refined and refined towards improved efficiency. Gamification provides the immediate analysis and rewards that provides users with instantaneous feedback to refine their approach on the next run through a given activity. Is there room in your OSS to increase the velocity of feedback into the users and/or systems? OSS already collect and manage lots of data but the operator feedback loops aren’t always strong.
Am I being a bit too left-field here or could this actually produce results?