Practical Gamification

I have been gaining some practical gamification experience recently in three different domains of my life.

1. Parenting Gamification - My wife and I continue to experiment with ways to motivate our 3 and 5 year old to get there chores done. We tried High Score House but that was too much overhead. Our most recent method utilizes small rocks as points and if our children get their morning chores done in time they get a certain amount of rocks. The tangible nature of the rocks has made it more real and exciting for the kids. The interesting twist my wife introduced is "bonus" rocks. If my 5 year old finishes his chores early he gets bonus rocks for helping out his sister. This has been great, both for getting the chores done and helping them learn to work better together. Similar concepts can be used when apply gamification to work or consumer situations. The benefits of gamification are amplified when a social pressures are also included.

2. Team Building Gamification - I introduced Chore Wars to my team at work as a way to encourage all of us to do a little better on some common tasks that we were finding it difficult to find the motivation to do. This is an interesting site that I ran into before I read about it in Reality is Broken. The use of the site has fizzled to a degree on our team but it did help spur some positive habits that continue to benefit our team. I plan on picking it up again soon.

3. Fitness Gamification - I have been using the smart phone app RunKeeper regularly as I train for a Marathon on June 23rd. As I've ramped up my training plan being able to track my progress and get feedback has helped me keep myself accountable and been very motivating. Recently I've broken my record for miles run in a week and a month and it fun to get notes from RunKeeper celebrating my achievement. Using the power of gamification and a degree of insanity I plan on reducing my PR in the marathon from 4:19 to 3:30 - which is an insane amount of time to take off a PR. Based on my recent training runs - recorded on RunKeeper - I'm feeling good about my changes.

There is room for gamification in many aspects of our lives and it can impact lives in many different ways. I'm excited to help innovate around how it is used.