This week on the Gamification Roundup, we’re getting corporate: Tim Chang of Mayfield Fund provides some expert insight on incorporating gamification, pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim’s has its first foray into gamification , a beautiful blood pressure tracking app called BloodNote engages through design, UnitedHealth is starting to bring gamification into their activities, and a high Klout score is now granting exclusive access at a particular Cathay Pacific Airways SFO lounge.
Tim Chang’s Gamification Insights – TechCrunch, May 11
Tim Chang, a managing director at Mayfield Fund and featured speaker at this year’s GSummit, talks about a number of emerging trends and insights as it relates to gamification in enterprise. Some of his best take-away points are: 1) Companies should incorporate gamification in baby steps and allow users to choose to opt in if they wish to. Quickly incorporating a full gamified experience can be overwhelming and ultimately rejected. 2) Gamification design is beginning to emerge as a desirable skill set. And finally 3) Don’t add gamification for gamification’s sake. Venture capitalists can see through it and users will shun shoddy badges.
Can Gamification Work for Big Pharma? – InPharm, May 10
Big pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has begun rolling out a number of gamified campaigns to drive disease awareness and marketing for the company. Syrum is a game designed to teach the public about the pharmaceutical industry and rewards users with in-game items for having them fill out surveys or watching disease-awareness videos. The game is clearly promoting disease awareness to side-step their inability to directly place their product in any of their marketing campaigns. Can gamification still work for them?
Beautiful Design Makes Hypertension Tracking a Tad Easier – TheNextWeb, May 10
Bloodnote is an iOS app that has been designed with user experience and aesthetics in mind. Very simple graphics, minimal design, and ease of use make blood pressure tracking a little more pleasing than simply tracking numbers on paper. Gamification doesn’t need to come in the form of badges or points, perhaps simply making something very mundane into a more pleasurable experience can be just as effective.
UnitedHealth is Bringing Active Fitness Games to their Services – United, May 10
UnitedHealth has just released the results of a survey asking 1,015 adults whether they believe video games should incorporate physical activity: 75% of respondents believe that video games should incoprorate some form of physical activity and 54% of respondents also said that active games would encourage them to perform more physical activity. As a response to this data, UnitedHealth will begin focusing on incorporating gameplay, gamification, and new game technology into their user activities. One of their most recent campaigns is the JOIN for MESM program, which gives participants an XBox 360, a kinect, and 2 exercise focused games to promote physical activity.
High Klout Score Grants Access to Cathay Pacific’s SFO Lounge – TechCrunch, May 9
Klout is partnering up with Cathay Pacific Airways to offer exclusive perks for Klout users with scores over 40. Anyone with the mobile Klout app at San Francisco International Airport will simply just have to flash the score to gain access to workstations, showers, and a noodle bar previously reserved for only first-class and business passengers. This is a great example of utilizing status for incentivization. Perhaps more companies will begin to start using Klout for other marketing opportunities.
Image (CC) – The Prime Minister’s Office
