News

Boston CIO to Gamify Citizens Connect App to Thank City Workers

If the case for non-physical rewards (see SAPS) as a motivator still hasn’t convinced you of its effectiveness, you might want to look at Boston’s government mobile app that will allow Bostonians to improve city services.

Released in 2008, Citizen’s Connect allows local citizens to report issues like broken signs and potholes to make sure they are fixed quickly. According to SearchCIO, this effort is in part of Boston CIO, Bill Oates’ desire to create an active communication loop between citizen and workers to ensure city problems are solved.

Status in the Subway: Montreal STM Introduces VIP Program

Loyalty programs have been commonly associated with airlines and retailers but Montreal’s recent plans may soon change that perspective to include public transportation systems. Montreal operates the Opus-à-l’année also know as the Opus & Cie subscriptions, a subscription service which recharges a commuter’s OPUS card automatically every month.
Montreal STM will be introducing a VIP class for its customers, which will only be made available to 20,000 commuters (9% of the 217,000 who regularly buy monthly Société passes). After subscribing for more 12 months, Opus & Cie users will be given the opportunity to upgrade to their new “maestro” status.

SAPS For Channukah? – Get the F In There!

As I prepare for the first night of Channukah tomorrow, and Gamification Co. prepares for our gsummitX Israel MeetUp in Tel Aviv on December 25th,  I’ve been contemplating a new addition to the SAPS model:  Let’s put an F out in front of that acronym! For I ask you, is there a more powerful motivator [...]

The NY Jets Take a Hint from the SAPS Model

Last Sunday, the Jets took a huge victory over the Bills by a 21-point margin. Sanchez, Tebow, and Greene displayed an exceptional offensive performance as they blasted through the Bills’ defense. Perhaps if the Bills took some defensive lessons from Rex Ryan and his black jerseys during training camp, they would not have given up [...]

Earn the Most Points to Get the First Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte

Want to be the first US or Canadian city to have Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte? From August 21 – August 24, Starbucks will be having a competition to reward a city first access to their pumpkin spice latte but only if they can earn enough points and beat out the rest of the cities. Fans of Starbucks’ Facebook [...]

PSFK’s The Future of Gaming

Gamification may be buzzing, but it hasn’t quite made the mainstream yet. In conversations outside the industry, it is still common to receive puzzled looks and even a few scoffs when “games” are mentioned in the same breath as business. Despite these holdouts, the future looks bright. “The Future of Gaming” is a recent report [...]

Motivating Learning Beyond Grades

Education in the United States is in dark times. Although we are one of the richest nations in the world, based upon international testing, our 9th graders are 28th in math, 22nd in science, and 18th in reading. Of course standardized testing as a measurement receives its fare share of criticism, but an even more insidious culprit in America’s [...]

Gamification in the Globe and Mail

“How long till life is one big video game?” asks Ivor Tossell in his recent article in the Innovation section of The Globe and Mail. In the piece he gives and introductory definition of gamification and quotes Gabe Zichermann for his insights as someone “at the forefront of a new strain of marketing thinking” and [...]

Gamification on the Cisco Blog

In this recent post on the Cisco blog, Dannette Veale uses common examples to help illustrate what gamification really means – like Foursquare, Quest to Learn charter school, Evoke and Wii Fit.  She also quotes Gabe Zichermann and his now famous SAPS model for rewards systems. The article also mentions GSummit and how it sold [...]

Gamification Talk on KFWB Radio in LA

I was recently interviewed by Lisa Osbourne of KFWB radio in Los Angeles and Lisa.FM. It’s a short piece, and you can hear it in it’s entirety here. I briefly define what gamification is and discuss the SAPS system as well as what attendees can expect at The Gamification Summit. There’s still time to register [...]