Transforming the Call Center Workplace with Pascal Leclerc

Revolutionizing the Call Center Workplace One Agent at A Time Last week, we featured nGUVU’s VP of product strategy, Pascal Leclerc to talk about how nGUVU’s platform help to create a better workplace environment for contact center agents. Using a combination of game mechanics, social interaction features and behavioral analytics, nGUVU helps motivate agents to achieve their goals…

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Guido Helmerhorst

Discovering KLM Airlines Next Top Model with Guido Helmerhorst

Promoting Employee Engagement and Collaboration in KLM’s IT Division Last time, we featured Head of Innovation Technology and Learning, Guido Helmerhorst from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to discuss his team’s recent project, “KLM’s Next Top Model“. With support from higher management, the project aimed to promote employee engagement and interdepartmental cooperation of KLM’s IT division….

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Decoding the Psychology of Video Gamers with Nick Yee

Last week, we featured Quantic Foundry co-founder and analytics lead, Nick Yee to talk about Quantic Foundry’s Gaming Motivation Model. Combining social science and data science, Nick’s team was able to decipher users gaming behaviors and motivations through the unique framework.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • How Nick’s team designed and developed the gaming motivation model?
  • What was the experience like studying social science (i.e. conducting an academic survey) using social media?
  • What were the most surprising findings when studying the user’s age and gender on their gaming motivation?
  • Did the gaming motivation framework enabled Nick’s team to establish user persona’s of their survey participants?
  • What are the 2 schools of thought in explaining the relationship between data points?
  • How can the gamer motivation framework be applied in the real world, beyond the context of video games alone?

Bonus: Interested to find out about your gamer motivation profile? Try taking the survey here.

Watch the video, listen on the audio podcast or subscribe to our iTunes channel below. Be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.



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Remodeling Clearly’s Logistics Training Program with Sean Goodman

Last time, we featured Clearly Logistic Supervisor, Sean Goodman to discuss how Clearly’s logistics department revamped their employee training program. Modeling after gamification concepts from Gabe Zichermann’s book “Gamification Revolution”, the program achieved major success and the organization is looking for new opportunities to incorporate gamification for its processes.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • What challenges were facing Clearly’s logistics department before gamification was introduced?
  • How did the team came together in designing and implementing the program?
  • What has been the cultural impact on the organization upon implementing gamification?
  • How has the team responded to the introduction of non-cash vs cash rewards in the rewards program?
  • Has Clearly changed or rebalanced the value of the rewards in the virtual economy since the program’s introduction?
  • What were the lesson learnt in driving progress and specific metrics for individuals?
  • How has the management team reacted to the program’s success and taking it other parts of the organization?

Watch the video or listen to the audio podcast below.


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Destroying Loyalty 2: How American Airlines’ Abuse Set Me Free

For 2 decades I’ve been deeply enmeshed in loyalty. First as a customer, then an obsessive “hardcore” loyalty junkie. Eventually my interest in loyalty helped give rise to the gamification movement and my work designing and developing engagement solutions across a wide range of industries. Although gamification encompasses much more than loyalty, I’ve continued to…

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Exploring the Influence of Games in Education with Greg Toppo

Last time, we featured USA Today national education writer and author, Greg Toppo to discuss about his recently released book, “The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter”. Hailed as the most important book since James Paul Gee’s pivotal work, The Game Believes in You covers how video games are presently being used in the classroom setting and the visionaries who have led the way.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  1. Why the education industry has not adopted more games in the classroom?
  2. What schools have done to take advantage of free, well designed game-learning modules?
  3. How does the influence of video games impact the different development phases of children education?
  4. Will the rise of games as a learning tool in the classroom demand new skillsets for teacher?
  5. Are we now able to quantify and determine the impact of video games in education in improving learning outcomes?
  6. How has the education realm reacted the concepts of reward, incentives and performance recognition in the gamified classroom?

Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.


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Gamifying Industrial Production with Dr. Joerg Niesenhaus

Last time, we featured senior user experience designer, Dr Joerg Niesenhaus from Centigrade GmbH to discuss his team’s recent project in gamifying industrial production process for a large production facility. As a user experience service provider, Joerg’s team was invited by clients from the mechanical and plant engineering to improve their customized production environment.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • The motivational challenges and consequences of failure faced by industrial assembly line production process.
  • How the team negotiated and managed expectation with management and collective bargaining units of the worker council.
  • The thought process in developing a scoring system to challenge and motivate the various production teams.
  • How the team find its early testers and subsequent advocates to champion for new process changes.
  • Was there difficulty in convincing the company’s leadership to give this approach a try and the post implementation reaction.
  • How did the team addressed different user-profiles and the research-process to determine clustering.

Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.

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Gamification by Design 2: Get Early Access and Contribute

Four years ago, we launched Gamification by Design as the first practically-oriented “how-to” book for building gamified apps, sites and systems. In those four years, GbD has helped tens of thousands of people around the world create engagement with customers, employees and society. If you follow such things, the book has been sold out for the better part of two years and copies have sold on Amazon for hundreds of dollars. While that sounds nice, a robust resale market doesn’t benefit the author, those interested in getting started in gamification or long-term practitioners who need a current resource. To whit, we’ve learned so much more about engagement science and how to create behavior change in the years since – there’s just a lot more to say. So, I’m pleased to announce a completely revised and updated Gamification by Design 2.

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Gamifying Investigative Documentary with Juliana Ruhfus

Last time, we featured chief reporter on People and Power from Al Jazeera English, Juliana Ruhfus in discussing the current affairs program’s interactive documentary, Pirate Fishing. Blending investigative journalism practices with gamification mechanics, the interactive tool introduces users about the multi-million dollar illegal fishing trade affecting West Africa’s poorest people.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • What was the scope of the investigation conducted by Juliana and how close does the interactive documentary mirror it?
  • How did Juliana pitched the concept to Al Jazeera executives?
  • How was the concept received by audience members and in the education field?
  • What was Juliana’s involvement in the design process and inclusion of mechanics.
  • The balancing act between storyteller’s control of narrative and user’s freedom of choice.
  • What were Juliana favorite examples within the documentary medium?
  • What future iterations does Juliana and her team have in store for future projects.

Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.

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Gamification in Education with Bron Stuckey

Last time, we featured Innovative Educational Ideas(IEI) director, Bron Stuckey in discussing about the current perceptions of gamification and the growing number of recent gamification initiatives by educators in the education space.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • What are the two underlyings view of using of gamification in education?
  • Are there tensions between gamification and game based learning?
  • How gamification could serve as a tool to reimagine current practices and go beyond superficial changes.
  • Does the uncertain nature of gamification discourage educators from trying to explore and use it?
  • Recommendations for educators who just started out applying gamification
  • What does commercial success of tools such as Minecraft entail for gamification in education?

Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.



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Conducting Gamification Research with Elisa Mekler

We last featured PhD student Elisa Mekler from the Center of Cognitive Psychology and Methodology at the University of Basel to discuss her 2013 research paper on whether gamification elements such as points, levels and leaderboards undermine user’s intrinsic motivation. The results garnered from the study was profoundly surprising as empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis was lacking prior to the research.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • How was the study constructed and designed to examine each mechanism?
  • What were the surprising results generated from the study? Were there outliers?
  • Has there been controversy or surprise generated in academic circle due to the results?
  • How was the process of getting gamification research approved and funded?
  • What are the next steps and opportunities in deepening further gamification research?
  • What ways could gamification industry practitioners help to boost future research?

Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.



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Encouraging Employee Social Collaboration with Accenture

Last time, we featured Accenture Social Collaboration and Gamification, Thomas Hsu and Senior manager, Steve Kaukonen in discussing how Accenture improved employee effectiveness with the company’s gamified enterprise social collaboration platform while employing gamification principles.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • How the platform has evolved and expanded into a global initiative since its first inception in 2007
  • The methodology in structuring baseline metrics and identifying user type behaviors
  • How the team used historical data and metrics to iterate and balance tool’s usage
  • What technology resources and human resources were needed to launch the program
  • Perceived expectations and realities of implementing a gamified program within a large organization
  • Unique findings of the adoption process across different levels of geography, function and employee level

Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.



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Join Gabe at Colloquy Loyalty Summit and Learn How to Make Loyalty Fun Again

Gabe will be one of the featured speakers and workshop facilitators at this year’s Colloquy Loyalty Summit September 29th to October 1st in Scottsdale, Arizona. Join Gabe on Oct 1st for his talk titled “Making Loyalty Fun Again: Gamification and Engagement” and then for his half-day Gamification of Loyalty Workshop with Jeff Berry. Quick synopsis…

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Making Agile Development Fun with FIEA’s Scrum Hero

Last time, we featured Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy’s (FIEA) head of marketing, Todd Deery (@FIEA) to discuss how he and former student Derrick Barra remodeled a game development curriculum by merging Scrum processes (Agile software development practices) with gamification elements.
Watch the full interview below to learn about:
  • How Scrum Hero was originally conceived and subsequently iterated.
  • The impact of emergent gameplay and how it was rectified.
  • Lessons drawn from building the two previous versions of Scrum Hero.
  • How to bring gamification concepts into the non-game design education realm.
  • FIEA past experiences working with external organizations on gamification projects.
  • How to connect teaching game development skills while building awareness for cross industry application.
Watch the video below and be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.



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GSummit SF 2014 Speaker – Gabe Zichermann (Gamification Co & GSummit)

Gabe is the chair of the Gamification Summit, partner at Dopamine, an author, highly rated public speaker and entrepreneur. His upcoming book, “Gamification Revolution” looks at the next level of gamification as a strategy. His last book, “Gamification by Design” (O’Reilly, 2011) looks at the technical and architectural considerations for designers in this burgeoning field….

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