My research on gamification recently got picked up by GamEffective, a market leader in gamification platforms for employee performance and learning. Gal Rimon, the company’s Founder and CEO talked about my 2015 journal article on enterprise gamification in his blog post.
In the blog post, Gal correctly points out my article’s main premise about “meaningful” gamification which aims to foster and draw upon employees’ intrinsic motivation to use the system. In my research article, I suggest that the cause for action (playing the game) has to be internally motivated. Ultimately, the aim of gamification is not to make drudgery fun, but rather to apply game elements or game-thinking towards improving motivation, engagement and user experience with business processes and systems.
I also like the adapted version of the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) framework from my paper – GamEffective’s version is more aesthetically pleasing and I like the metaphor of dices, pawns and checkerboards to depict mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics respectively. GamEffective’s blog post also does a very good job of summarizing the key take-aways from my paper.
Original MDA Framework from My Paper
GamEffective’s Adaptation of the MDA Framework
While GamEffective’s blog post does not go into many details of the game aesthetics that I describe in my article, it was good to see that they agreed that the interpreted narrative (end-users’ perspective) plays a very important role in the success of gamification initiatives.
Overall, it seems like GamEffective has concurred with the findings from this empirical research. As an information systems researcher, it is always great to see the industry validate your research on the basis of their own experience and insights.
I will be collaborating with GamEffective for further research on enterprise gamification. As a first engagement, they are going to host me in their upcoming webinar in June where I will talk about the MDA framework and the company’s VP Marketing, Roni Floman will relate some of the findings from my research to GamEffective’s own offerings. This should be exciting!