If in the era of infoxication it is difficult to attract someone’s attention, to hold it for some time it is even more difficult. Therefore, in the work context, companies strive to seek interactive and stimulating alternatives consistent with the new paradigms of relationship, with which engage their employees and involve them in their own learning. This way, corporate universities emerge offering a structured career within the company, internal communities to share knowledge and best practices, as well as multiple initiatives to bring learning to the workplace, where the transfer to performance is faster and more effective, “On the Job Training”.
Among these initiatives, gamification seeped over 10 years ago as a methodology to improve the experience of people with reality (McGonigal, 2011). Within enterprises, gamification brings the logic of collaborative and constructivist learning to environments where intrinsic motivation and interaction between people and teams directly affect the achievement of results. But despite the numerous success stories, gamification is not “the magic word” that improves any KPI, much less the only methodology that helps improve engagement of employees with the brand that hires them.
People do not pay attention to boring things
For a successful gamification project, it is not enough to create a multidisciplinary team of knowledgeable business consultants, game designers and technology developers. It is also necessary to know the rules with which the human brain is governed.
In his work Brain rules, Dr. John J. Medina presents 12 basic rules to exercise the mind. Specifically, rule #4 “We don’t pay attention to boring things” explains certain principles perfectly transposable to the context of corporate gamification, which we condense on 5 critical points:
- Convey the message in an interesting way for the recipient, and make him participate. If with our gamification project we do not manage to “attack” the emotional side of the brain, it will not segregate enough dopamine to help memory and information processing. In other words, the stimulus will be discarded and quickly forgotten.
- Make clear game rules and objectives to achieve. The expert knowledge of the brain remembers big general ideas, not thousands of small details or anecdotes. Well defined and easily remembered rules will be much more effective than complicated game systems where you have to be a strong gamer and a long time is needed to achieve mastery.
- Avoid “harassing” the player with simultaneous stimuli (and much less contradictory). The brain can only focus on one task at a time, so if we over-stimulate our participants they will make mistakes, get frustrated and end up leaving the game. Therefore, we should avoid activities within a game where we ask users to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, or “bombard” them with continuous sound and visual stimuli. Opening and closing activities will help each of them to be resolved more effectively.
- Dose information, action and knowledge. The participant needs time to assimilate information and time to digest it. Make a good scheme of evolution of the project with valleys and peaks, essential to provide the participant with the logical pauses that will need to reflect on what they have learned or how it has contributed to the success of the challenge overcome, preparing to undertake the next mission.
- Use storytelling. We remember what we learn through stories that appeal to primary emotional stimuli such as fear, sexuality, fun, etc. Building a solid and consistent metaphor where all the rules, dynamic and aesthetic mechanics of the game come together will make the story that is being lived in first person to be memorable, and the participant will feel like sharing or involving others in it.
Playing is a basic mechanism that has helped man survive and evolve from the beginning of time. The taste for playfulness is in our DNA, and therefore knowing how our brain works will help us be more efficient not only in educational processes but also in our professional activities.
More info:
- McGonigal, Jane. Reality is broken. Why games make us better and how they can change the world (2011) http://janemcgonigal.com/my-book/
- Medina, John. Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Principles-Surviving-Thriving/dp/0979777720 / http://www.brainrules.net/about-brain-rules
