Not so long ago, it seemed like “gamification” was all the rage among the customer education community. Lately, however, we’ve heard a lot less about it. What happened? Was it a failed experiment? Or has it just become ... commonplace?

In this session, we’ll explore the role of gamification in learning and motivation, and its impact on customer education programs. You’ll also learn how to apply simple game design strategies to help you drive real outcomes in your own training programs.

As a former game designers turned educator, I notice that gamification often falls flat because too much focus is placed on game systems (i.e., points, badges, and leaderboards) rather than on player motivation. You can’t apply gamification to motivate someone to do something that they don’t already want to do. Effective gamification requires us to understand the psychology of motivation and understand how a particular activity is going to feel intrinsically motivating for the end-user.

In this session, you will learn:

• A deeper understanding of effective gamification and how it differs from game-based learning
• How to apply design thinking to create game systems that motivate players to achieve a goal
• How to align game mechanics to the four different player types in order to optimize for motivation
• How to apply gamification to education programs to reinforce learning and deepen engagement