I’m excited to share a side project I’ve been working on lately which shows how gamification can be applied to actions and activities performed in real life.

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of applying gamification concepts to every day activities for a while but I really didn’t know where to start. The biggest hurdle has been (and still is) finding and configuring sensors that can interpret and transmit actions a person is performing. Then I discovered the eletronics communities for Arduino and Netduino.

Netduino

For this project I chose to use the Netduino Plus. Why? Well, primarily because this amazing piece of electronics is able to run the .Net Microframework! That means I can write and debug applications using C# and Visual Studio. The Netduino Plus also comes with built in Ethernet which I use to communicate with IActionable’s API. Working with the Netduino is surprisingly easy and was no more complicated than writing a Hello World for a Console Application.

RFID

The RFID Card Reader is made by Parallax and I found it at my local Radio Shack. Note, I rediscovered just how dangerous that store is when you’re just browsing for “cool stuff”. Hopefully I will be able to find a way to incorporate the other neat things I picked up in my next projects.

Connecting the reader to the Netduino board was straight forward since it already works with serial and only needed 5 volts. Just 4 wires and the reader lit up and was ready to transmit data.

Code & Game Mechanics

Once the devices were connected I wrote a simple application which detected the presence of an RFID card and read the unique ID associated with it. The application was also configured to send this action as an event to the IActionable API. I use Visual Studio 2010 and couldn’t believe at first how simple it was to deploy my code. You hit F5 and that’s it. Seriously. A big thanks goes out to the guys on the Netduino forums which made learning how to interface with the on-board ethernet and rfid serial data a snap!

A simple POST to the API sent the data off to the engine to be processed. Within IActionable I had created an basic Achievement which listened for 3 visit events from the same person. As each visit was detected the progress for the reward was updated for that user. The iPad only communicates with the IActionable API via javascript and has no knowledge of the Netduino configuration. When new events are received the progress is displayed instantly on the webpage.

The Future

So what could you do with this? The first applications that came to mind were for conferences and trade shows. As web enabled devices become more common I imagine we’ll see a lot more gamification concepts integrated with the conference experience. The idea could encourage people to visit more or all booths on the trade show floor. It could also show who has attended the most sessions or classes and reward them for taking a specific series of courses.

As you walk around the conference with your iPad or smart phone you’ll know exactly how many points you have and where you rank on a leaderboard. Of course, this is only one simple part of what the entire gamification experience should be.

As more cheaper, smaller and internet connected devices become available I can see this moving into our every day life at home, work and school. I see gamification evolving along side a new phase of analytics. With more data comes the ability to make better decisions and encourage specific behaviors.

Video

Check out a quick video demonstrating the concept in action!

We want to thank everyone who helped us make it into the Top 8 for App Quest 2011. The next round to narrow the entries down to the Top 4 is still based on votes so we need your help again! We’ve created a page to make the voting process as straight forward as possible.

Vote for Engage and help us bring gamification to the enterprise!

http://iactionable.com/contest

OK, so here’s the deal. Many of you know that our gamification for salesforce.com application, Engage, has made it into the top 16 for this year’s AppQuest competition. Our ultimate goal is to make it to the top 4 and be able to present our application on stage at Dreamforce in front of 30-40k SFDC users. Gamification is still really new and no one is really pushing it as a tool to increase productivity so we’re excited to have the chance to do so on such a scale.

First, we need to make it to the top 8, and to do that we are going to need your help. This round is based on “likes” on the AppQuest Facebook page and we’re at a real disadvantage. For example, some of our competitors have over 2,000 employees. This means we really need to flex every social muscle we can find.

So, are you a fan of gamification? Do you want to see gamification break into the enterprise and workplace on a large stage? Here are the steps you need to take to make this happen:

UPDATE! – Engage by IActionable has moved to the Top 8! We need your vote again here: http://iactionable.com/contest

Of course, we wouldn’t ask you to vote if we didn’t think we had a winning product – check out our submission video for yourself:

The Age of Static Content

The early days of the mainstream internet was dominated by content and portal sites. These were the days of Yahoo! and AOL (back when it was called America Online). Search companies rose to help people find the content they were looking for. At first their was no Google. You had to use Lycos or AltaVista or some-such. The internet was being created by editors and writers as they added more and more content. People came and consumed this content and used those little odometer style counters to show you how many people had come before you. The big sites were mostly static. There were forums and chat rooms but that was about the height of interactivity for most early users.

People clamored for more and were not content to wait for new content – they started to create their own, and thus we entered a new era.

The Age of User Generated Content

It started out slowly. People could leave comments and reviews. Sites started to grow around user generated content. Social networks rose and fell. Applications that had been part of the desktop moved to the web. Someone came up with the acronym “SAAS”. More and more software became web based. The internet became more prevalent in our every day lives. You could do anything on the internet. In fact you often had your choice from a handful of sites for whatever it is you wanted to do. Twitter let you tell everyone exactly what you were doing. Facebook let you show everyone what you had done.

Attentions became ever more fragmented as more and more sites fought for eyeballs, and thus we entered a new era.

The Age of Gamification

Sites began to take a hint from games and provide better feedback to users. They rewarded and recognized their users for their loyalty and patronage. Someone came up with the term “gamification” and many hated it but it stuck. Services appeared to help others manage these systems. IActionable rose above them all. (OK, that last part hasn’t happened yet, but it’s coming, I’m sure of it.)

We really feel like this is a natural path for the internet to be taking. Better yet, technology has reached a point where we can better recognize and reward people regardless of the types of systems they interact with. Here at IActionable we believe this is the next big trend that, down the road, we will look back on and see as obvious. Technology and information availability has our attention more and more divided every day – whether it’s at work or during play. It makes sense to introduce systems to help us develop goals and objectives in order to focus. It makes sense to use more nurturing and expressive ways to develop loyalty in a rapidly changing world.

Many people wonder if gamification is a fad. We see it as a logical next step.

Our office while at the Microsoft campus.

In March we were invited by Microsoft to come out to Redmond and spend nearly a week working directly with Microsoft engineers, designers, and product managers to make our product even better as part of the Azure Deep Dive. For some long time .NET developers this was almost like a pilgrimage. We thought about it for a minute and then declared “To the Cloud!” (doo-da-loodle-loodle-loo!)

The program was pretty neat. There were a handful of other companies there. Each company had their own office and could work on whatever they wanted, so we didn’t really interact with the other companies too much outside of meals. We used our time to take a good look at our overall architecture and run the main ideas past  various Microsoft guys to make sure it was a solid approach and see if there were any ways to increase efficiency. Turns out we did a pretty good job as most of the suggestions were things we were already doing. Whew.

Overheard while at Microsoft:

OK, guys, false alarm: Steve Ballmer is not an idiot. – Microsoft employee who shall remain nameless

We were able to talk to lots of people while at Microsoft, spanning all sorts of Azure products like Table Storage, SQL Azure, Caching, App Fabric, etc. We really enjoyed the program and were able to get questions answered, talk to people we had previously been working with on forums, and learn more about what’s coming down the line. We were also very well fed. They provided breakfast, lunch, and snacks while in the office and even took us all out to a nice Brazilian Steakhouse one night.

We appreciate Microsoft thinking enough of us to have us out there and show us some developer love.