Applications in the market have evolved, and today, educational content can be accessed through multimedia systems. Multimedia content generates interest in students, motivation, and cooperative learning.

Multimedia refers to the integration of two or more elements, such as audio, text, and images, on the same platform. This integration requires a correct combination of software and hardware to generate a multisensory information environment.

Software is essential because it is where the application and interactivity are developed, while hardware allows access to that content in a comfortable, fast, and user-friendly way.

The user should have a multimedia learning experience.

“Currently, multimedia content is commonplace, interaction with it is greater, so learning happens naturally, becoming something easily memorable that is internalized more quickly because we are more involved,” says occupational psychologist Teresita Ramacciotti.

For the multimedia experience to become a motivating agent for learning, it is first necessary for the user to be able to access the content quickly, cleanly, and without interruptions to maintain interest and start with the right disposition. In this sense, the smartphone is hardware already familiar to users, making learning through this device just one of the many activities performed with the phone.

However, the key is to deliver an outstanding experience to users, and this is achieved by combining attractive elements such as photos, audio, text, and especially videos. The latter are easy to produce and allow any message to be conveyed simply and quickly.

In addition, videos can provide more information than other channels, and by incorporating image and sound, they create a much more attractive message and increase retention because the user has to get more involved.

Games are multimedia

Playing involves continuous positive reinforcement. “Playing gives the opportunity to learn because it creates a greater connection, especially if it is with sensory multimedia content, as one can learn visually and auditorily. This makes learning easier for people from their own style, as it adapts and increases the number of stimuli for each person,” explains Ramacciotti.

Interactive multimedia materials allow the transition from hard information to something meaningful. Information, analysis, practice, and instant feedback will allow the user to correct any errors instantly. Additionally, training through a mobile device makes the results tracking process three times easier, making it more motivating to use it as a learning medium.

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However, one of the most important elements is personalization and segmentation. Not everyone is the same. Employees should be segmented into different groups and assigned specific objectives so that they have a sense of achievement of KPIs or eLearning.

Gamification does not motivate everyone in the same way.

Gamification does not generate the same motivation in everyone equally. The beauty of Closelly is that it is flexible enough to use the appropriate game dynamics for each individual or group of individuals.

Furthermore, there is a diversity of generations within a company. So, how do we personalize Gamification?

To achieve this, and be sure that the proposed solution is the best, we have to make the effort to understand the users. Not only identify them and know what role they play in the organization, but we have to know them more deeply. We need to know how they react, to what and when. We need to know what affects them and what does not motivate them at all. This way, we can design training and dynamics that allow them to motivate themselves and achieve the best results.

Types of players and games

Some people look at player types as proposed by Bartle. This view can be partially useful. Octalysis’ perspective provides other useful elements for the implementation of gamification in companies and is more focused on the goal of the game.

And what about the user profile? We are not even talking about gamification in companies like what Closelly does but about video games. Companies that create video games face exactly the same challenges as us. They want their users to be as motivated and engaged as possible, and to achieve this, they need to understand them.

A company that is a great source of game creators is Quantic Foundry. On their blog, there is a vast amount of information about what they have learned about games and their players. We love the analysis of player motivations and personality traits that we find here.

However, when designing a gamification implementation for a client, even when you can customize activities, how can we consider the differences of the participants when we choose the same narrative for everyone?

Looking for a common denominator? Strategy, not competition

Here are interesting points to highlight from Quantic Foundry’s blog.

• Strategy is the most stable motivator as players mature. Contrary to what many people might think, competition is a motivator that is not always effective for all ages. Competition is more effective as a motivator at an early age rather than by gender. On the other hand, strategy and complex thinking keep players motivated at all ages.

• Gender matters, but not as much as age. As we might expect, female players are more likely to be motivated by elements of personal expression and the customization of elements, fantasy elements, and elements that revolve around stories. Male players tend to be more motivated by competition, challenges, adrenaline, and strategy. All of this aligns with the stereotypes we have seen. The interesting thing is that as players age, these elements become less important.

These are just 2 examples among many. The point is the importance of understanding users (players and employees).

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But why do people respond so positively when employee training programs incorporate game elements? There are three key aspects:

Engagement Mechanisms

If we think about all the elements that made Super Mario, Pac-Man, and Tetris so addictive, it’s because the game revolved around achieving goals: earning points by acquiring certain items or solving puzzles. Moreover, games reward behavior in a satisfying way, such as leveling up or earning badges after reaching certain objectives.

Game mechanics can also help your workforce stay absorbed in the learning experience. If employees enjoy the training, they are more likely to complete the course and retain knowledge, especially when working with millennials who statistically are more likely to enjoy video games in their free time.

Rankings to Enhance Interactive Learning Dynamics

Many games have public leaderboards where players can track and see who is performing better and who is falling behind.

Although the goal is not to encourage a competitive culture, managers and training and human resources personnel can use this information internally to better understand which employees grasp concepts and which ones require additional training, or to gain a better understanding of the team’s progress and competencies.

Microlearning as an Aspect of Interactive Learning

One cannot truly appreciate gamification without exploring the psychology behind microlearning. This methodology has changed the way we create e-learning training courses, benefiting everyone!

Microlearning breaks down a large concept into smaller pieces and then teaches each piece. Studies show that microlearning methods increase a learner’s knowledge retention by at least 50 percent. So, by using gamification, you are adopting the mindset of microlearning and implementing interactive learning!

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The world of video games and the world of work have something in common and it is Karl Kapp, one of the world leaders in instructional design and gamification who presents their similarities.

Karl Kapp is vice director of the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) at Bloomsburg University, PhD in Instructional Design at the University of Pittsburgh, university lecturer and gamification expert.

Learn about it at:

What do video games and your professional development have in common?

If you’re like me as a kid, you were told that video games were a waste of time and not productive. Well, fast forward to when I’m an adult and I can tell you that playing video games and working on your career development have a lot in common.
First, really good, well-designed video games are all about problem solving. The game puts you in a situation where you face a problem that has multiple solutions.
Your career will be full of decisions with many options to choose from. There are clearly bad options and plenty of good, feasible options for you to consider.
You can generalize the same technique for career decisions, I bet you can.

What can video games teach us?

The next thing video games can teach us is that finding the “enemy” or opponent is a good thing, not a bad thing. If, while playing a video game, I am unsure about what to do or where to go, I look for the bad characters and know that is the right direction.

If you encounter obstacles and resistance in your career path, that could be a sign that you’ve found something interesting, provocative, different and exciting.

When I started studying and writing about the convergence of games and the field of learning and development I was met with a lot of resistance from many different directions, but I stuck to my guns and have made a career out of studying, applying and developing games that help others learn. Look for places of progression and not resistance or unproductive. Be smart and persistent. One way to make sure you are going in the right direction is to stay current on what is happening in the field.

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Chou’s proposed principles are grouped into an octagon, where “everything you do is based on one or more core drives,” as stated by the author. The core drives are: Epic Meaning and Calling, Development and Accomplishment, Empowerment of Creativity, Ownership and Possession, Social Influence and Affinity, Scarcity and Impatience, Unpredictability and Curiosity, and Loss Avoidance. Each drive addresses specific aspects of human motivation, creating a comprehensive framework for effectively applying gamification.

Chou emphasizes that these principles result from years of in-depth research into what makes a game engaging. Without these motivational principles, actions lack the drive needed for behavior. Developed by the president of Octalysis, these principles offer a comprehensive analysis based on empathy and understanding of human motivations to effectively apply gamification, transforming everyday essential activities into engaging and motivating experiences for users.

You can find the translation below:

Gamification is the art of combining the enjoyable elements of games with things that are relatively boring and routine but likely very important.

My name is Yu Kai Chou, and I am one of the pioneers in the field of gamification. I have helped many companies such as Tesla, Google, Apple, and I believe, from my own experience, that gamification is useful when motivation and behavioral action are key components for success.

Many times you want customers to buy something; that is obviously related to motivation and behavior. But if you want your employees to be more creative or collaborate more, that’s about motivation.

I would say that as long as you can define a desired behavior, gamification can improve that behavior. The Octalysis system is what I am most known for. It was the result of many years of studying what exactly makes a game engaging.

After many years, I realized that all successful games have what I call the 8 Core Drives, which denote a mix in an octagon-based analysis. The key to these core drives is that everything you do is based on one or more of these core drives. In other words, if there are none, there is no motivation, and there will be no behavior.

Epic Meaning and Calling

The first core drive is Epic Meaning and Calling. It is the drive that says we are motivated because we feel we are part of something greater than ourselves. People contribute to Wikipedia because they feel they are protecting human knowledge. It’s something bigger than themselves.

This is often seen in games, the typical scenario where the world is going to end, but somehow, you are the only one who can save the world. That motivates. Saving the world is Epic Meaning and Calling.

Development and Accomplishment

The second core drive is Development and Accomplishment. It is the drive that says how we feel that we are improving by leveling up, mastering it, and feeling very motivated. Most points and medals in traditional gamification fall under this category.

Points are nothing more than counters; they give a sense of progress. So even if you perform the same action or one and the same again, pressing the same buttons day after day, at least you are advancing this progress bar, or you see the number increase and feel like you are making progress.

Creativity and Feedback

The third drive is Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback, which is like Lego. You give users a lot of basic building blocks, and there is an almost infinite way to be creative, try different strategies, receive feedback, and then adjust. It’s a process that generates a lot of interest.

Ownership and Possession

The fourth core drive is Ownership and Possession. This drive says that when we feel something belongs to us, we want to protect it, improve it, and want more. This is seen a lot in things like virtual goods and currencies. But it is also the drive that makes us collect stamps, baseball cards, or accumulate money.

It also leads to other abstract aspects. If you invest a lot of time in customizing your Facebook profile or your Dropbox folders, then you feel it’s more yours, and you become more attached to that system. Even if a new technology comes out, you may not want to change because this system. You don’t feel the other one as yours.

Social Influence and Affinity

The fifth drive is Social Influence and Affinity. It is about everything you do; you do it because of what others do. It involves things like collaboration, competition, group missions, or giving gifts.

But it also has to do with the aspect of affinity, which can be, for example, nostalgia. If you see a product that reminds you of your childhood, your chances of buying increase a lot. If you know someone from your hometown, you are more likely to close a deal with that person. That connection, that relationship, is very important.

Scarcity and Impatience

The sixth drive is Scarcity and Impatience. This is the drive that says we want something because we can’t have it or it’s very difficult to get. If there are grapes on the table, maybe we don’t care; maybe we eat a couple, but we don’t give them importance. If the grapes are behind a showcase, out of our reach, we won’t stop thinking about them. Can I eat them? When? What are they doing in a showcase? Will they be good? This is a strategy that Facebook used at the beginning. When they said that facebook.com was only for Harvard students, and if you don’t go to Harvard, you feel you can’t use Facebook. Later, they said, “I’ll extend it to Harvard, Ivy League universities, and other universities” that your friends go to. But they didn’t choose you. It feels. In the end, it opened to more people.

Unpredictability and Curiosity

The seventh drive is Unpredictability and Curiosity. This is the drive that says that, since we don’t know what will happen next, we can’t stop thinking about it. This is used in things like everything the gaming industry does, the mechanics of slot machines, and also the draws of the lottery system. It is also what makes us want to finish a book or a movie.

Loss Avoidance

We have the eighth drive, Loss Avoidance. This is very simple. It’s when we do something to avoid a loss or when we don’t want something bad to happen. The signals indicate that it is much more likely that we will do something to avoid a loss than to achieve a gain because a loss is more painful.

Those are the eight core drives, and I repeat, everything that is done is given by one of these core drives. If there is none, there is no motivation.

The most important thing I want you to learn is to understand motivation and human psychology and apply it to the experience. It’s not about technology, functions, or features. It’s about understanding how the brain is interested in stimuli, in the environment, what excites it and using empathy to know how to create a better experience.

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But how is gamification done? Most would answer with video games, but it’s not always the case. Playful elements like cards, badges, board games, and more can be used. In this instance, marketing expert Trent Kennelly explains in simple terms what gamification is and why everyone needs it, regardless of their industry or number of collaborators.

Watch more about this:

I think it’s already a pretty well established fact that people love to have fun, which means that if you can create fun in your business. You can generate engagement and get more people to buy.

We’re talking about gamification which is simply taking fun elements of games and adding them to your product, your service, your business to create interaction with your brand and generate more sales. So today I’m going to tell you how to gamify without overhauling your strategy and then tell you why it doesn’t even matter what industry you’re in, anyone can benefit from gamification.

My name is Trent Kenelly, I’m a Marketing Strategist and we’ll talk about things you can do to improve your business through marketing. Let’s get started.

Gamification Examples

Okay, let’s go over some examples of gamification so you can better understand what gamification is and what gamification is not and I’m really going to start right here anything with an element of fun.

Competition is gamification, if you get a free sandwich after you buy 10, that’s gamification, you get a badge if you perform a workout on a fitness app that’s gamification. If you try to get an A on a test, guess what… That’s gamification.

That’s why this is applicable to everyone, there is always a way to build competence in your business whether internal or external.

Let’s talk about how to gamify

So there’s three basic elements to any game, any type of game, there’s challenge options and changes, so the challenge is the challenge of achieving the goal and that’s what we’re really interested in. And first of all if you were Super Mario and you’re in a flat environment where you just ran all the way through and there were no goombas and no traps and nothing that would cause you to have to start over it would be neither interesting, nor challenging and you’d move forward pretty quickly.

When deciding which direction we want to go in, it’s our choice to make the decisions that if there’s no other choice, you might as well just press start on Netflix because it’s not a game, it’s okay television and then, third is the change that a player needs to be able to grow with the game and if you’re just getting through level one one one and then you start level one one over and again there’s no change there’s no growth. There’s no challenge again so you need to keep that challenge going.

You need to keep that game changing as the player evolves.

Maintain participation and engagement.

Okay, these three elements have one thing in common. They’re driving engagement now, this seems like an obvious thing for like an app or a program or something like that, just add a reward system in there people interact and they get rewards it’s great like the phytocracy of a few years ago without exploiting beer.

Another great application is badges, people can enter information and then they get rewards that are in the app it’s something that generates great participation without a huge expense to the company-.

Another more challenging example, how can you as a real estate agent? This is where it gets really interesting, because gamification is not just an external process, you can also look internally.

In the case of a real estate agent, you don’t really expect a lot of traffic coming back very quickly, whereas in an app, you might expect people to come in every day and that’s why you’re doing all these badges.

Gamification, for a real estate agent, you have to look internally because those are the people that come back every day. So you want to incentivize those employees to have higher turnover or do better, data entry or better customer service, things like that that will get people to buy from you and stay with you and use word of mouth on the outside focusing on those good aspects.

Within that, that’s why you say it’s all marketing, because we’re almost in a human resources role here because we’re talking about positive outcomes for employees, but it’s the same basic principle that you’re gamifying, how employees get the most out of their interaction with you.

Source: Trent Kennelly YouTube channel

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