"Gamification is also being used in corporate contexts, where employees can earn points for dealing with boring tasks such as updating documentation. Gartner even claims that more than 50 per cent of organisations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes by 2015.
Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but I thought that doing your job actually involved doing your job, and there was no requirement for it to be fun."
In other words, "Humbug!"
I recall an article predating the use of the term "gamification," and predating 10 years I've lived in Japan, where a research group was tasked with improving a bank's new employee training program. The consultancy used games to educate the new employees. It produced some astonishing results, with greatly improved knowledge retention, greater sense of job satisfaction, and improved communication across the participants.
When the results were shown to the executive board which had paid for the study, despite the readily apparent success of the exercise, they chose not to adopt the games into their curriculum. As executives who had climbed up the corporate ladder the hard way, they didn't feel compelled to lessen the barrier-to-success for those after them. It was hard for us, so why should we make it easier for them? Which is of course reminiscent of that CP/M and DOS-era, user-hostile programmer chestnut, "If it was hard to program, it should be hard to use."
Comments
Post a Comment