Design thinking + Gamification = Business Innovation

November 9, 2014February 26, 2015Ezri Carlebach

The now-established IABC Rápido session format (5 min presentations) promotes three important things:

storytelling
concision – the art and craft of being concise
design thinking

Design thinking is about applying problem-solving skills, typically associated with the design process to other areas, particularly in a business environment. Probably the least well-known term in communications circles and despite a relatively short and somewhat checkered existence, is now taking off by virtue of being hitched to another buzz-wagon: gamification.

David Kelley, founder of the innovations company IDEO, began to use the term design thinking in the early 1990s to describe what IDEO did. In 2008, current IDEO CEO Tim Brown made the case for design thinking in a well-received Harvard Business Review blog post, and its influence seems to have been growing since then.

Now it seems to have found a soul-mate in the shape of gamification, the much-touted introduction of game elements into business processes from recruitment and onboarding to sales training and various flavours of employee engagement programmes.

Gamification guru, Mario Herger wrote recently about How Gamification Design Thinking Helps Your Business – without creating an even more hideous neologism like ‘gamidesignifying’ (sorry) and in doing so sets out some simple steps that you might use as a way of framing an issue or challenge you’re facing at work.

After all, the core idea of gamification is simply to provide a different and more engaging take on an existing business process or need.

Herger says “I believe that design thinking has much to offer a business world in which most management ideas and best practices are freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process”.

Herger’s article which suggest as a process to 1) define the problem, 2) observe the users and 3) iterate on ideas for responses
strikes me as a useful heuristic that can easily be applied in any number of situations. He advises a player-centric approach to constantly remind us that design must satisfy the play instinct in the target audience, otherwise they just won’t join in.

He acknowledges that in a business context this kind of language might sound trivial but the reality it’s quite the opposite.

Only by focusing seriously on our innate desire for play, and its manifestation as an organized activity in games, can we hope to capture the kind of engagement that will see your HR or sales process become the next Angry Birds.

Whether you then go on to build a multi-level, immersive game experience that drives columnar geo-spatial data warehousing – well, that’s up to you.

Ezri Carlebach is a consultant, writer and lecturer with a background in senior communication roles for public, private and nonprofit organizations. He consults on communication and stakeholder engagement and writes for The Guardian, simply-communicate.com, and other publications. He is a visiting lecturer of contemporary issues in public relations practice at the University of Greenwich, and has recently led sessions at communication conferences in Slovenia, Canada, Italy and the U.K.

Carlebach is a director at large for the IABC Europe, Middle East and North Africa region, and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Internal Communication and the Royal Society of Arts.

Twitter: @ezriel
Blog: www.ezricarlebach.com

See Ezri in action during the European Training Foundation, Communication Week initiative.

SMiLE London 2014 – Event Review

March 18, 2014February 1, 2015Stephen Welch

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a fascinating SMiLE conference yesterday, fantastically hosted by Marc Wright, Silvia Cambie, Gloria Lombardi and the rest of the team from simiply-communicate. I certainly learned a lot: thank you to the team who did a great job.

Cards on the table: I’m a skeptic when it comes to social media. It’s often touted as a panacea to organizational performance and indeed “shiny new tools” are one of the #11ways that communicators can help their organization underperform, as Michael Ambjorn and I will be discussing at the IABC World Conference in June, in Toronto.

My scepticism is based on two key elements. One: in my view, shiny social media tools are nothing without the right culture. Buying the most expensive shiny new car doesn’t automatically make you a better driver, but you’ll be determined to use it all the time, even when it’s inappropriate. Two: it is surprising how little work seems to have been done on the business impact of investment in social media. It is hard to find concrete, specific, costed (in £) evidence of ROI. Compared to other investments an organization might make, and their WACC, how does investment in social media compare? No one seems to have data. Or if they do, I’ve not seen it.

However, I went with an open mind; prepared to be convinced. Was I?

On point one (culture), almost. I heard lots of great stories of how social media is being a catalyst for culture change in organizations, and how it is fostering new cultures of collaboration and knowledge sharing in ways that would not otherwise be possible. And there were some new examples of the power of social media tools in helping to address business issues, like integration of new acquisitions, customer service, or involving people in remote conferences. So I was really glad to see momentum in this area, and learn from some great examples.

I do think that gamification needs to be handled with care: any reward system need to be sure to align behaviour to company strategy and not just help people’s achievement drives run amok.

On point two (ROI), I’m still looking for more specific measurement and evidence of a financial return. There were some good stories (such as from Pearson and Grundfos), but in conversation with Kevin Ruck during a break we agreed that the measurement of internal communication has a way to go before it catches up with the measurement of external communication. Few seem to be tackling this issue to the standards a sceptical CFO might require. (But perhaps this was covered in the afternoon session when I had to absent myself.)

Overall, though, I’d say that it was well worth hearing from the latest developments in the field, and the interview style of the presentations worked well to bring things to life in a different way from the norm. But I will have to await the next conference to be totally cured of my scepticism.

Stephen Welch helps organizations with culture change, communication and leadership, and explores the connections between behavior and job/organization design.

He is a member of the Market Research Society and the Chartered Institute of Publications, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and past president of the IABC U.K. chapter.

Follow him on Twitter at @stephenwelch11