Skilful Minds

JUNE 27, 2011

Social Flow in Gameful Design made the point that social flow contrasts to Csikszentmihalyi's original concept of individual or solitary flow, in which a person's engagement in actions is optimal, where they lose a sense of time and awareness of self in an intrisincally rewarding feeling. Social flow implies a qualitatively different order of the flow experience, a group-level experience.

Social 96

Social Games Collaboration Design 96

Skilful Minds

APRIL 1, 2011

Back in 2006 I read the following point on Hugh Mcleod's blog, Gapingvoid: "If people like buying your product, it’s because its story helps fill in the narrative gaps in their own lives." At the time I thought it conveyed nicely the point made by Gerald Zaltman in How Customers Think that "companies should define customer segments ont he basis of similarities in their reasoning or thinking processes" (p. 152) rather than the conventional constructs related to demographics.

Social Media 76

Social Media Research Media Social 76

Skilful Minds

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

There is nothing like an exception to the way things are done to highlight the need to increase knowledge sharing, especially if the exception is one instance of a pattern that results in bad experiences for customers. As Jay Cross recently noted, people learning at work rely on social, or informal learning, around 80% of the time. Interestingly, I noted in a former post, Social Learning and Exception Handling, that John Hagel and John Seeley Brown contend that "as much as two-thirds of headcoun

Social 70

Social Pattern Enterprise Social Learning 70

Skilful Minds

MAY 21, 2011

Don't Gamify Wild Bill discussed the importance of designing for voluntary play in serious games. Play is the baseline requirement for any game designed to provide useful indicators for gauging individual and organizational successes over time. Specifically, my point is that those interested in gamifying employee engagement in social business, and who also aim to effectively use collaboration, must optimally design for emergence not just competition and cooperation as guiding principles.

Games 57

Games Social Design Player 57

Skilful Minds

APRIL 25, 2011

There is a lot, actually a whole lot, of buzz over the past year about the gamification of business, specifically marketing, training, customer service. Much of it misses the simple point that it is the experience with it, the playfulness of it, that makes a game. Not the scoring system, or the rewards, or anything else can make up for a game that participants (customers or employees) don't experience as play.

Gamification 48

Gamification Customer Service Score Games 48

Skilful Minds

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

I recently received an invitation from Mads Soegaard, Editor-in-Chief at Interaction-Design.org to offer those who read this blog an early view of a new chapter on Social Computing in their encyclopedia. I’m a little late on this writing for you to get a pre-publication view of the chapter but I wanted to make sure and point it out for [.].

Social 44

Social Write Blog Social Networks Interactive 44

Skilful Minds

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

One of my earlier posts discussed the learnability of a service as a key challenge for experience design. Today I ran across this early video from Don Norman on learnability and product design. I thought I would share it.

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Design Services Discussion Video 43