Gamification, Game On!

 Gamification still offering creative solutions for employee engagement 10-17

If you think gamification is only for kids, think again. Gamification is not just Pokémon, Clash of Clans, Fortnite, or Minecraft. Some games challenge us but are filled with incentives. If you look around and how everyday systems are being used to engage people or members, companies are finding new ways to engage their associates.

Here is the definition of Gamification (1)

the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.

You may be surprised to find out how often this strategy is used and the diverse ways in which it’s used in everyday marketing and motivation. The strategy is similar to that of how casinos play the odds. They want to keep you interested and engaged to play a few minutes longer, spending just a few dollars more since the odds or the numbers are in their favor. 

To put the odds or numbers in your favor, IoT is even more valuable to provide feedback on what is and what is not working within your system. If you are a manufacturer you want to make sure that the gamification incentives are providing improved employee engagement, decreased injuries, and increased production. 

You can monitor safety light curtains, plc control activities, quality, and production tracking of parts. This provides the monitoring but what is it that adds the element of gamification?

One element of gamification is tracking. You must be able to make the statistics viewable to create competition and awards/rewards tied to metrics.

If the element you want to improve is safety and the performance you want to improve is to keep workers out of unsafe areas for example. You have light curtains for when personnel is entering unsafe areas, you can monitor the time they are exposed to the hazard and the same with monitored safety guards and switches. This information can be compared against injuries or just plain risk analysis and you want to incentivize operators to not go into the back of the machine and instead adjust and setup from the front. This may be more difficult or take longer but it reduces the exposure to the dangerous area. By monitoring and displaying operator performance you can reward and recognize good behavior. 

Badging has become one of the additional forms of recognition. Digital badging allows a user to have badges like perfect attendance, safety guru, top performer, etc on their profile. Some of these are internally viewed through private Microsoft teams sites, others are seen everywhere in places like LinkedIn. 

Many companies offer preferred parking for top performers and key contributors. You get the recognitions and save the wear and tear on your shoes and the feet that go in them!

Why is this important? Gamification is designed to develop competition and a high level of engagement. By building in gamification tools you’re encouraging repeated behavior, in much the same was as developing a habit, you’re attempting to have people engage for 2-4 weeks. 

Think about this; if you have your engineers all using the monitoring system daily to retrieve their data they are more likely to value that information and also return to retrieve it after that period. You’re getting buy-in from your department. If you include engineers who run their reports using a program like Linknet for their information gathering, this means opening the program, sorting the machines for which they are responsible, and reporting on their production numbers, you are developing a behavior. 

If the program has multiple impact points such as tooling, production, maintenance, administration, inventory, etc., you find that one department uses this program for their needs and unless you’re running the reports for the other departments, they continue doing what they’ve always done. This means of course you continue getting what you always got.

But you can, of course, gamify the condition where you have departments competing against each other for interacting with the system. This is a top-down approach and requires buy-in from upper and middle management. When a company invests millions in software like SAP, you can be assured that upper management has bought in before they cut the check for the back-office system.

Where we use gamification. Gamification is all around us. Have you seen where Facebook pages acknowledge your contribution to pages and they are given badges to acknowledge your viewership or contribution to a page? These systems are integrated into every aspect of our social media. LinkedIn acknowledges you as being well connected to their site. Sometimes offering premium benefits to you for free or little cost.

Hotels and Airlines reward you for engaging. Contests reward you for liking and sharing pages. It continues on and on. Waze gives you advanced identifiers based on your time and contribution. These tools keep you engaged and using the app.

How we use gamification. We can use the tool of gamification to implement a new change or role out of new products. People often resist change so you can reward those that embrace it by being an early adopter. Early adopters are the key to all effective changes and improvements. They represent the success of the change and also have to be the ones that prove out the new ideas. This type of reward system allows us to visibly (using a display board for the improvement), share in the success of those that are willing to embrace the change. 

As an example, we see where personnel who are given a choice will run jobs that they have run before and are familiar with in the production cycle. You can reward those that are willing to work on new projects and parts. Higher points are given to these jobs and it is reflected in their ranking.

The key to gamification success is constantly re-evaluating and adjusting the metrics so that people don’t get bored or lose interest. When used properly it increases learning and reinforces the principles that the company values. 

Some tips for gamifying your workplace.

1. Reset all contestants goals regularly. If you run it like an odometer on a car many of your people will find it too daunting and they will lose interest. Also, the winners lose interest because there is no competition.

2. Make it visible. Everyone should see the tracking because that also gets non-competitors interested and have a rooting interest in the winner. It also promotes it through the company, this provides recognition to the employee that may feel they are just a number on the plant floor and not recognized for their contribution. A company newsletter and a congratulations from the CEO goes a long way!

3. Make it fun, you might find out that bragging rights and a wrestling belt are more desired than a $10 gift card to the winner. Offering a choice is another option. Not everyone wants the same thing, recognize the difference in their desired language of appreciation. Sometimes offering a day off with pay or gift card or another option can give them an option that fits their desired recognition. 

4. Vary the grading system based on desired results. If you want to add gamification to sales goals to recognize teamwork and leadership, you have to be specific. If it’s just sales numbers don’t be surprised your best salesman is not your best teammate or mentor. You may even get other members involved where they get a point to give to their most important team player.

5. Automate. A system that requires you to implement a new tracking system just adds more work. Utilize your existing IoT tracking and add sensors or triggers where needed to gauge missing elements. Many display systems can add fields for new goals and add a baseline for the green or red requirements.

Does it work? There is some debate over the long term success of using gamification. Some studies show that over time people’s interest and desire to reach an accomplishment wanes in the same way an old game wears out its interest (2). 

1- Oxford Dictionary

2- How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction by 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321630855X

Voice First Technology

Voice First Technology

Recently, “Project Voice” had an event. For those unfamiliar with project voice, their events focus around voice first technology. Incredible conference with new technology and new strategies for incorporating voice technology.

Growth has been exploding in the voice arena. See below, 39.8% growth in one year!

People are quickly adapting this technology and improving their life experiences. With all of these new devices, so too are the growth of applications for voice.

Medical was a very important focus during this conference. Voice technology is very helpful when doctors and nurses hands are occupied performing procedures. The though of being able to add additional options to record, detail,  note are all great but the amazing part is the thought of adding automation, changing settings, moving an operating table up and down, adding suction all by voice is a phenomenal new idea.

Think about how we interact with voice currently? Maybe you have a smart speaker in your home and you use it to check weather, your schedule, raise the temperature in your room or even adjust lighting. These are just scratching the surface.

Again if we think about places where your hands are indisposed, cooking in the kitchen and you need to look at a recipe, or are multitasking talking as you’re working on your car. These make your like easier

Go to the next level, the elderly, or handicapped without the use of their hands, this moves it from improving your life to a necessity of life! Imagine you need a automated chair to allow you to stand. Using your voice can change this aspect of someone who needs assistance to round the clock care.

Many neurological diseases are incorporating a strategy to help patients with these health concerns. Parkinson’s is one of these that were in attendance and discussed their needs for patients. 

Making information available through voice applications is a new area being developed. The blind have a difficult time using systems with just a modified Braille keyboard, the smart speakers provide access to more data everyday. It’s freeing to have more access for those with vision problems. Now those who don’t have access to interfaces for computer system information can access using voice. 

Project voice take the voice first attitude. Which along the same vein as, ” You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' the famous speech by George Bernard Shaw, used by Robert Kennedy. Voice first promotes using voice over other forms of input, keyboard, mouse, etc. This is their focus.

Let’s look at the average person's commute. Commute times are increasing and with it the need for hands free usage. Robert Bruchardt from Mercedes Benz discussed how voice is improving safety in vehicles by keeping your hands off your phone and eyes on the road. It is an opportunity for safety that we all can embrace to make roads safer.

The conference highlighted similar strategies for vehicle driving challenges all the way down to food ordering apps. Organizing foods into better searchable engines is harder than most people think. For instance if you want to get a hamburger, it’s very difficult when a restaurant has a proprietary name like Big Mac or big boy since these make it more difficult for the engines to compile this information.

You need to realize that voice first strategy means that you have to combine direction “look up” or “find” , along with data, fettuccine Alfredo. This can make this a challenge and while it continues to improve we need to do a better job training our technology.

There were even companies who can test your technology and recognition without the need to go through the pain of customers becoming agitated with a poor interface or a bad interpretation program. 

Companies were there speaking on integration between voice and manufacturing workplace like Jeff Adams from Cobalt had tremendous insight into what is the next phase of technology integration. Using voice instructions to operate robots and equipment are here today.

There were many ethical discussions and panels regarding AI and voice. Much has been expressed regarding what can be heard within these devices and what is done with that information and who else sees the info. There were several discussions regarding protecting data and the hacking of these devices or ancillary programs. It was a significant part of the strategy for most companies. We need to address these concerns. 

AI is becoming more important as part of a voice first company interface. Artificial Intelligence is assisting with the voice comprehension aspect. Once the voice is received by the smart device microphone section of the device the understanding of the words is critical to the success of the program. 

Dr Shamoon was presenting on the difficulty we have in communicating big ideas in just words. Below are 2 sample sentences which illustrate how easy it is to confuse programs by voice when we make assumptions. Our brains can understand these assumptions but a computer does this through understanding the probability of what word or phrase you are wanting to convey.

Why should you care? With the significant growth of smart speakers and now the mobile version you can put in your car, we are seeing more and more companies writing for these devices. 

Many people only see these as a hands free device for convenience but in the same way as we have become dependent on our cell phones and they have become our go to place for our data, searches, communication and access, the smart units are quickly becoming the interface of choice. By no means should we think of this as a replacement to other devices like our phones or tablets, it is instead a convenient method to interface with our devices.

The big picture for manufacturing and IoT is that these devices make interfacing with our current systems a bit more convenient when the application warrants a hands free option, or in the case of many, when you need another hand. 

The designers of these devices are designing simpler programming interfaces so anyone can program using these devices. This open platform design has accelerated the app development. This is where many companies will find their niche in the future. I can’t stress enough that we have proven historically that we will invest in convenience. We spend more on cell phones than we did 20 years ago with the new phones coming out at around $1,000. Why? Do we need this to make a call, no. But, because we are paying for the all in one service where the one device can perform all of the systems in one device. Can we do this currently? Echo show can search, play music, show you pictures, access the Internet, update your calendar, make lists all by voice. 

Siri is another area that is expected to attain more utilization but needs a bit of a push to make it a more open design so app makers will want to build for this service. 

All of the big players were in attendance ( Microsoft, Amazon, Google) so you know they see the long term merit to designing for voice first systems. Don’t sleep on voice first, oh that reminds me to set an alarm on my smart speaker.