Improspectives

I’m most of the way through the Gamification course I’m taking on Coursera. I’ve learned a lot and hope to apply some of the techniques in my own work.

Much of the course’s material appears in For the Win, written by the Coursera professor Kevin Werbach and his coauthor Dan Hunter (both of whom are faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School). My previous four posts discussed four elements of gamification (such as meaningful choices and conflict) and how to incorporate them into business and improv. The authors also identify six steps to gamification (For the Win, p. 86), which I think provide an excellent framework for business and theatrical endeavors.

The authors’ six D’s are:

• Define business objectives
• Delineate target behaviors
• Describe your players
• Devise activity cycles
• Don’t forget the fun!
• Deploy the appropriate tools

My next six posts will address these D’s one at a time, starting with how to define your objectives.