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Blogging Innovation: Mapping Customer Experience Excellence - Innovation blog articles, videos, and insights

via business-strategy-innovation.com

A product or service is merely a means to an end. The real deeper value lies in the story attached. I don't want to own a coffee maker - I need to wake up early with a little help from a cup of coffee. I don't want to use a train - I want to get home to my wife and children. I don't want to go to a store and buy a stereo set - I just want to listen to my favorite rock music when I'm home, it makes me unwind after work.

Use of points in social systems

Yesterday afternoon on Twitter there was a brilliant conversation among Kevin Marks, Tom Coates, Jane McGonigal, Tara Hunt, Josh Porter and a few others on the thoughtful use of points and competition in social systems.

Motivated by the popularity of games, designers of social systems sometimes adopt scoring and ranking systems simplistically, with counterproductive results.

The easiest design mistake is to throw up a “leaderboard” ranking all participants by a single dimension. Tom Coates explains that this simply discourages most participants. “Competitive charts, particularly at scale, basically are disincentives! Why compete to be #134,555th best at something!” Jane McGonigal agrees: “Cumulative allplayer scoreboards/ranks/achievements are fail, should be stopped like blink tags ^_^”

..... more   http://www.alevin.com/?p=1733