Defining, designing and using gamification

Games are an engaging and captivating medium, and serious games - those built for a purpose other than entertainment - can be used to educate, inspire and train a target user base. More recently though designers have started to borrow elements directly from video games, embedding these elements into non-game interactive systems in an attempt to make a more engaging experience for users. Described as gamification, or gameful design, this area has taken off big time in the last few years. This presentation will introduce you to the concept of gamification, detail where and why you'd use it, and provide tips on how to design it effectively.

Presented by Mr. Zac Fitz-Walter, Phd Candidate, Queensland University of Technology

Zac is a PhD candidate at the Mobile Innovation Lab at the Faculty of Science and Technology, QUT with a research focus on gamification, mobile applications and motivation. His PhD thesis is centered around exploring how to design effective gamification for mobile services and software applications. Zac has interned at the Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Finland as a User Experience research intern and has taught a range of subjects at both the Faculty of Information Technology and Faculty of Creative Industries at QUT. He also creates iPhone applications and games during his spare time and when he gets the chance enjoys playing board games... in particular the super nerdy German ones.