Somersaults in our minds

Buil­ding, rom­ping, hiding, giving free rein to ide­as, per­forming somer­saults in our minds: as child­ren, we play­ed games. And we were hap­py to. Espe­ci­al­ly when we play­ed tog­e­ther. We ima­gi­ned new things, flew in our thoughts to undis­co­ve­r­ed uni­ver­ses, crea­ted our very own worlds with all our sen­ses. Play con­nec­ted us.

Then we grew up and the serious­ness of life took over from play­ing. How quick­ly we have for­got­ten how important play is – also as an act of free­dom. That this form of arran­ge­ment is valu­able and enri­ching and moves us for­ward. The fact is, play­ful ele­ments are lin­ked to posi­tively char­ged memo­ries. And posi­ti­ve memo­ries find their way direc­t­ly into the sub­con­scious. How would it be if the­se play­ful ele­ments once again pene­tra­ted upwards from the­re, with new rules for our pro­duct and media jung­le?

Gami­fi­ca­ti­on is the trans­fer of typi­cal game pro­ces­ses and ele­ments into new envi­ron­ments. Rele­vant design alo­ne will make your mind turn somer­saults again and find ways to play online, off­line and bet­ween the lines. This starts with catchy sym­bols, emo­ti­cons or ani­ma­ti­ons that redu­ce the likeli­hood of aban­don­ment during a shop­ping pro­cess, emo­tio­nal­ly reward the shop­per or con­vey the secu­ri­ty of a pass­word. It con­ti­nues with sur­pri­sing sta­gings, uncon­ven­tio­nal forms and pur­po­se­ful­ly used mate­ri­als that trans­form archi­tec­tu­re and spaces into sen­su­al worlds. Well imple­men­ted, gami­fi­ca­ti­on is not an annex to exis­ting con­cepts, but may beco­me their very core … becau­se in the end, peop­le are only ful­ly human when they play.