May 21, 2011
Courtesy of Haxney's Photostream
To start I want to acknowledge that the term “gamification” is not the subject of this post even though it is the buzz term these days. So before going further let me explain why I think the term is misleading.
When used as a noun, gamification implies a standardized design process and I don’t think one exists for implementing game design that enables relationships in social business. I prefer to follow Jane McGonical’s use of the term gameful to reinforce the point that the spirit of games rather than the mechanics is most important in designing for what makes experience playful, especially in collaboration. I do use gamification in the context of other people’s discussions though. In additon, I use the verb gamify to imply an activity.
Don’t Gamify Wild Bill discussed the importance of designing for voluntary play in serious games. Playfulness is the baseline requirement for any game designed to provide useful indicators for gauging individual and organizational successes over time.
The qualifier over time is the key point to keep in mind. Specifically, those interested in gamifying employee engagement in social business, and who also aim to effectively use collaboration, must optimally design for emergence not just competition and cooperation as guiding principles.
To echo the position taken by many game designers on the subject of gamification, you can’t simply add game mechanics to employee participation in business processes and expect voluntary engagement by players over time.
Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | 
Collaboration, Community 2.0, Experience Design, Gameful Design, Social Business Design, Social Learning | 
Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
May 28, 2009
Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) is a term used by Doc Searls and other members of ProjectVRM to distinguish market relationships between vendors and consumers where the latter gain increased control over that commercial relationship. Building on the VRM concept, Jeremiah Owyang recently noted that VRM offers a potential future for public relations agencies in which the future of PR is in representing communities rather than brands. As Doc recently declared,
We therefore resolve to avoid all relationships in which the privileges of loyalty are determined entirely by the seller, and to construct new terms and means of engagement that will work in mutually constructive ways for both customers and sellers, for the good of all.
So, in the spirit of the Declaration of Customer Independence recently outlined by Doc, I offer the following turn of the century anecdote for thinking about Customer Managed Relationships (CMR).
Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Community 2.0, Customer Communities, Customer Experience, Social Networks | Tagged: Community 2.0, Customer Communities, customer community, customer managed relationships, Experience Design, personalization, social network, social networking, vendor relationship management, VRM | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
October 22, 2008
David Armano recently made a distinction between interactive advertising and social media which he depicts in the image on the left. He noted that many companies mistake interactive advertising with social media and notes that the two differ in the place of PEOPLE in the strategy. Specifically, David points out that interactive advertising involves Human-Technology Interactions. Whereas, social media involves Human-Human Interactions enabled by technology.
Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Brands, Community 2.0, Experience Design, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Tagged: community, interactive advertising, Persona, social media marketing | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
September 26, 2008
Peter Kim offers an interesting observation on the way social networking relates to the qualities of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and the insight offered by Michel Foucault that Bentham’s design served as an exemplar for organizational discipline in the industrial age. Peter notes that Bentham’s design made prisoners uncertain whether the prison guards were watching their behavior at any particular moment. He also points out that the design of modern cube farms in offices not only foster collaboration but also afford observation by managers and peers.
Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Collaboration, Community 2.0, e-Learning 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Social Networks, Web 2.0 | Tagged: e-Learning 2.0, elearning 2.0, panopticon, social networking, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
September 18, 2008
Ross Mayfield of SocialText recently pointed to a longstanding issue involving the relationship of organizational practices and organizational processes. He offered a discussion of distributed collaboration and community, specifically on the question of which organizational stakeholder is the most effective leader of community (internal and external) initiatives. Ross suggests that even though we may see the emergence of a Chief Community Officer to align and coordinate internal and external communities, communities are more likely to arise around organizational processes as 360 degree process communities.
In my view, approaching distributed collaboration from the standpoint of community alone, especially communities internal to the enterprise, is overly restrictive. Collective understanding and collaborative understanding, as Thomas Vander Wahl makes clear, are different parts of what he refers to as the social sofware stack. Without getting overly picky, let me agree with Ross’ point that the development of internal communities in enterprises will most likely occur around the way process owners manage routine work and its exceptions. Nevertheless, the distinction Ross makes, following Mike Gotta, about the difference between processes (how work is supposed to get done) and practices (how work actually gets done) really indicates a need to keep in focus the range of connections and interactions that social software enables.
Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments | Collaboration, Community 2.0, e-Learning 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Social Media | Tagged: Collaboration, Community 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, social software, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
August 29, 2008
A few weeks ago, we drew from the 2008 Tribalization of Business Study, sponsored by Beeline Labs, Deloitte, and the Society for New Communications Research, to discuss the gap between the importance many enterprises attribute to the development of communities and the accompanying investment in that engagement strategy, whether focused on internal stakeholders, or externally on customers.
We noted that the findings of the Tribalization study point to a Community Gap. Yet, drawing from Rachel Happe, we also pointed out the differences between the conversations characterizing social media and the conversations of a community. The distinction is important to keep in mind when considering an overall strategy for connecting with and engaging people online, whether they are employees, suppliers, or customers. After reading two recent research efforts, one from Fleishman-Hillard and the other from Forrester Research, it is clear that the Community Gap is one manifestation of a larger gap, the Engagement Gap.
Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Brands, Community 2.0, Customer Communities, Customer Experience, Experience Design, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Customer Experience, engagement, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
August 13, 2008
For those who think discussions of semantic value and meaning are pointless, with no relationship to technology adoption, you may want to skip this post.
We first discussed visual tags in 2006. Many people today refer to them as 2d barcodes. However, a crucial difference exists between what things are like and what they in fact are. Calling visual tags (v-Tags) 2d barcodes is like calling YouTube a video database, Flickr a photo database, or Del.icio.us a favorites list. Literally, the description is accurate. Functionally, it is meaningless. Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Community 2.0, e-Learning 2.0, Experience Design, Innovation, Ubiquitous Computing, v-Tags, Web 2.0 | Tagged: 2d barcode, Experience Design, folksonomy, m-learning, mlearning, mobile experience design, mobile learning, social media marketing, Ubiquitous Computing, v-Tags, visual tags, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
May 15, 2008
I’ve discussed the importance of customer communities to innovation, customer experience, and customer dialogue as an antidote to self-orientation by companies. David Weinberger recently posted about the Community 2.0 conference, pointing out the Starbucks suggestion box as a good example of customer community. David also pointed approvingly to the arms-length participation of Tivo in the independent forum, TivoCommunity.com, speaking to the point that communities of customers often form on their own.
Coincidentally, I received an email recently soliciting me to join a community of Best Buy customers. I’m not an especially enthusiastic customer of Best Buy, but since CompUSA closed its doors in St. Louis, most of my electronic purchases are at Best Buy. The first thing I took note of in the invitation was its blatant point that Best Buy is selecting members for its community. The email stated:
If you are selected to join the online community, you will discuss and share opinions on a variety of topics, react to questions posed by Best Buy and provide insight into your lifestyle. In addition, you will build rewarding friendships with other members, and receive periodic rewards in exchange for your participation. This is a unique opportunity for you to share your thoughts and ideas with Best Buy – only about three hundred people will be chosen.
To see if you qualify, please click on the link below to complete a 10-minute questionnaire.
The email solicitation sparked my curiosity and I clicked on the links to check out the survey it requires you to complete before learning whether you qualify. At the end of a lengthy sequence of questions, I learned that I just don’t fit into their community plans. Probably because I didn’t answer all the questions, such as what is your family income and other fairly personal items. It seems obvious to me that Best Buy doesn’t really want a community. Rather, they are selecting people for the equivalent of an online focus group representing one marketing segment. I’d suggest Best Buy rethink its strategy.
Share this post…
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
: 
1 Comment | Community 2.0, Customer Communities | Tagged: Best Buy, Community 2.0, customer community | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
Skilful Minds 