Human-Focused Design: The Better Term for Gamification
In my own view, gamification is the craft of deriving fun and engaging elements found typically in games and thoughtfully applying them to real-world or productive activities. This process is what I call “Human-Focused Design,” in opposition to what we normally find in society as “Function-Focused Design.” Human-Focused Design optimizes for human motivation in a system as opposed to optimizing for pure functional efficiency within the system.
Most systems are inherently “function-focused,” that is, designed to get the job done quickly. This is like a factory that assumes its workers will do their jobs because they are required to, not because they necessarily want to perform the associated tasks. However, at its core, Human-Focused Design emphasizes that people aren’t rudimentary cogs in a system.
We have feelings, ambitions, insecurities, and reasons for whether or not we want...