Using Gamification to Collect Big Data

By Mark Van Rijmenam

Big data can be collected through game design and gamification to improve customer engagement and build a relationship with the company brand. The right design of gamification is very important for it to deliver the desired results and insights. Gartner predicts that 80% of the gamification solutions will fail to reach its objectives due to poor design. Poor design could lead to poor data quality and no insights. As with big data, visualisations and great design are really important. With this information we start to understand how and why someone behaves in a gamified context and as such it gives us insights in how that person behaves in real-life. That information is very valuable for advertisers that want to reach consumers with the right message in the right context at the right moment.

Here are 5 advantages to combining big data and gamification:

1. Real -time feedback. Big data provides transparent, real-time, and personalized feedback to the user. Using this data the user can receive various rewards, loyalty and social awards.
2. Engagement. Personalized gamification elements will increase the involvement of the end-user with the product. More interaction could lead to more sharing and thus online reach for the company. With big data, the gamification elements become more engaging and, more importantly, more fun too.
3. Insight. Big data will provide insights into the behaviour of users, on an aggregated level as well as an individual level. This data can be used to improve the products and services offered.
4. Transferable data. With big data it is important that the insights derived from the massive amounts of data are actually used. Gamification can help to turn an organization into an information-centric organization by applying game elements in the dashboards that visualize the data.
5. Smart data. Roman Rackwitz states that gamification can advance big data into smart data. Personalized and relevant feedback based on the choices made in the gamified context will increase the interaction and draw a user more into the big data dashboard. This will result in more involvement and interest in data-driven insights and thus better decision-making.

There are a lot of similarities between big data and gamification. One could even say that gamification is the friendly scout of big data, gathering data from literally 1000's of potential actions that can be measured, but in a user friendly and engaging manner. The insights that come from any good gamification platform are enormous and, if visualized correctly, it can provide valuable insights to organizations as well as help to create an information-centric organization.

About The Author