Andy Baio Talks Motivating Real Life via Games at SXSW

Earlier this month, we saw the incredible Panic Status board, a real-time visualization of the Portland-based software company's activities and tasks. Running on a large high def screen mounted in the office, the Web-based board tracks the number of outstanding tech requests, creating a way for everyone at the company to quickly see what's happening. Panic found that the board, in effect, motivated people to attack the support queue like a game, aiming to get the outstanding requests number down to zero.

Programmer and journalist Andy Baio, of Waxy.org and Kickstarter, spoke at SXSW about games bleeding into real life, the workplace and the marketplace. Using games as psychological motivators isn't a far-fetched idea. Both the Ford Fusion and Honda Insight have dashboard graphics that show you how efficiently you're driving via growing leaves. The Obama team understood this and leveraged the power of a leader board and achievements during the presidential campaign. Nike realized this earlier with the hugely effective Nike+ where it used real world data and visualization to get people exercising, a notoriously difficult thing to get people to do regularly. Nike+ users can track their own performance, compare with friends, and even compete in virtual races and marathons.

The Guardian newspaper published over 700,000 pages of U.K. politician's expenses online, and was able to get 20,000 volunteers to sift through the huge database of government paperwork by adding a status bar and other game components. The achievements, incentives, and competition involved in these kinds of gameplay games can, as Baio describes, be incredible motivators to make the "not fun, fun."

Learning about Microsoft Office has even been turned into a game by the team at Office Labs. Ribbon Hero takes these "bloated apps" and adds a scoreboard, rewarding you with points as you try new features and complete challenges. For example, learning to format a document with headers, alignment, and italics (a riveting activity) gets you points, which you can then share on Facebook and compare with friends. Adding feedback, recognition, goals, and a sense of community to these seemingly boring things, Baio explained, can be surprisingly effective in hacking your mind into making the activities seem attractive and exciting.

Even Target is getting in on adding game components to work. The company tested a simple cashier rating system, which rated each individual check-out, letting cashiers get real feedback on their work. Baio highlighted Jesse Schell's excellent Dice presentation, 'Design Outside the Box,' to explore where the combination of gaming and real life could go next. With the spread of mobile technology and always on Web, systems for tracking (and scoring) everything from exercising, brushing your teeth, getting to work on time, and shopping might not be that far off.

Presenter: Andy Baio (twitter and Waxy.org)

Tags: andy baio, AndyBaio, NikePlus, politics, sxsw, sxsw2010, target, waxy