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Showing posts from August, 2009

More On Productivity (Serious) Games

Via: Productivity Games – Ross Smith Following my prior posting Productivity (Serious) Games , Ross Smith, an 18-year veteran of Microsoft and now director of the Windows Security Test Team Director, reports that they've had some great success using games at work, with a focus on using gaming technology and game elements to help make work more fun while increasing productivity. Hard evidence can be found on their book The Practical Guide to Defect Prevention and the companion site http://defectprevention.cloudapp.net/   that cover what they learned about using games in Windows. Chapter 5 addresses a theme that is very close to my heart: “ using the carrot, not the stick ” and the corollary topics: “Use Scoring to Encourage Participation, Keep the Players Coming Back to Check Their Score, You’d Be Surprised at What People Will Compete For”, and much more. In addition, they share some Examples of Using Games for Defect Prevention. The Language Quality Game As briefl

Productivity (Serious) Games

Page Hunt shows users a Web page, without the URL, and asks them what search query they would type to get to that page. Via: Productivity Games – Ross Smith A ccording to Ross Smith, Director of Test, Windows Security, at Microsoft, Productivity Games are a sub-category of Serious Games designed to improve the productivity and morale of people doing "regular work”, or in other words: Play your Work! In his extensive post Portfolio Selection and Game Theory in Defect Prevention , he states that Productivity Games could be the Six Sigma of the 21st century. Ross Smith also states that Productivity Games attract players to perform tasks that humans are good at but computers currently are not. “Although computers offer tremendous opportunities for automation and calculation”, he says, “some tasks, such as analyzing images, have proven to be difficult and error-prone and, therefore, using computers can often lower the quality and usefulness of the results. For tasks s