I’m back in the office after attending The Quirk’s Event, London, and my head is still spinning from the experience. I enjoyed connecting with new people and learning from the speakers during some amazing sessions (Shout out to everyone who attended Lori Laflin’s session, “Customer Experience from Talk to Action: An Interactive Workshop.” I’ll never forget the singing cookie!).
One session that I really connected with was titled, “Gamifying Qualitative Research – It’s A Lot More than Just Playing Games,” presented by Susan Fader of Fader & Associates. Fader shared how the elements of gamification can be incorporated into all aspects of qualitative research design.
As I listened to Fader describe ways researchers can gamify their process, my mind went straight to the interactive smart badges from Klik, new to the event this year, and how the technology brought gamification to expo hall networking. The badges allowed attendees in close proximity to exchange information simply by both pressing and holding down the bottom of the badge. LEDs flashed, letting you know you successfully exchanged information. In addition, by connecting, attending sessions, giving session feedback and more, attendees earned points. Once an attendee achieved a benchmark point total they were entered into a drawing to win prizes.
From tweets – including photos from those heading up the leaderboard – to attendees eagerly connecting to earn points, the excitement surrounding the smart badges was real.
“Great gamifying of event social networking. Worked on me so far.” Joe Glassfield (LinkedIn)
“Winner of the day though – the Klik event app. It had everyone slightly obsessing over their place on the leaderboard, great use of gamification to encourage networking.” Mandeep Gill (LinkedIn)
“… excited about being able to directly download contacts from the klik badge thingies!” @JDDeitch (Twitter)
One purpose of gamification is to enhance engagement and deliver more powerful feedback and insights. While The Quirk’s Event is far from a formal qualitative study, the game – and the badges – encouraged connections and sparked interesting conversations. I credit the tech for many of the fun, real conversations I had with attendees. Some likely wouldn’t have approached me without the desire to improve their score!