Gamification stuff we love: Kano Kit
At the Gamification World Meetup in London Kano kindly age us their space to host the Meetup in, they also show cased their computer building kits. In my first job I was given a working computer and told to take it apart and then put it back together again whilst making sure it still worked. In technical support it was one skill you needed and the challenge at the time sort of filled me with nervous anxiety and determination both at the same time, but I did work it out and worked in this role for some time.
When I saw the Kano kit it brought back all those memories of rebuilding the computer, equally the thought if it had looked like that much fun the first time round, I probably wouldn’t have felt anxious but rather more curious on how I could put it together. The Kano kit comes supplied with a fun manual all the elements such as a keyboard, cables, speaker, it has a Raspberry Pi 2 chip inside and comes with a Kano OS to make it all work.
Once you have it all assembled you connect it to a display screen and it then teaches you to start creating your own fun games with code. Again it is all done in a very playful way, so your curiosity is to continuously tickled to keep working forward. They have since built a community where young people can share their games. the kit is aimed at children, but I have to say and their own stories of customers also noticed older adult like children can’t resist building the computer and making the games either.
From a gamification perspective it is well constructed on the curiosity motivational driver, all the materials encourage you to keep exploring from manual to instruction, the colours and stickers already give it a friendly fun feel and yes you can level up by creating your own games and re-constructing some old traditional games such as Pong and snakes, amongst others. The product design is so well thought through, you just don’t notice you are moving forward, which is the best way of learning if you ask me.
[video_player type=”embed” width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″]
[/video_player]
I will be buying a Kano kit for myself, will you or will you buy it for your children?
