Where X meets the spot

Gamification stuff we love: Where X meets the spot

As I travel I often read some books on my Kindle app or play games, all in the name of research and improving my gamification off course. Three flights later, I finished the new book from Brian Solis called “X: The experience when business meets design”. Although it is not written for gamification, I found it really applies to a number of projects I am working on, hence I wanted to share it in this column.

In gamification design we focus on building meaningful customer or employee journeys, the book describes how various companies approach their experiential journey design for customers. Brian shares how X (the experience) is made up of multiple micro-moments all with a variation of purposes, some will raise awareness, others are for buying or decision making aims, validation and then advocacy. Each really is built on an underlying value and emotion. It is on the emotional level where he sees current journey design is often missing the spot. However by following how people do-think-feel at each moment of truth and designing those instances with specific goals in mind, we can make their experience better.

In gamification design, I spend quite some time looking at the behaviours of current users and their motivations and this is also what the book recommends to engage with end-users in order to design with the customer central to the picture.

I have to say, the book is making me enhance some of the design processes I am using, so I highly recommend it for your design too.

Let me know what your key take aways are from this book.