We said it in a previous article: Big Data Analysis can be applied to many fields, first of all within an organization, where it can help to further investigate every kind of behavior and business decision.
However, it is not so easy to leverage data properly. The most concrete problem is very often the collection of the data itself, which is numerous and can be confusing, disaggregated, or not easily found.
In these cases, gamification can help. But what is meant by this term?
Gamification is a tool that, taking advantage of the interactivity of modern means of communication, associates it with the concept of fun, inducing active behavior on the part of the users involved. We talk about gamification, for example, in the context of improving customer management, consolidating brand loyalty, or improving the performance of employees and partners.
Starting with this concept, it’s easy to see how it can be applied to data analytics as well. By improving the connection people have with the data they produce, gamification gives data researchers better ways to collect and study it.
Turning big data analytics into a game
Let’s take the field of genetic research as an example: did you know that at the beginning of the decade some scientists at the Scripps Research Institute released a game, called Dizeez? It was an online quiz that invited players to match diseases with the genes that cause them. The quiz covered areas as broad as cancer, metabolism, and mental health.
Andrew Su, the Institute professor who developed Dizeez, explained in a blog post how it works. First, such a quiz helped players reinforce the scientific knowledge they had. But more importantly, the game itself led the user to unconsciously reveal links between genes and diseases that were not yet known. Starting with existing data, then, new information was created to be recorded in databases and new connections that could lead to potential treatments for those diseases.
Gamification in Tableau
Tableau is, as you might imagine, a perfect ally for creating game-oriented dashboards, and its applications in this field are endless.
For example, you might want to track the process of learning and knowledge acquisition by members of a team, thus enticing them to proceed with personal training. That’s what happened to Ratnesh Pandey, a Tableau-certified analyst living and working in Singapore, creator of a Viz (you can find it here in full) that fully sums up the concept of Gamification.
The concept is simple: after assigning each team member a character that represents him or her – a “Viz-Monster” – the goal is to make him or her grow faster by collecting coins that are earned by achieving specific objectives, such as certifications or training.
In this way, each user has a view of the general performance of the whole team and of the individual ones. There is also the possibility of comparing several paths to monitor their growth at the same pace, always in a fun and competitive perspective, just like participating in a group game.
The future of gamification in Data Analysis
We’ve seen how gamification is a useful tool for data collection and, in some cases, even data analysis. Starting from the example above, it should be added that, with the use of Tableau, each visualization can be gamified in order to involve more users who interact with it, also with the introduction of levels, scores and challenges among participants. There are many Tableau users who, on Tableau Public, share daily dashboards that wink at gamification.
Have you ever wanted to create such a viz?
If so, or if you want to tell us about some really innovative ones, let us know by commenting on our social channels Facebook and Linkedin, or by emailing us at info@visualitics.it.
