Institute For The Future

Using nature and gaming to persuade for productivity

Nathan Verrill, an interaction designer, applied gaming guru, and usability expert who among other things was a key figure in the development of our Signtific platform, has a new start-up creating gamelike overlays for workplace tasks and organizational processes. With his team at NatronBaxter, he has developed The Garden, "an organic approach to increasing employee engagement" that builds off University of Rochester research suggesting that exposure to natural environments (even virtual representations, apparently) makes us more generous and more happy--all things you probably want to encourage in the workplace. 

 

Some of the persuasive elements: game theory (rewards, incentives, rapid feedback); natural growth as a metaphor for "growing" professional/workplace targets and goals; bringing games into work to reframe the context of work activities: their core belief is that "fun is not the enemy of work."