October 2014

Entrepreneur and keynote presenter Krishna Depura shared his take on creating engaging content to a full room of professional education providers at the 2014 National Registry Summit.

“It’s all about flow,” Depura said, “which is the right combination of challenge and use of preexisting skills.”

The presentation was one of two keynote messages delivered at this year’s Summit, held in Nashville, TN.

Depura explained that learners feel anxiety if there are big challenges in a lesson that exceed their skill levels. Conversely, it can be boring when a learner’s skill level is high and there is very little challenge. “Flow is the state of mind where your skills are good enough and there are enough challenges that you’re enjoying the experience,” he said. The goal of a game is to keep you in flow.

In 2012, Depura co-founded MindTickle, a web-based course platform that leverages game mechanics and social tools. “We combined the power of social, mobile, gamification and analytics,” explained Depura. “You bring in any of your existing digital content and, within a few hours, convert [it] into an interesting gamification experience.” Since then, MindTickle courses have served over 60,000 learners.

Depura shared examples of how using social interaction and leaderboards motivates users to engage with content exponentially more. “A Fortune 500 company had 300 senior vice presidents and directors and tried for two years to teach them about the company’s new policies, but never got more than 15 people to the training,” shared Depura. “So we created a story experience with a leaderboard to see everyone’s progress and 173 people completed it within three days.”

In another example, school districts within the Des Moines school system saw a 40% drop in their support tickets after implementing a MindTickle program to have them compete over their mastery of new technologies.

Depura and his colleagues first discovered the power of gamification from Facebook, where they noticed friends doing extensive research just to compete in informal trivia competition. The social competition motivated people to learn the content, they concluded. That element, combined with game mechanics and principles, now comprises the heart of MindTickle.

“Gamification for the sake of itself will fail. If you ask why you’re doing something eventually everything leads to that you want to be happy. And, to become happy, you need three things: to feel like you’re in control; to make progress in your life; and to be connected to a higher purpose,” Depura said.

“We have taken that principle and applied it to MindTickle so that the user experience lets the learner have control, users go at their own pace and content is available to them whenever and wherever they want. The progress is very incremental. And, it’s always clear as to why the user is doing this program and how it will help them.”

To learn more about MindTickle, visit: mindtickle.com.

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