Game Dynamics in User Experience

In a recent post, I talked about “Gamifying Usability” citing an NPR story and Amazon’s user badges.
Rajat Paharia of Bunchball has done a nice job in this 60 minute video distilling some useful practices for bring in game behavior into app (or site) design.

One useful illustration is this table listing human desires, rewards and their sweet-spots.

In some way, games can be very different from utilitarian UI, in that a game cannot be so easy to use as to present no challenge. The designer needs to invent obstacles to keep the level of play at a satisfying level. However, you in non-game applications, game reward systems could be used to motivate just as well.