Applied Gaming At Target Off Target

The always lovely linkage at kottke.org brought us to this ditty about Target employing some game elements to motivate and track their cashiers. And even though one employee acknowledges that it “makes work feel like a game,” we can’t help but notice that it’s one fugly game.

To be fair, the system developers probably weren’t thinking of their feedback mechanism as a game. But having established a hint of gameplay, they’ve whet the whistles of a whole slew of game-playing employees. With a little aesthetic polish, real-time team challenges / rewards, and high scores (most consecutive “perfect checkouts,” for example), they’d no doubt invigorate that latent spirit of competition.

And you’ll have to get your leisurely checkout banter elsewhere.