Early-stage Startup Vetter seeks Gamification suggestions

This is a guest post from Duncan Murtagh, co-founder of Vetter. 

Vetter is a web-based Idea Management System.

Among the many requests and recommendations we've received while building out Vetter over the last two months, adding gamification has come up the most. We see the implementation of some game mechanics as simultaneously the most fun sounding and the most daunting.

Any gamification features must not make the system harder to use

Our web-app's key selling point is that unlike competitor's complicated, feature heavy, systems, ours is feature-light and you can figure out how to use it in a couple of minutes (at least that's what we reckon anyway). So we have to think very carefully about adding any feature that would require a page to explain it. We've learned this from the success of HipChat's private group chat service, which has lots of features but they don't make the system hard to use, so HipChat has managed to land loads of big clients. Our No. 1 priority is to keep Vetter a low-maintenance system for a manager in a business. 

We're here to tap the creativity of the Gamificaton & Branding readers
So far, our only adventure in gamification has been the addition of a simple leaderboard of 'Top Idea Submitters'. We're wondering if the smart people that read this blog (that's YOU!) might have suggestions for how we could use game mechanics to increase usage of Vetter? Please post your ideas in the comments below and I'll do my best to reply to all suggestions. A quick explanation of how the system work's can be found on Vetter's How it Works page.

Lastly - our own gamificaton idea - is it any good?
My co-founder Steven and I have though about creating a points systems for users, with some type of cute icon appearing beside user's names to indicate where they stand in the system. Our intitial thought was that the points system would be something like:

• Rating an idea – 1 point
• Submitting an idea – 3 points
• Getting an idea through the vetting and to the boss – 5 points
• Having an idea marked as implemented (likely after some time) by the boss – 15 points

Bart Hufen added this comment: @Duncan and @Steven please check out my presentation about Gamification at Slideshare or join me tomorrow in London at the 'Games for Brands' event.