We’re pleased to announce that Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer of major gamification service vendor Bunchball, will join the Gamification workshop at CHI 2011 as industry expert. He will provide insights into the practical design challenges of “gameifying” applications and sites, lessons learned on the way, trends and open questions the industry faces right now, and in general stand by for kind cross-examination.

Before founding Bunchball in 2005, he was co-director of the Software Experiences Practice at IDEO, working with clients including AT&T Wireless, Avaya, Microsoft, McDonald’s, HP and Philips. Prior to that, he worked at Philips Consumer Electronics, IBM Research and ViewStar. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, and an undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley.

For a taster, you may watch a video of Rajat’s presentation on “Driving User Behavior with Game Dynamics and Behavioral Economics” given on February 12, 2010 at Stanford University in the Human-Computer Interaction Program (description here, PDF of slides here):