Actionable Gamification

by Yu-kai Chou

  But surprisingly, when showing these three options to new groups of MIT students, zero people chose the new print version only option as we might have expected (they are smart MIT students after all), but a overwhelming majority of the students (84%) suddenly wanted to order the digital and print subscriptions for $125, and only 16% of the students wanted the digital-only copy for $59.

  If you were the Economist magazine, this means adding the useless option that no one wants will suddenly increase your total revenues by 44.6%! How does that make any sense? The secret lies in the fact that people do not take actions that are necessarily the most economical, but actions that make them feel the smartest.

  I have personally seen rich women who spend dozens of hours clipping coupons so they could reduce a $20 item to $0.60. Do they need the extra savings? No. Is it the most economical use of their time? Probably not. But they do it because it makes them feel smart. They get to buy a $20 item with a dollar bill, and they even get change back! Similarly, in the case of the magazine, when a person sees that it takes $125 to get the print versions alone, but also $125 to get the print version and the digital version, it now feels like the digital version was obtained for FREE! By putting out a bait reference price, people now feel smarter getting the one that seemed like a no-brainer good deal. Sometimes feeling smart comes at a luxurious cost.

  Limitations of eBay’s Design

  Because of the Glowing Choices, Personalized Recommendations, Peer Reviews, and Desert Oasis design elements mentioned above, Amazon users never feel confused about what to do next. You move quickly towards the Win-State, and especially if you made the “feel-smart” decision of purchasing Amazon Prime, your item will ship to your home within two days, with easy return and refund options.

  eBay on the other hand, does not enjoy the same luxuries of making users feel smart. To start, eBay’s interface is a bit more like Google+, where the user doesn’t really know where to find what they want. With a variety of horizontal and vertical menus on the same screen, along with multiple dropdown menus, it’s easy for a user to spend over four seconds before figuring out where they want to go.

  Also, because of eBay’s DNA of being a bidding marketplace, it does not have as much control over the experience of the users. When a user finally buys a product, eBay cannot guarantee the item will arrive within two days. In fact, eBay is at the mercy of the amateur sellers, who may not even ship the product out in a week. Even when the seller has shipped the item, they sometimes don’t record it as shipped, let alone include a tracking number. During this time of waiting, the buyer has no idea whether the product was shipped or not, and when it will arrive. This definitely does not induce feelings of competency.

  Luckily, when that dream item finally arrives, joy is reinstalled, and that delayed gratification fuels the drive to buy again on eBay. Unfortunately, when the item doesn’t come in the form you dreamt it to be, therein lies the limitations of eBay. Especially as a used-item market, you may receive items that are in different conditions than described, damaged during shipment, or just plain out not what you paid for. And in the case of eBay, they can’t just give you a return-refund. The seller who shadily sold you the product in the first place has to.

  Sure, you have the option to leave negative feedback on eBay’s reputation system, but for years there was a strange feedback standstill phenomenon which paralyzed further activity. When there has been a bad experience, both sides refuse to leave the first negative feedback in fear of negative feedback retaliation. Even though I had a bad experience buying at eBay, I didn’t want to give the seller a bad review because the seller could turn around and say I was a bad buyer, hurting my reputation. That stalemate is another bad feeling to go through, where the user feels unsettled and not feeling so smart about the purchasing decision (Note: this experience has been improved upon in recent years).

  Sure, the user can take this bad experience up to eBay or even report fraud on Paypal (which is owned by eBay), but that process is grueling, with lots of waiting, frustration, and often poor communication. Letting users get stuck in bureaucracy (or be transferred back and forth on hold) is a sure way to make them feel helpless.

  Imagine a game you play, where by working hard and reaching the Win-State, you have to wonder for a week when your reward will show up. When it does, it might actually show up as a penalty instead of a reward, and the only way to sort it out is to go through long steps of negotiation and bureaucracy. How often would you play this game? It becomes much easier to move on and never come back again. Perhaps this would make another great story in the users’ daily complaining rituals too.

  Of course, though I firmly believe that both Amazon and eBay can drastically improve their metrics even more with better gamification and Human-Focused Design, both companies are incredibly and intimidatingly successful. With billions of dollars in revenue, each company powerfully wields different Core Drives that make them successful, engaging, and even addictive.

  Wait, that’s not new!

  Perhaps at this point, some people will say, “Making things easy for users and making them feel smart… that’s not profound at all! That’s what all Usability, User Interface, User Experience, and so-called User-Centered Design efforts already work on. How is Gamification or Human-Focused Design different?”

  I believe the main difference between Human-Focused Design and the other fields mentioned is that they primarily focus on the “ease” of doing an activity instead of the motivation behind it. While usability focuses on making users complete their tasks more intuitively, assuming users already want to do that activity, Octalysis Gamification focuses on the motivation to do those tasks in the first place.

  Even though most UX (User Experience) Experts also focus on the ease and flow of the experience, I have not seen many UX professionals try to improve motivation through a higher epic vision that users can believe in, nor withholding certain parts of the experience to create emotional scarcity. The focus is quite different.

  In reality, Gamification is a combination of Game Design, Game Dynamics, Motivational Psychology, Behavioral Economics, UX/UI, Neurobiology, Technology Platforms, and Business Systems that drive an ROI. Interestingly, games have all of the above besides the last part: business systems that drive an ROI (or Return on Investment).

  In order to make a great game, one needs to have great game dynamics, great UX/UI, have an understanding of Behavioral Economics through its virtual economy, motivational psychology and reward schedules, as well as the intricate relationships between hitting Win-States and dopamine firing. If any of these factors are off, the player simply abandons the game.

  For this reason, when we study good gamification/game design, we will also inevitably bring up many concepts of creating behavior and great experiences in many other fields.

  Game Techniques within Development & Accomplishment

  You have learned more about the motivational and psychological nature of Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment. To make it more actionable, I’ve included some Game Techniques below that heavily utilize this Core Drive to engage users.

  Progress Bars (Game Technique #4)

  One of the simplest and best known examples of Development & Accomplishment is the LinkedIn Progress Bar. As the largest professional social network in the world, LinkedIn realized that its value is only as good as the information people choose to input into the system. But inputting one’s profile and job history on LinkedIn is tedious, and users quickly drop out early in the onboarding process.

  LinkedIn realizes that simply making the interface easier for users to maneuver was not enough. They needed to make the interface more motivating. As a result LinkedIn introduced a little Progress Bar (Game Technique #4) on the side of user profiles to show people how complete theirs were. Our brains hate it when incomplete things are dangled in front of our faces. When we see a progress bar that is taunting us as only being 70% of a human being, it gives us that extra push to finish the Desire
d Actions and achieve the Win-State of completeness.

  The amazing thing is, this progress bar didn’t take developers many hours to code, but improved LinkedIn’s profile completeness by 20%, an impressive change considering how they have spent millions of dollars on achieving this same goal66.

  Progress Bars are seen in many places nowadays, and are often used in the Onboarding experience. It is one of the simplest gamification design techniques out there. Of course, if designed incorrectly, it would also fail to create meaningful engagement. A parody example called Progress Wars by Jakob Skjerning shows a meaningless game where every time you click a button, a progress bar fills up, allowing users to level up67. This is a great example of having game design techniques in a system without Core Drives powering them, leading to low engagement results.

  The Rockstar Effect (Game Technique #92)

  The Rockstar Effect is a gamification design technique where you make users feel like everyone is dying to interact with them. In essence, if you make people feel like they have earned their way in becoming a Rockstar, they will feel so much pride in it that they will continue to perform the Desired Actions of building up an even greater fanbase and sharing with others.

  Twitter is a great example of utilizing the Rockstar Effect. Most people remember Twitter’s innovation being the limitation of only 140 characters within a message (which is an interesting balance between Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience combined with Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback), but few people remember that another one of Twitter’s key innovations was the one-way follow.

  Back in the day, social connections were mutual – either both sides agree to be friends, or no relationship existed. When Twitter was launched in 2006, it came with this new one-way follow system, allowing users to follow the message updates of people who are interesting, without these people following the users back. Because of the one-way nature of the relationship, many people saw getting many followers as a true achievement – meaning that everyone wanted to listen to your valuable opinions, even though you didn’t give a rat’s pancreas about their opinions.

  People tried as hard as they could to “earn” followers – tweeting out witty comments, sharing valuable links, and retweeting others to gain attention. Some even pressured their non-tech friends to follow them just so they could look better on Twitter. This became a game for many, where the goal was to reach the highest amount of followers and retweets.

  Then, at one point, influential people started to compete with each other to see who had more followers. At the beginning, the implicit comparing came between influencers in the tech world, such as Guy Kawasaki or Robert Scoble. This is a typical condition that many new tech companies go through - where bloggers and people in Silicon Valley love the platforms, but the mainstream population isn’t yet aware of their existence.

  However, because of the “Accomplishment” nature that is baked into Twitter’s DNA, Twitter finally caught massive mainstream attention when celebrities like Ashton Kutcher joined the mix of “follower competitions” against other celebrities, and most notably, the official CNN Breaking News Twitter Channel.

  In 2009, Ashton Kutcher, publicly challenged CNN Breaking News to see who could first reach 1 million Followers.68 Both sides, not wanting to lose the competition, started promoting Twitter and their own Twitter profiles on all their media outlets, hoping to be the first to hit that “golden million.” Ashton Kutcher’s fans, who loved his movies but had no idea what Twitter was, also started to write blog posts and make Youtube videos telling everyone else to follow him.

  Towards the end, Ashton Kutcher did achieve his victory of reaching 1 million Followers on Twitter before CNN Breaking News. Again, because he considers this to be a true accomplishment, he brags with joy and pride with nine exclamation marks.

  CNN Breaking News, on the other hand, behaves in a sportsmanlike manner, as a big company should. In the above screenshot, you can see that by the time Ashton Kutcher won, CNN Breaking News had 999,652 followers, mere hundreds away from winning. Instead of bitterly saying, “So close! We were only off by a few hundred,” they gracefully announced to the world “Ashton Kutcher is first to reach 1 million followers in Twitter contest with CNN” with a “Congrats” on the tweet below.

  This contest has turned out very positive for the brand names of both CNN and Ashton Kutcher, but the biggest beneficiary is Twitter, whom received millions of dollars worth of free press with an audience that was unfamiliar with their platform.

  Achievement Symbols (Game Technique #2)

  As discussed in Chapter 2, points and badges can ruin good gamification design as often so-called “gamification experts” slap them onto everything they see. However, they are useful tools to drive Development & Accomplishment and have their place in a gamified system.

  Badges are what I call “Achievement Symbols” and can come in many forms – badges, stars, belts, hats, uniforms, trophies, medals, etc.. The important thing about Achievement Symbols, is that they must symbolize “achievement.” If you go on a website and click a button, and then suddenly a popup springs out and says, “CONGRATULATIONS!!! You just earned your ‘Clicked On My First Button Badge’! Click here to see other cool badges you can earn!” Are you going to be excited?

  Probably not.

  You may even think, “Well this is pretty lame…what else is there? A ‘Scrolling Down Badge’? A ‘Click on the About Us Page Badge’?” You’re almost insulted.

  But if through your creative skills you solved a unique problem that not everyone could solve, and as a result received a badge to symbolize that achievement, you feel proud and accomplished. Now the motivation is valid.

  Achievement Symbols merely reflect achievement, but are not achievements by themselves. A similar example evolved from where badges came from – the military. If you join the military, and immediately get a badge on your chest, “Joined the Military Badge!” And on the next day, another badge gets pinned on your chest that says, “Survived My First Day Badge!” followed by “Made my First Friend Badge!” and “Made Five Friends Badge!” You probably won’t feel accomplished and wear all these badges to your social gatherings. You are more likely to feel nonplused or even insulted. But if you performed acts of valor – you risked your life to save a fellow soldier, and as a result received a Medal of Honor on your chest, you are likely to truly feel proud and accomplished.

  Keep in mind some of those “insulting badges” do work great for children, because as small children, these are actual feats and accomplishments. More often than not, making your first friend is not something you have a parade about when you are a grown person.

  Therefore, when I work with clients on gamification, I never ask them, “Do you have badges?” I ask, “Do you make your users feel accomplished?” Having badges (or any game element in itself) does not mean users are motivated towards the Win-State. That’s why we focus on the 8 Core Drives instead of game elements.

  Status Points (Game Technique #1)

  There are two types of points in a motivation system: Status Points, and Exchangeable Points. Status Points are for keeping score of progress. Internally, it allows the system to know how close players are towards the win-state. Externally, it gives players a feedback system for tracking their progress. As a great candidate for “Feedback Mechanics” in the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard (discussed in more detail in Chapter 17), showing people their score and how it changes based on small improvements often motivates them towards the right direction.

  Within Status Points, there are also smaller divisions of types. For example, Absolute Status Points (which measures the total amount of points earned during a journey) versus Marginal Status Points (which are points that are specifically set for a given challenge or one time period, and can be reset once that challenge or time period is over). Another example is that of the One-Way Status Points (points that can only go up) verses Two-Way Status Points (it can also go down as the user fails to achieve the
Win-State).

  How you craft the gain and loss of points, as well as meaning behind the points can significantly change the users’ perception of your product. Done incorrectly, it can cause the user to devalue the entire experience and distrust your intentions as a systems designer.

  A year prior to my advisory role as Behavioral Scientist to the Israel-based company Captain Up69, I was looking for a good PBL platform to use for my own blog yukaichou.com.

  I found Captain Up’s gamification platform to be the most customizable and easiest to use out of my options during the time.

  When I was designing my Points and Badges system using the Captain Up platform, the first thing I did was to change almost everything in the default settings. The default settings at the time rewarded a few points for watching a video and commenting on my blog posts, and a lot more for tweeting and sharing the post on Facebook. This design is generally sound, especially since I indeed get more value when my readers are sharing my content to others. However, I felt the default points/rewards economy was not optimized.

  The first thing I changed, was to make commenting on my blog worth 100 points, and watching a video worth 40 points. Facebook Liking and Tweeting were only worth 25 and 10 points. After I made the changes on the platform, the supportive team members from Captain Up reached out to me to make sure I felt comfortable with their platform. They also asked, “Isn’t 100 points way too much for just commenting?”

  That’s a very good question.

  During the Discovery and Onboarding Phases of a Player’s Journey (the initial two phases) the first thing you want to communicate to users is whether this is “a game worth playing?” With the rules you set, you are establishing an interaction with the user and communicating your values.