Gamification From Hype to Hope v1

8/2/2019 Gamification From Hype to Hope v1

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GAMIFICATION

FROM HYPE TO HOPE

IN THE ONLINE EXPERIENCE

Constance Semler |@consemler

PodCamp Toronto 2012 | #pcto2012

I'm Constance Semler, and currently I'm director ofintegrated digital products at MediResource,Canada's largest digital publisher of consumer health

content.

I've spent my career in product development, productmanagement, and marketing. In recent years, I'vebecome heavily involved in content strategy andcontent-rich web applications. Very recently, I'minvolved in developing digital products that influence

people's choices about their health.

For a while, I'd heard what sounded like hype to me this idea that gamification is going to save theworld. As I got more deeply involved, though, Irealized that there's a lot more to gamification thanjust hype.

What have you heard about gamification?


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Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness:Defining Gamification. MindTrek '11, September 28-30, 2011.

the use of design elementscharacteristic of games

in non-game contexts

But first, what is gamification?

There are a number of definitions, but this is my

preferred definition of gamification.

For anyone new to gamification, this definition doesthe job well and dispels the idea that gamification isabout games.

BTW, Sebastian Deterding is one of the most

insightful people writing and speaking aboutgamification today.


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Professor B.J. Fogg

Stanford University

I want to back up for just a moment to talk about howmy interest in gamification evolved.

First, about a year ago, I started getting into the work

of B.J. Fogg, who runs the Captology centre atStanford. He's well known for his work on technologyand persuasion, among other things. This workbecame highly pertinent to my own work in health.He's also behind the Mobile Health conference,where several mobile health startups get airtime.

Jane McGonigal published her book in 2010, and in

2011 she spoke at SXSW. Her notion of the commontraits of games (purpose + rules/constraints +feedback + safe place to do work) and herhopefulness about the power of games spoke to me.The application to my own work was obvious.


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Source: Gartner Research, 2011: Gartner Hype Cycle, Emerging Technologies 2011.

At the same time, in 2011 Gartner Researchpublished their hype cycle review of emergingtechnologies.

Gartner says gamification is poised to become amulti-billion dollar industry

They also predict that by 2014, >70% of Global 2000organizations will have at least one gamifiedapplication.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1844115

It shows that gamification is just getting started andpoised for growth. It's not in its infancy, but itsadolescence.


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Source: Gartner Research, 2011: Gartner Hype Cycle, Emerging Technologies 2011.

But I dislike this graph for two reasons:

#1 the take away from this could be that gamification

is just a fad destined to go the way of the dinosaur.As someone trying to make a case for gamificationinternally/in an organization, this doesn't support meAT ALL.

The true message here is that hype will die down, ofcourse, but then a process of maturation will occur

through experimentation, trial and error, research,and case studies. But all that some people see hereis a big downward dive on the horizon, andprematurely write off gamification as a serious thing.

#2 This graph gets it wrong because gamification is nota technology problem, notwithstanding the

gamification platform vendors out there.


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Really, gamification is a design issue, not atechnology issue.

Has anyone read this book, Seductive InteractionDesign, by Stephen Anderson? If not, I recommendyou do. He's written several chapters that discussthis very thing with tremendous insight.


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GAME

MECHANICS

GAME

DYNAMICS +

Earlier, I gave you what I consider a balanceddefinition of gamification. But as you continue toexplore gamification, you'll inevitably see the above

explanation of gamification: game dynamics plusgame mechanics. There's some truth in it, to be sure.

Game dynamics are the behavior patterns thatemerge from the psychology of competition, peerpressure, etc.

By game mechanics, people often mean things likeleaderboards, badges, etc. though these are morelike the artefacts of game mechanics, the rulessystems in place.

This isn't gamification by a long shot, but see how thisapproach is used...


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In this slide and the two that follow I highlight three ofthe top gamification platform vendors. I've spokenwith all three of them.

You see here that they provide measure of success these can be very impressive.


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Here we see Big Door claims a social sharing lift of94x. OK, that sounds interesting, particularly tosomeone who works in digital publishing.

But what does a 312% engagement lift mean? Outof context, nothing, but more important,engagement is a kind of flabby term what doesengagement mean REALLY? It's the kind of term youhave to deconstruct:

Engagement as show by ____? As measured by ____? And this is relevant because ____? And this drives results through ___?


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Badgeville lets you define what you mean byengagement you set the 'behaviors' you want toreward. Social sharing, liking, etc. They have an API

that lets you pretty quickly integrate their platformwith your own. I also like Badgeville's businessmodel the most, of the three.

I don't want to knock what these platform vendorshave to offer they have their place and their use,especially for publishing, ecommerce, and a number

of domains.

But they merely scratch the surface of the potential ofgamification. Because gamification is still rising in thehype cycle, sadly, many people will conclude that thisis all there is to gamification.


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Just add rewardsand stir!

As someone building websites as well as webapplications, I can tell you that just add rewards andstir is nave.

If your content or your application isn't meaningful,usable, and useful, then no amount of rewards isgoing to save it.

That's good news because gamification has muchmore potential to help us address our design

problems (and meet our business/organizationgoals) than this add-and-stir approach offers.


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?

The other issue is does this approach see users asnothing more than rats in a Skinner Box? (In Psych 101,before I became a vegetarian, I already had a lot ofempathy for rats.)

Are we seeking to use gamification to manipulate peopleto pursue more points, badges and whatever in pursuitof marketing results?

That is questionable on an number of levels, but alsoimpractical it's not sustainable. If your product has no

real meaning for people, they'll quickly tire of it. Thereare only so many pellets a rat can eat.

In the health sphere, I'm looking to support people intheir efforts to be healthy. The desired behavior isn't alike or a share, though that can have value, too. Thedesired behavior is more of what people already want to

do have fun and live longer!


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Back to Seductive Interaction Design. This model ofhow gamification works has a bit more nuance andbetter reflects how gameful design works. This

model is much like Jane McGonigal's list of gametraits.

It's important to distinguish between game andplay. You can read more about that in theDeterding et alia article I first referenced.

What I find important to note here is the differencebetween intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

Good design seeks to understand intrinsicmotivators and ALIGN extrinsic motivators withthem...enhance and support what the useralready wants to do. It's here that one canlegitimately use the word engagement,

without it being a hopelessly flabby term!


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Now let's look at a few examples of how some of theprinciples of gamification have been applied in non-game contexts.

Keas is a group wellness challenge application. Agroup of people say, in an organization participatein a challenge to do something healthy in a timeline.

This application is interesting partly because of it'shistory. It was created by a former Google Health exec

who first took the company in a direction focused onquantitative feedback, but participation rates werehigh at first and dropped off. On the advice of some ofthe younger team members, Keas did a 180 and madeit more about positive messages and fun. There'smore to the story, but that's the gist of it participationwas higher and more sustained after this fundamental

change in the design approach.


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StickK.com is all about accountability for reaching agoal. People register, set goal, set the stakes, assignreferee to kick their butts, and invite friends to root

from the sidelines. The call them commitmentcontracts.

It was developed by Yale professors and students inbehavioral economics. The principles of thisdiscipline and gamification overlap.

One interesting feature is the ability to set up an anti-charity. So, say I'm a lifelong Republican. I can setup a donation to go to the Democratic NationalCommittee if I fail to reach my goal. Talk aboutincentives!

The company markets stickK to both B2C and B2B.


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Movenbank is part of what's known as the Bank 2.0movement. There's also Bank Simple, now justSimple. They aim to go head-to-head with the big

banks in pursuit of the personal banking market in ayounger demographic.

You have to have a FB account to sign up.

Here you see the results of my Movenbank's FinancialPersonality Profile questionnaire. The 9 differentpersonalities in the grid are much like a user persona,or even a player profile. As a beta user, I have aspecial badge to commemorate my being an earlyadopter.

If I disagree with my profile, I can complete thequestionnaire again. Movenbank isn't dogmatic aboutassigning me a profile type it encourages me to tryagain as much as I like.


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For those of you who conduct online surveys andonline market/user research, you might be interestedin this paper about the use of gamification in online

surveys.

This paper won an award in 2011 for BestMethodological Paper at the ESOMAR congress -ESOMAR is an organization that supports marketresearch worldwide.

The authors worked with a number of companies torun a range of small-scale experiments, witheverything from the way questions are asked, theway answers are sought, and the physical layout andvisual design of the surveys.


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Puleston, J., and Sleep, D. The Game Experiments: Researching How Gaming Techniques Can Be Usedto Improve the Quality of Feedback From Online Research. ESOMAR 2011.

Gamification is a very powerful technique,

in fact the most powerful techniquewe have come across in the four years

of research we have done to explore

how to improve the feedback

from online surveys.

Here's what the authors, Jon Puleston and DeborahSleep, have to say about the results.

If you read the paper, you'll notice that the authorsdefine gamification in a rather simplistic way, but still I think it demonstrates that the potential forgamification to aid us in improving the userexperience in a whole range of applications andproducts is enormous.


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empathy hope+ =insight

To wrap up, this simple slide expresses how we movefrom hype to hope in gamification.

Good design starts with empathy really puttingoneself in the shoes of other people.

It also requires insight developed from learning aboutand studying people and how they interact with eachother and with an application.

These two key elements help us move into a morehopeful stage with gamification in the onlineexperience.

Gamification From Hype to Hope v1

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