by Yu-kai Chou
This means that you should place a limit on an activity if you want to increase a certain behavior. Of course, you don’t necessarily want the Magnetic Cap to limit the activity so much that you lose more than you gain. The best way to set a limit is to first find the current “upper bound” of the desired metric, and use that as the cap to create a perceived sense of scarcity but doesn’t necessarily limit the behavior. A behavior designer could speculate “Even though we want users to select an unlimited number of hobbies, 90% of our users choose fewer than five hobbies on our website.” In this case, it would be appropriate to set a limit at five or six hobbies instead of having no limits.
What about the 10% of users who go beyond six hobbies - the “power users”, you ask? Aren’t they important? Yes they are (and if you asked that question, it means you have been thinking about user motivation and experience phases, which is great). This is when you let the power users unlock more capabilities and have the limit rise as they continue to prove their commitment, as described with the Evolved UI technique below. Again, you still want to let these power users to confront a Magnetic Cap at the top, so that they always feel a sense of Scarcity, but not have it truly limit their activities.
Appointment Dynamics (Game Technique #21)
Another way to reinforce this Core Drive is to harness the scarcity of time. The best known game technique that leverages this is the Appointment Dynamic. Popularized by Seth Priebatsch’s TEDx Boston talk on The Game Layer on Top of the World171, Appointment Dynamics utilize a formerly declared, or recurring schedule where users have to take the Desired Actions to effectively reach the Win-State.
One of the most common examples are Happy Hours, where by hitting the Win-State of showing up at the right time, people get to enjoy the reward of 50% off appetizers and beer. People expect the schedule and plan accordingly.
Appointment Dynamics are powerful because they form a trigger built around time. Many products don’t have recurring usage because they lack a trigger to remind the person to come back. According to Nir Eyal, author of Hooked172, External Triggers often come in the form of reminder emails, pop-up messages, or people telling you to do something.
On the other hand, Internal Triggers are built within your natural response system for certain experiences. For instance, when you see something beautiful, it triggers the desire to open Instagram. Facebook’s trigger, on the other hand, is boredom.
A friend once told me how one day he was using Facebook and suddenly felt bored. Surprisingly, He instinctively opened a new tab on his browser and typed in “Facebook.com.” Once the website loaded, he was shocked, “Oh my. I was already on Facebook. Why did I open Facebook again?” Again, this is the power of an Internal Trigger that connects to a feeling as common as boredom - for instance, what do you do when you are waiting in line?
With Appointment Dynamics, the trigger is time. My garbage truck comes every Tuesday morning, so on Monday nights, I automatically have an internal alarm clock reminding myself to take out the garbage. If the garbage truck comes out every day, I may procrastinate until my garbage overflows before taking it out.
One extremely innovative example (and I rarely call things “innovative”) of a company utilizing the Appointment Dynamic is a large Korean shopping center named eMart. The company realized that their traffic and sales are usually great during most hours of the day, but during lunch time, foot traffic and sales drops significantly. To motivate people to show up during lunch time (Desired Action), they mustered up the principles of Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience and a bit of Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity. They ended up launching a campaign called “Sunny Sale” and built an odd-looking statue in front of their stores.
On its own, this statue looks fairly abstract and doesn’t seem to resemble anything. During noon time, however, the magic starts to happen. When the sun reaches its greatest height at noon, the shadow of this statue suddenly transforms into a perfect QR Code where people can scan with their mobile phones and see unique content.
Isn’t that cool? Because the QR Code can only be scanned within a limited window between 12PM to 1PM, people are now rushing to get there in time. Honestly, at that point, it doesn’t matter what the QR Code is about – the scarcity and intrigue (stemming from Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity) is enough to get people to show up. In the case of eMart, the QR code links to a coupon that consumers can redeem immediately for a purchase online.
This tactic reportedly improved eMart’s noon time sales by 25%. Not bad when you are already the largest player in the industry.
Torture Breaks (Game Technique #66)
By now you may have noticed that another kind of game technique of Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience can utilize “Impatience”, which means not allowing people to do something immediately. In the old days, most console games tried to get users to stay on as long as possible. If a player were “glued to the screen” for five hours straight, it would be a big win for the game. Nowadays, social mobile games do something completely different.
Many social mobile games don’t let you play for very long. The game will let you play for thirty minutes, and then tell you “Stop! You can’t play anymore. You need to come back 8 hours later - because you have to wait for your crops to grow / you need to wait for your energy to recharge / you need to heal up.”
For some parents who don’t understand Core Drive 6, this design makes them very happy. “That’s great! These game designers are so responsible – now my son’s play time will be limited!” But in fact, what they don’t recognize is that the game is implementing what I call Torture Breaks to drive obsessive behavior.
A Torture Break is a sudden and often triggered pause to the Desired Actions. Whereas the Appointment Dynamic is more based on absolute times that people look forward to (Every Monday morning the garbage truck will come; on July 4th when you open the app, you will get a huge bonus), Torture Breaks are often unexpected hard stops in the user’s path toward the Desired Action. It often comes with a relative timestamp based on when the break is triggered, such as “Return 5 hours from now.”
My differentiation between the two Game Techniques may differ somewhat from Priebatsch’s definition. Though they often work hand in hand together (sometimes after a Torture Break is triggered, an Appointment Dynamic follows), it is important to note the difference so you can plan your gamified systems accurately.
In the example of social mobile games, because the player was forced to stop playing, they will likely continue to think about the game all day long. Often, they will log back in after three hours, five hours, six hours, just to check if they are finally able to play - even though their brain knows as a fact that the allotted eight hours haven’t passed yet.
If the player was allowed to play for as long as they wanted – say three hours, they would likely become satisfied, stop playing, and not think about the game for a day or two. Therefore, an omniscient game designer would perhaps allow them to play for two hours and fifty-nine minutes, and then trigger the Torture Break. At this point, they will be obsessively trying to figure out how to play that final one minute. Sometimes the game may even provide another option – “pay $1 to remove the Torture Break immediately!”
Another game, Candy Crush, which by many metrics is considered to be one of the most successful games in the world, making approximately $3 million per day173, incorporates the Torture Break very well. After losing a life, the game pauses and forces you to wait 25 minutes before you can gain another life and proceed to the next level.
This draws players to constantly think about those slow-passing 25 minute intervals, and makes it difficult to plan other activities while being occupied by the obsession.
Of course, the game also gives you two options: ask your friends to give you a life (Social Treasure), or pay right now (Anchored Juxtaposition). See how all these game techniques work together to become a holistic motivational system towards Desired Actions?
Ac
cidental Fails sometimes become a Blessing
Another good example of the Torture Break is the “Fail Whale” in the early years of Twitter. The Twitter site was often down in 2007. Though this frustrated many users, they waited more eagerly for the service to return, while talking about it on Facebook.
When the site was down, users would only see a “404 Error Page” displaying the iconic Fail Whale – a large whale being pulled out of the water by many struggling birds.
Twitter’s combination of “limitations” – you can’t go over 140 characters, can’t tweet over X times a day, can’t access the site 60% of the time – compelled many to spend countless hours on Twitter, even though there truthfully wasn’t much to do there in those early days.
I’ve seen other cases where people were planning to retire from playing a game, but then encountered issues due to massive server problems. Instead of quitting, they checked the app every day to see whether they could play it or not. Even though they planned to quit, they needed to quit on their own terms. When these players were prevented from playing because they “couldn’t,” their desire to play actually increased.
What made the situation worse was that players would occasionally be able to play the game, only to experience another crash. If it were down indefinitely, people would lose interest. But by “sometimes working,” the game would take on an addictive appeal. Remember, for Core Drive 6 to work, users have to perceive that obtaining the goal is possible, or else they fall into a Self-Denial Mode driven by Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance.
This is also similar to some relationships I’ve witnessed, where one person wants to break up with the other, plans the breakup for months, and suddenly gets dumped by the other person. Even though the person wanted to break up from the start, when they gets dumped, they may become obsessed with wanting to get back together with the other person. They want the separation to be on their terms. But when forced to separate, it becomes a Torture Break that makes them yearn for a reconciliation.
This behavior is much like people pulling on a slot machine lever, hoping for, but not necessarily expecting, good results. The same effect happened with Twitter, where users became obsessed with checking the site each minute to see if the service had been reestablished, subsequently becoming delighted when it ultimately returned.
Evolved UI (Game Technique #37)
One of the techniques that I often recommended to my clients, but have faced resistance on, is the Evolved UI - short for “Evolved User Interface”. The problem with most user interfaces is that they’re too complex during the Onboarding stage, while too basic for the Endgame.
In the popular gaming phenomenon World of Warcraft, if you monitor the top-level players, their interface could make you dizzy. There may be close to a dozen little windows open, all with different stats, options, and icons. It displays a plethora of information about how your teammates are doing, how the boss is doing, where everyone is, and your own resources. So much information that you can barely see the animation of your own character fighting! It truly is one of the most complex user interfaces around.
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However, World of Warcraft, along with many other well-designed games, never starts off with this level of complexity. At the beginning they only provide a few options, buttons, and icons. But as you reach more Win-States, you unlock more options, skills, and capabilities. With the help of effective Step-by-step On-boarding Tutorials, Narratives, and Glowing Choices, a beginner never gets confused about what to do at the start.
Based on the concept of Decision Paralysis, if you give users twenty amazing features at the beginning, they feel flustered and don’t use a single one. But if you give them only two or three of those features (not just one, since our Core Drive 3 loves choice), and have them slowly unlock more, then they begin to enjoy and love the complexity.
However, the Evolved UI concept is very difficult for a company to implement emotionally, because it feels weird to withhold great features and functionalities from the user. For the designer though, it is important to acknowledge that withholding options can drive more behavior towards the Desired Action. Just because it makes users feel uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad for you, nor for the user.
One company that did implement the Evolved UI concept was Sony, calling it Evolution UI175(in fact, I modified my game technique name to fit Sony’s, just to avoid semantical ambiguity within the industry).
Though the Android smartphone system developed by Google was very powerful, Sony realized that it had a high learning curve that could fluster beginning users. To address the situation, they launched the Evolution UI, which presented a very limited set of core options during the Onboarding process.
Once users have shown that they have mastered the basic UI, such as opening 5 apps, they unlock an achievement, which in turn unleashes new features. In this way, the difficulty of the user experience never surpasses the skill sets of the user, following the principles of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory mentioned earlier.
So what’s the consequence of having an UI that is too complex at the beginning? Google Plus. As mentioned earlier, even with a lot of great features and functions, Google Plus did not have sticky traction because of the learning curve it required. Most mainstream users feel confused when they are accidentally pushed onto Google Plus when using Youtube or Gmail; and thus quickly leave the platform.
Gmail, on the other hand, implements a small version of Evolved UI, which manifested itself in the form of Gmail Labs. In Gmail, users are provided a basic set of features and functionalities by default. But there are many cool features that they can be unlocked through the “Labs” tab under Gmail Settings, opening up complex but helpful features once the user feels ready.
Great! So now what?
Of course, understanding Scarcity & Impatience doesn’t mean that startups should shut down their servers on purpose, or set up fake and corny limitations in their systems. Some users may become obsessed, but you could likely turn away many others who quickly jump into denial mode and never come back.
The most obvious application for start-ups based on Core Drive 6 principles is to launch with a confident pricing strategy. Instead of just offering everything for free or making them easily available, a more premium pricing model or well-structured exclusivity design can increase the confidence of users/buyers resulting in increased conversion rates.
Of course, if you price an item beyond your target market’s capability to afford, this would obviously backfire. But more often than not, when customers don’t buy your product, it’s not because they can’t afford it, it’s because the perceived value they have for your product is not worth the cost. Sometimes that cost is in the form of time, energy investment, or reputation in their organizations.
Beyond pricing, you may want to create a sense of exclusivity for each step during the Discovery and Onboarding stages. A design, where the service makes them feel that it’s uniquely for them and that they are only qualifying for access - similar to Facebook’s early marketing strategy.
Every step of the way, you want to show users what they may want but can’t have - just yet. Scarcity only exists as a motivator when people know the reward actually exists, so when in doubt, Dangle about (but don’t say you learned that from my book during court). For actions that lead to rewards and investments, consider using more restrictive options. Placing a cap on how many actions a person can take (or investments that they can make) will cause them to desire the actions more.
By increasing perceived value, customers and users are more likely to stay engaged and take greater interest in your venture. This will help insure you from giving out all your hard-earned work for close to nothing.
Core Drive 6: The Bigger Picture
Scarcity and Impatience is considered a Black Hat Core Drive, but if used correctly, it can be very powerful in driving motivation. Often, Core Drive 6 is a first source of generating Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity
& Feedback in the system. Overcoming scarcity can cause a higher sense of Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment.
When fused with Core Drive 7: Unpredictability and Curiosity, Core Drive 6 becomes a great engine to drive online consumer action. Finally, working alongside Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance, Scarcity and Impatience becomes a powerful force that not only pushes for action, but pushes for action with extremely strong urgency.
To get the most out of the book, Choose only ONE of the below options to do right now:
Easy: Think about a time where you wanted something, mostly because it was exclusive, or because you felt you were uniquely qualified. Try to describe the nature of that feeling from Scarcity & Impatience.
Medium: Think about a time when a company attempted to implement a corny form of Scarcity, and it backfired because it caused people to go into denial. What could the company do to actually implement principles of Scarcity correctly?
Hard: Think about how you can implement combinations of Dangling, Torture Breaks, Evolved UI, and Anchored Juxtaposition into one of your own projects. Does it automatically increase the desire for other Core Drives? Or does it hamper it? Does it drive long-term engagement, or short-term obsession?
Share what you come up with on Twitter or your preferred social network with the hashtag #OctalysisBook and check out what ideas other people have.
Share your Knowledge!
Beyond sharing my own research and interests, I regularly have guest bloggers posting their research on gamification, motivational psychology, behavioral design and much more on my blog YukaiChou.com176. If you have interesting knowledge to share through your own experiences and research, consider sending a message through the site and offer a guest piece to promote your work. I’ve done all this work so you could learn a little bit from me. I would love to get the opportunity to learn from you too!