Actionable Gamification

by Yu-kai Chou

  Most of the time to fulfill the Ownership & Possession Core Drive, all the user needs to do is to spend more time on it, to take actions based on moderate planning, or to organize their systems. There is no sense of anxiety. If not designed properly, this sometimes even creates boredom. Think about employees who do data entry work just for a paycheck; the task is not very difficult, but there isn’t a strong level of engagement either.

  Below Core Drive 4 is Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness. This is basically like going to a chat room. You don’t need too much skill, you just say whatever you want to express yourself, and you can even troll others. This is often seen in the Water Cooler game technique we discussed in Chapter 9. The activity could still be quite fun, but it is mostly very easy. Even if you don’t see feedback from your witty comments (Core Drive 3) and impress others (Core Drive 2) the feeling of relatedness, acceptance, and bonding with others will make the experience pleasant and relaxing.

  If you look another level down, you could say that Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity is at the lowest level of Flow. We mentioned earlier that adding chance and randomness is a good way to make a game easier. Most gambling games, sweepstakes, and lotteries don’t require any amount of skill. You basically participate, take the Desired Action, and wait for the results. That’s also why playing games that involve randomness like Risk or Monopoly (including the Chance Cards) often produce more laughter than pure skill-based games such as Chess.

  Now you could argue that people engaged by Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity are not really in a state of “boredom,” especially if they’re watching a movie or trying to finish a book. However, when you look at it from the perspective of skill versus challenge (the Flow chart), the user is not enjoying the activity because of skill usage. They are instead, entertained in a different way that drives pleasure.

  In one of Csikszentmihalyi’s charts, as seen below, he includes a state of “relaxation” as a result of having skills that greatly surpass the challenge. Core Drive 7 then does not result in boredom but rather appropriate relaxation.

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  You can see here that within the Flow model, the only Core Drive that is missing is Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling. That’s because Core Drive 1 is completely out of the context of player skill level compared to challenge difficulty, as those two factors are irrelevant when it comes to committing to something that is bigger than oneself. Core Drive 1 does not really fit into the Flow model but powers the reason why people may engage with any experience in the first place.

  Fogg Behavior Model

  BJ Fogg, a professor of human behavior from Stanford, created a model that boils down all behavior into three factors: motivation, ability, and a trigger283.

  Motivation is how much the individual wants to take the action or obtain the desired outcome. Ability is how equipped the individual is in taking that action; in other words, how easy or convenient it is for the user to perform the action. The third factor is a Trigger, or something that reminds the user to take action.

  Fogg proposes that every action you take is a result of these three components coming together. If any one of them is absent, there can be no action.

  He is an evangelist of what he calls “Tiny Habits.” For instance, Fogg explained a system where every time he goes to urinate, he does two push-ups before washing his hands. Urinating is the trigger, and since doing two push-ups is so easy, you don’t need a lot of motivation to do it.284

  In this system, setting the goal at two push-ups instead of something more ambitious like eight or ten is very important. If you set your goal at ten, then at one point your brain will likely think, “I’m kind of busy or tired. I’m just going to skip this one time,” which will then lead to another occurrence of skipping soon after. This weakens self-confidence and ensures that a positive habit does not form.

  But when you design the goal to be two push-ups and you actually do them, you feel a sense of accomplishment (Core Drive 2), which builds up your confidence and allows you to eventually build a stronger habit.

  In general, I like Fogg’s Behavioral Model and often reflect on it within my own studies. The one area I differ with him on is his claim that the motivation piece is very difficult and unpredictable, and that companies or individuals shouldn’t start with improving motivation. His conclusion calls for companies to focus on making sure the activity is extremely easy and that there is an appropriate trigger to do it.

  From this viewpoint, Octalysis puts a much stronger emphasis on the motivation piece. As Fogg expresses in his own model, when there is no motivation, it doesn’t matter how easy the task is, people won’t do it.

  We saw from earlier chapters that if we adjust the difficulty with Octalysis design campaigns, it is primarily because we either want users to feel smart and competent (Core Drive 2), or we want to make users sense that the opportunity is exclusive and difficult to obtain (Core Drive 6). In whatever way you adjust the experience, Octalysis brings the focus back to motivation. Games don’t necessarily make things easy - they make things motivating and engaging. In fact, one of the most respected definitions of a game is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”285

  Fogg himself says that, as you accomplish your tiny habits, your motivation increases because you feel accomplished, which, in turn, becomes a positive cycle that builds on itself. Eventually doing more push-ups feels easier and you don’t require as much motivation to maintain that higher level of activity. This line of thinking is aligned with our understanding of Core Drive 2.

  Fogg supports his strategy to focus on Ability by saying that, instead of “motivating” people to do what they don’t want to, companies should focus on what people already want to do, and just make that easier.

  That makes a great deal of sense. However, from my own design experience, we see that even if a user has the motivation to become healthy, they don’t necessarily have the motivation to use your particular health app. Even if people want to connect with their friends, there is still no incentive for them to share your product with their friends unless you design for it. And even if people already want to do great work, they don’t necessarily want to work hard for a micromanaging boss that treats them badly. In these cases, it is more productive to improve how the boss motivates his employees (via methods of appreciation, autonomy, clear purpose, etc.), instead of trying to make their dreadful jobs easier.

  Tiny Habits work great for self-improvement goals from the individual standpoint, but it sometimes works less ideally with employee engagement or viral marketing systems. If you just focus on making things easier, users may or may not muster enough motivation to perform the new behaviors that you want to create.

  The flip side of generating motivation by making things easier is to make things more difficult. From the viewpoint of Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, we’ve already seen through many examples that when something is too easy, people don’t necessarily appreciate it.

  What if you use the “make things easy” strategy for dating? Let’s say you want a certain person to become your significant other (the Desired Action), so you ask the person out (a Trigger), but their motivation is still very low at this point because they are just trying to figure out if you are a desirable mate. At this point, if you did everything you could to make it extremely easy for the person to go out with you, such as constantly being free at their convenience any day of the week or sending dozens of texts a day so the person can respond easily (Trigger and Ability boost) - this would not work out very well according to my own experiences… I mean, my observations. Shhh. Don’t laugh.

  Sometimes holding back increases the anticipation and suspense, and as a result, creates motivation. The outcome is that despite the increased difficulty of the Desired Action, scarcity creates more of the desired behavior. We have seen in previous chapters that inconveniencing your users or walking away from a deal (if done right), can seriously boost motivation and actio
ns too.

  So while Fogg’s Behavior Model itself is extremely useful in terms of understanding behavior and its implications, Fogg and I have slightly different conclusions on the actionable steps to improve the process. Namely, Fogg focuses on the Ability aspect of his model, while I focus on the Motivational aspect. Of course, I also work on improving the ease of each Desired Action, and I’m sure Fogg also spends time on improving motivation; our priorities just seem to be different.

  With that said, it is true that most products are so complicated and difficult to use they make users feel stupid and demoralized (Anti Core Drive 2). This is especially an issue during the Onboarding Phase when users don’t have enough motivation to commit much energy into figuring things out. As a result, it is still a high priority to make the activities so easy that users do not need to think hard about committing the actions is still a high priority.

  In terms of Motivation, Fogg states that Motivation is derived from six factors: Seeking Pleasure, Avoiding Pain, Seeking Hope, Avoiding Fear, Seeking Social Acceptance, and Avoiding Social Rejection286. This is a mix of Core Drives 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and the Hidden Core Drive 9: Sensation.287

  For drives like Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, as well as with the Endowment Effect within Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession, these are often not explained in other behavioral models. They are mental shortcuts we take in our heads and are academically known as cognitive biases and decision-making heuristics288. There is a list of dozens of heuristics289, including Anchoring (everything is relative in my mind), Illusory superiority (I am surely above average), IKEA effect (I value what I built), and Loss Aversion (I wouldn’t risk $10 to earn $15) that we have discussed in several of the previous chapters.

  Together, Fogg’s six components of motivation plus a list of behavioral heuristics, become a fairly complete view of all our behaviors; though they may not explain why we would sometimes die for a greater cause - Epic Meaning & Calling. For my own design work, I have preferred to have a general framework that is more inclusive of our psychological Core Drives and how they foster and interact with each other. It’s easier to simply utilize one framework instead of thinking about a list of exceptions when we design for engaging experiences.

  Lastly, if we look at the Trigger component through Octalysis, that’s the role of Feedback Mechanics within the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard - something we will cover in more depth in future writings290. Feedback Mechanics allow users to pay attention to what they need to do, often via a received email or text message, user interfaces that show actionable information, or friends that “Like” your new Facebook photo, prompting you to return to the site. These are all Triggers delivered by Feedback Mechanics.

  All Feedback Mechanics also incorporate various Core Drives of motivation within them, based on what the trigger itself is. Points and Badges are Core Drive 2 Triggers, Countdown Timers are Core Drive 6 Triggers, Spinning Fortune Wheels are Core Drive 7 Triggers, and Friend-Likes are Core Drive 5 Triggers. When you design for Feedback Mechanics or Triggers, you need to understand whether they are meant to drive the users’ curiosity, their sense of accomplishment, their internal social pressure, or other Core Drives. If not, the Feedback Mechanics become empty signals that do not trigger towards any Desired Actions.

  Jane McGonigal’s Theories

  As the final touchstone of this chapter, we will look at Jane McGonigal’s theories. McGonigal is a game designer and author of the book Reality is Broken291. She’s most known for two TED talks on the power of games within the real world.

  McGonigal describes the four components behind how games make people better and more resilient: Epic Meaning, Urgent Optimism, Blissful Productivity, and Social Fabric.

  There are a few components that we can easily match with Octalysis. Epic Meaning of course echoes Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling - something that makes you feel like you’re changing the world. Social Fabric clearly aligns with Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness, which is about the trusting bond between people taking on the same quests.

  Urgent Optimism is slightly trickier to comprehend through Octalysis Glasses. In Reality is Broken, McGonigal defines Urgent Optimism as, “the moment of hope just before our success is real, when we feel inspired to try our hardest and do our best.”292 In my own interpretation, this is the sense where as long as you act immediately, you can accomplish your objective and achieve the Win-State. In this sense, a gamer always trusts the game designer to provide a way to win, as long as the gamer is doing the right thing in taking prompt action towards the obviously designed objectives.

  Now with our Octalysis Glasses on, Urgent Optimism is generally a combination of Core Drive 2: Develop & Accomplishment as well as Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience. Core Drive 2 is present because the player is optimistic that they are capable of hitting the Win-State and feeling accomplished. On the other hand, Core Drive 6 also comes into play because the player can’t wait forever to commit the Desired Action - they have to do it now because it is urgent. Therefore, the White and Black Hat combination of these Left Brain Core Drives leads to a player who is truly engaged.

  The last component is Blissful Productivity293, which was originally coined by a team of computer scientists at the Indiana University who were studying the unusually high stamina of World of Warcraft players. McGonigal defines Blissful Productivity as “the sense of being deeply immersed in work that produces immediate and obvious results.”

  From my understanding, Blissful Productivity is the sense that you are growing, accumulating, or improving something as you spend more time on it. Sometimes the task itself could seem a bit monotonous, but as long as the player feels like there is progress, the process will generate a sense of bliss and delight within.

  Often this is a combination of Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, Core Drives 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback as well as Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession. The user is accumulating, growing, or organizing something (Core Drive 4), and is continuously shown feedback on those activities in order to adjust, optimize, and feel accomplished.

  As you can see, these four Core Drive packages are great combinations that allow users to deeply enjoy games as well as experiences outside of games. As you progress further into your Octalysis Gamification learning journey, you will start to identify and define many more of these Core Drive combinations beyond these four components, and pioneer your own work as an experience designer. For instance, we can see from the above analysis that Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity isn’t very prominent, and we can think about how to add more suspense, surprise, and unpredictability into the experience beyond the four components.

  The World is Your Playground

  We all have the same brains, so all the sound studies on our motivation and behavior should have a way to converge with each other. The main point of this chapter is not that Octalysis is superior to any other framework, but at least to me, it can be a very useful tool to help comprehend and navigate the other models in behavioral science, games, and gamification. In my own experience, it is both convenient and rewarding to be able to use one framework to analyze them all and help refine our understanding of behavioral design.

  There are obviously many other splendid theories and models on human behavior out there. But to make this book’s length manageable for the reader, we won’t be able to flush them all out here.

  I highly encourage avid Octalysis Learners who are filled by Core Drive 3 and Core Drive 7 to put on your Octalysis Glasses and study Nir Eyal’s Hook Model, Andrzej Marczewski’s User Types, or Daniel Kahnemann’s Prospect Theory and Four Fold Pattern. Works by behavioral psychology pioneers such as Dan Ariely, Michael Wu, or Robert Cialdini don’t necessarily have graphical models, but you can understand their research through the 8 Core Drives as well.

  With a strong grasp of the Core Drives, you can illuminate the aspects of motivation that other works cover or don’t cover and determine how to best use these ot
her models and frameworks for optimal experience design.

  To get the most out of the book, Choose only ONE of the below options to do right now:

  Medium: Pick a new model on human behavior (make sure it is related to actions, not necessarily emotions), and try to analyze it with Octalysis Glasses. What 8 Core Drives are present, and what are absent? Based on that, can you draw conclusions on what that particular model specializes in and when best to utilize it?

  Medium: Try to recite all the models and frameworks covered in this chapter. You will need to take some time going back and forth before fully memorizing them. Can you remember how each is analyzed through Octalysis? Did your knowledge on Octalysis help you understand (hence remember) these models better?

  Hard: Analyze Nir Eyal’s Hook Model and try to understand how Octalysis fits into the cycles of Trigger, Action, Reward, and Investment. Does each component rely on a few of the 8 Core Drives? (For instance, Investment is often using Core Drive 4 to build up the Endowment Effect). Think about how the Core Drives change as we go through each Hook cycle throughout the Discovery, Onboarding, Scaffolding, and Endgame Phases. (For instance, during the Discovery Phase, the Trigger is often an External Trigger from marketing materials built on Core Drive 7. During the Endgame, the Trigger becomes an Internal Trigger, where the user is motivated through Core Drives 4 and 8.) Try to fully immerse your Octalysis understanding into the Hook Model.

  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.