by Yu-kai Chou
Start Designing
You are getting close to the end of the book, and it is time to start designing your own project. Come up with a project related to Human-Motivation that you want to improve on.
Think about what are the Quantifiable Metrics you want to improve. Who are the Users you are targeting and what Core Drives motivate them? What are the Desired Actions you need them to perform? What mediums can you communicate with them, show them Feedback Mechanics, and display Triggers? Finally, what are the Rewards and Incentives you can provide users?
Together, this becomes the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard that will be useful in any gamification design campaign. This will be a good foundation for Chapter 17. More information on the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard can be found on my blog at:
http://www.yukaichou.com/gamification-study/the-strategy-dashboard-for-gamification-design/
Chapter 16: Level I Octalysis in Action
Now that we have examined all the various components of Level I Octalysis, let’s see how everything comes together. There are generally two methods to use Octalysis:
The first method is to analyze existing products to determine their strengths and weaknesses for motivation toward the Desired Actions. It allows us to identify what type of motivation is weak so we can introduce new improvements, often in the form of Game Design Techniques, to the experience. This is typically called an Octalysis Audit.
The second method is to create a brand new experience based on Octalysis and the 8 Core Drives. Through a very systematic process, we can create an engaging experience that will fulfill the goals of the experience designer.
Let’s first look at the former.
Octalysis Review of Facebook
The first step of utilizing Octalysis as a tool is to decipher all the motivation Core Drives that are present in an experience. In Chapter 3, we briefly looked at Facebook through the lenses of Octalysis. Let’s take a slightly closer look using your new familiarity with the 8 Core Drives.
In general, Facebook is fairly strong in most of the Core Drives, hence the massive success it has today. At the center of Facebook there is Core Drive 5: Social Influence and Relatedness. People are consistently looking to stay connected with others to share their own experiences and check out what others are doing. Facebook deploys a great deal of Social Prodding, Social Treasures, and Conformity Anchors to create a more engaging experience.
On the other hand there is a high amount of Core Drive 7: Unpredictability and Curiosity in the experience. Every time a user goes on Facebook, they are looking for new and wondrous content that is worth viewing and sharing.
Hooked author Nir Eyal even implies that every time we go onto our Facebook (or Twitter) News Feeds, or when we “pull down” to refresh the News Feed updates, it’s as if we are pulling the lever on a slot machine - something he terms “Rewards of the Hunt.”294 Every time we commit the Desired Action, we are trying to see if we will be rewarded with more more interesting content. If we don’t “win,” we pull the lever to play again and see if we become luckier the next time.
There’s also a strong sense of Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession within Facebook. One of the core activities on Facebook is to accumulate and organize more photos of friends and experiences. In addition, since many people’s Facebook profiles represent their social identity, there is a strong sense of ownership towards these profiles. True to Core Drive 4 principles, now there is an even stronger desire to organize and improve their profiles.
For some people, one of the joys of using Facebook is to constantly come up with creative and humorous things to say or content to share in order to get “Likes.” This often utilizes Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback. The “Feedback” part of receiving likes is essential in any experience, as simply expressing creativity without receiving any feedback is actually a torturous experience.
Of course, when a person shares photos of their latest trip to Europe or a funny blog post that dozens or even hundreds of their friends are liking, they also feel a strong sense of Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment. This Left Brain White Hat Core Drive further makes a user feel good when they continue to commit the Desired Actions.
We also mentioned in Chapter 12 that there is a tremendous amount of Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance for Facebook, especially in the Endgame. This is because the Sunk Cost Prison prevents people from quitting due to all the time, friends, photos, experiences, messages, and game points accumulated on Facebook. Users are simply stuck with investing more of their time accumulating additional “valuables” that they are afraid to lose.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, the only two Core Drives that Facebook is lacking on are Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling, as well as Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience. There is no real higher purpose that is greater than oneself when using Facebook. A rare exception is when people join Facebook Groups based on a higher mission or vision, such as some charity or cult groups. Of course, this type of motivation is certainly not dominant towards why people use Facebook, but only serves as an complementary experience alongside of Facebook.
We also mentioned how in the early days of Facebook, there was a tremendous amount of scarcity in the form of exclusivity as only students from a few selected universities like Harvard were allowed to join. During that time, Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience was extremely high in the Discovery Phase, which also built up a strong sense of Elitism from Core Drive 1 during the Onboarding and Scaffolding Phases.
However, since Facebook opened up to everyone and their grandmothers, there is very little Core Drive 6 left. There isn’t anything that you want but cannot have constantly being dangled in front of your face. Perhaps only when you are waiting for your friend to respond to your message or when Facebook has exclusive new features that are only offered to a small pool of users do you feel some sense of Core Drive 6. Oh yes, and that person you are stalking who refuses to accept your friend request and show you more pictures. I guess there is Core Drive 6 in that too, but it probably isn’t the main “gameplay” experience of Facebook.
Of course, not having Core Drive 6 in this case is not a negative thing, because we learned that even though Core Drive 6 creates obsession by being Black Hat and Left Brain (Extrinsic Tendency), it is not ideal for long term engagement. If Facebook has already achieved strong engagement through other Core Drives (and earlier Core Drive 6 efforts), there is no need to add Core Drive 6 if it isn’t trying to rapidly capture new users but to engage existing ones.
So based on the quick Level 1 Octalysis review above, we recognize that Facebook would be more successful if it had a greater element of Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling in it. People who are against Facebook often think of it is as a waste of time and a distraction to bigger, more important things. Plenty of people attempt to boycott or go on a “Facebook fast” because they don’t want to waste their life on “silly” things. If Facebook could utilize its platform to get individuals to do more meaningful activities that help the world and contribute to society, then it would likely become even more engaging.
Of course, we see that Facebook already attempts to add in a thread of Core Drive 1 as they raise awareness and ask for donations to support natural disaster refugees. But those are usually one-off cases triggered by large world events that no one can ignore. It would be more meaningful if they build in more regular and streamlined experiences where users feel that every minute on Facebook actually contributes to the world. For instance, a top bar that continually displays an effort or group in less fortunate communities that is in dire need of help. It can also show a trigger button that allows people to donate their time or money to these causes.
Since the effort or group would change daily and would include details on exactly what they are going through, at the minimum people would feel more educated and aware of the world’s problems each day they visit Facebook. Through massively increasing donations to groups, Facebook can truly say that they don’t only change th
e world, but they also save the world as users login everyday.
Finally, it would likely benefit Facebook if it easily allowed people to find and seek help from mentors or homework buddies. This would make people think that being on Facebook is very “productive” and decrease their resistance of it.
The Score is a Smoke Screen
Over the years, a lot of people like to ask me what the Octalysis Score represents. You might have that question too as you look at some of the Octalysis charts. As we already know, scores tend to intrigue the mind, and everyone likes to find out about them. However, I usually try to stray away from spending too much time explaining the Octalysis Score because it is actually the least actionable element in the realm of Octalysis.
What’s useful is using the Octalysis chart to determine which Core Drives are weak and need to be improved on, while understanding the nature of the dominant Core Drives in terms of being White/Black Hat and Left/Right Brain. The Octalysis Score itself is somewhat just fun and gimmicky. But since people keep asking, I thought I should share a bit on how I arrive at these numbers.
Generally, for each Core Drive, we assume a number between 0 to 10 based on “How strong does this Core Drive motivate towards the Desired Action.” 0 Means that the Core Drive does not exist as a motivator within the experience. At the top end of the scale, 10 usually means that it is impossible to improve the Core Drive further, and almost all individuals who become exposed to the Core Drive will take the Desired Action.
After that, I take the square of all eight numbers and add them together. This means that the highest possible Octalysis Score is 800 (Ten squared multiplied by eight), and the lowest is 0. In my own ratings, most successful games are above 350, and most non-game products are below 150. In fact, most products that aren’t sensitive to Human-Focused Design fall below 50.
However, since the scoring is relatively subjective, different people will come up with different scores for the same product. When people ask me how do I know the exact numbers assigned to each motivation, I just say that it is based on an intuitive feel after experiencing the system. However, the exact numbers aren’t really that useful as I mentioned earlier, as long as you are not far off. It really doesn’t do anything to your design whether you give a Core Drive a value of 2 or 3, as long as you know it is not a 7 or 8. As I said, Octalysis is a tool that allows people to design better based on their own sound judgements. (After all, sound judgement is required in all models, be it SWOT Analysis295, BJ Fogg’s B=MAT, or Boston Consulting Group’s BCG Matrix296).
What’s actually important in my mind is that you conceptually recognize things like: there is no unpredictability in your experience, or that you heavily rely on Black Hat Core Drives. Generally, just knowing which Core Drives are strong and which are weak can allow you to design appropriately for the experience, as opposed to spending precious time fussing over exact values.
One insight that can be derived out of the Octalysis Score formula, is that it is generally better being extremely strong in a few Core Drives, as opposed to having a little bit of everything. A score of 1 for all eight Core Drives will only result in an Octalysis Score of 8, whereas having two Core Drives that have the value of 9 will result in an Octalysis Score of 162. That is why it is so important to pick the right Core Drives that has the desired characteristics in your gamification design. If you are only going to pick a few Core Drives, you want to make sure that you are picking the most effective ones based on the specific scenario.
With that said, it is usually easier to improve on a Core Drive if it is completely lacking compared to ones that are already strong. It is usually fairly easy to add a little bit of unpredictability, a little bit of social, or a little bit of scarcity when there are none. But if there is already a high sense of Social Influence, it becomes much more difficult to further enhance that Core Drive. You usually need a true expert on that Core Drive doing a lot of design, research, and A/B Testing to push out the Core Drive from a theoretical 8 to a 9.
Finally, I have noticed a tendency for students of Octalysis to “inflate” the values of Core Drives within their own projects (a Core Drive 4 bias - ha!). Everything appears to be a 7 to 9 in their projects, which is extremely unlikely unless your project is already more engaging than Facebook. Not surprisingly, Octalysis is more useful as a design tool if you are more realistic on the scale of motivation for each of the Core Drives.
As a thinking exercise, a value of 10 for Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling should be something that is so epically meaningful that people are willing to die for it. Similarly, a value of 10 for Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance should reflect something so threatening that people are willing to kill for it. With that in mind, I’m going to imagine your employee engagement campaign is far away from having all 8s or 9s on each Core Drive.
Most systems in the market are Function-Focused, and the majority of products I have seen have 0 on most Core Drives and only 1 or 2 on a few Core Drives. Successful products have 3 to 4 on a few Core Drives and a few 8 to 9s. Industry-dominating products might have one or two 9s and even a 10, but that should rarely be assigned.
At the end of the day, if you use Octalysis just to make yourself feel good about what you are doing, then there is very little room to find better ways to improve the experience.
It’s difficult to absorb a waterfall when your cup is too full.297
Octalysis of the Speed Camera Lottery
One of the most famous analogue designs in the gamification world is The Speed Camera Lottery by Volkswagen’s Fun Theory298. The goal of the campaign is to encourage drivers to obey the posted speed limits by making the Desired Action more engaging.
Originally proposed to the The Fun Factory by Kevin Richardson from San Francisco, the concept was implemented in 2010 by the Swedish National Society for Road Safety based in Stockholm, Sweden. Using existing traffic-camera and speed-capture technologies, the Speed Camera Lottery device would detect the speed of all drivers passing through it and take photographs of their license plates.
An LED board displayed the speeds to each passing driver, along with a thumbs up or thumbs down sign signifying whether they were obeying the law or not. Speeders that are photographed were issued a citation, with the proceeds going into a cash fund. On the other hand, drivers who obeyed the speed law would also be recorded and then entered into a lottery, where they would be eligible to win some of the money from the speeders.
This case study has been seen by many people within the gamification industry, and people often exclaim, “That’s a really creative solution! How can I come up with creative solutions like that to solve my own problems?”
Here we see that, through the Octalysis process, one can potentially come up with creative solutions like the Speed Camera Lottery and more.
The Problem: Get people to drive under the speed limit
In every gamified campaign, one must first define the problem to solve, and how to measure success. If we take the problem of decreasing speeding drivers as an ongoing campaign, we can then analyze it through the 8 Core Drives of Octalysis.
Generally speaking, without any human intervention, driving within the speed limit is only motivated by Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling - driving safely and responsibly is for a cause greater than yourself. This has definitely caused many people to put some sort of limitation on their driving speed, making the roads safer overall.
The problem is, most people don’t always equate fast driving to “dangerous” driving. For many, ignoring the speed limit is still worth it if the reward is the immediate gratification of arriving to their destinations sooner or feeling the thrill of going fast. As a consequence, most governments introduced Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance - fining people when they are caught driving over the speed limit. People want to avoid getting fined for fast driving, so they lower their driving speeds tangibly. This is what deters most people from driving dangerously.
However, law enforcement is a very exp
ensive solution, especially if it needs to be ubiquitous. And because the odds of getting caught are relatively low when one speeds, many people are still not deterred from their occasional speeding habits.
Subsequently, another solution was introduced that utilizes Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback. You may have seen those speed detectors that don’t give speeders a fine, but merely display what speed they were driving at. Since the driver is in control of their “score” and sees immediate feedback, this encourages many people to slow down even more when they see that their speeds are too high.
The issue here is that the Win-State is still not very clear to the driver. What was the speed limit again? Was I above it or below it? Remember that people often do not want to use their active brains to think if it is not necessary. If people have to calculate for themselves whether they hit the Win-State or not, many will get lazy and not bother. Also, it turns out that some people will also do the opposite of the Desired Action and try to see how high of a speed they can get recorded on the feedback device, which completely defeats the purpose of the design.
Speed Camera Lottery’s Innovation
As a result, in comes the Speed Camera Lottery. The Speed Camera Lottery adds four additional Core Drives to solve this problem.
Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession. With the Speed Camera Lottery, a player can now potentially “earn” money if they score well and achieve the Win-State. In this case, the tangible reward of cash is itself a fairly strong motivator to get people interested in participating.
Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity. We have learned that, whenever there is a lottery or sweepstakes system, it involves Core Drive 7. A 10% chance of winning $100 often engages people more than a sure chance of getting $10, because they will continuously think about whether they will win or not. This anticipation makes things more exciting and engaging.