Actionable Gamification

Social Influence idea: Perhaps every day users have an opportunity to "tip" Chou Coins to someone they appreciate in the community, with each Chou Coin becoming two coins when tipped (to a certain limit). Generosity takes a person further than self-consumption.

Start by defining the dashboard: At the beginning of every gamification campaign, the first thing I do is to define five items: 1) Business Metrics, which lead to Game Objective 2) Users, which lead to Players 3) Desired Actions, which lead to Win-States 4) Feedhack Mechanics, which lead to Triggers 5) Incentives, which lead to Rewards

Currently for Waze, the only reason why people would level up is to unlock new status avatars. For most users who aren't really hung up on their avatars, there isn't much to look forward to when gaining more experience points. Waze could solve this problem by building in unlockable features such as the carpool matching and flash mobs, where only users with higher levels could set up more interest filters, preferences, and get better access to these features.

Another idea with Core Drive 4 is to start showing cute graphics and charts that reflect the user's driving behaviors. Charts that reflect things like, "Did you know that you went to the gym 105 times this year and stayed there for a total of 5,775 minutes?" Or, "Did you know that you spent 9,422 minutes last year commuting to work?" These could really build more Core Drive 4 into the experience.

To improve Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, Waze should consider making every arrival to the destination a bigger Win-State. Play a victorious tune, show a popup that excitedly shows, "You have arrived safely. Awesome!" Maybe even show the image of the location like some other navigation apps do so the user knows what to look out for. All this is much better than the bland GPS voice of "You have reached your destination."

We know that for Core Drive 3 to work, it needs quick "feedback" also, and feedback is often even stronger if it is mixed with Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness. What's emotionally rewarding about Waze, is that often, when you shared information with the community, you may receive a couple pop-ups that show people thanking you a few seconds later. When users seemingly get instant feedback from other, appreciative users, they feel delighted and are prone to share more in the future. After every Desired Action must come a delightful moment.

How could Facebook add more of CD.1- epic meaning & calling to the experience? 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.

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. 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.

The Flow theory illustrates that when the difficulty of a challenge is too high compared to a user's skill level, the result is a sense of anxiety which may compel the user to drop out quickly. Similarly, if the user's skill level is dramatically higher than the difficulty of the challenge, the user will feel bored and may also drop out. Only when the user's skill level is balanced with the difficulty of the challenge, do they enter the state known as Flow.

Player types: - Achievers who try to master everything there is to do within the game system. - Explorers that just want to go out and explore all the content in the world but aren't as focused on overcoming challenges. - Socializers who are really in the virtual world just to interact with each other, have conversations, and build companionship. - Killers - players that not only strive to reach the top, but take glory in beating down the competition in the process. Furthermore, they need to bask in their victories and be admired by all.

People are motivated through three elements: Competence, Relatedness, and Autonomy. - Competence is the need to feel self-efficacy and experience mastery. - Autonomy is the urge to be causal agents of one's own life and control one's own choices. - Relatedness is the universal want to interact, be connected to, and experience caring for others. In the book Drive, Daniel Pink demonstrates a fourth component to this theory, which is Purpose.

After the game put you in an uncomfortable position to buy a health increase to save the troop, it starts showing you how great of an achievement you accomplished (Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment). and the rewards or trophies you have obtained (Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession) because you have beaten the boss. On top of that, your teammate will often start cheering for you (Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness), "Wow! You spent real money just to save our troop. You are our hero!" Being sprinkled by all this emotional confetti, people often start to think, "Hmm, maybe that was $10 well spent after all!" And this eventually trains their brains to be more open to spending the next $10 to buy energy and defeating the boss when necessary.