Category: Gamification Examples

This series is written by Erik van Mechelen, based on the Octalysis framework by Yu-kai Chou. Get excited…

Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback is the Golden Corner in the Octalysis behavior model.

From Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards, Yu-kai shared this about Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback

I believe that people are by nature creative beings, and we yearn to learn, imagine, invent, and partake in creative processes where the journey in of itself brings happiness.

Empowerment is an important word here. Someone can have innate creative traits or sensibilities or tendencies, but if those are not actively rewarded, or worse, blockaded, those talents cannot be further developed.

In this article, we’ll continue the series on Lifestyle Gamification. I’ll give a refresher on CD3 and why it’s important.

I’ll then explore how it can be used in lifestyle gamification scenarios.

Then I’ll share what I do to inject CD3 into my life.

If you need a refresher on CD3 itself outside the context of Lifestyle Gamification, Yu-kai also shared more here: http://yukaichou.com/gamification-study/8-core-drives-gamification-3-empowerment-creativity-feedback/ 

Continue reading How to Add Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback into your Life: Lifestyle Gamification Examples 3/8

This series is written by Erik van Mechelen, based on the Octalysis framework by Yu-kai Chou.

A reminder about Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment

I like how simply Yu-kai puts CD2 in his book:

Development & Accomplishment is the Second Core Drive of the Gamification Framework Octalysis.

This is the Core Drive where people are driven by a sense of growth towards a goal and accomplishing it.

He also uses an example from the early days of social media to describe how bells and whistles weren’t working as people expected. Points, badges, and leaderboards were the vanity metrics of online publishing:

What most people didn’t recognize then was that social media is much deeper than simply possessing and posting on profile accounts. That’s just the outer shell of its influence and impact. We now know today that great social media campaigns focus on how to create value for the audience by sharing information that is insightful and engaging; has a personal voice; engages and sincerely interacts with each potential customer; and much, much more.

In essence, the beauty of social media was in how you designed and implemented a campaign, not in the bells and whistles you’ve used. It was the informal and formal dialogue you had with your community that ultimately taps into the platform’s unique possibilities.

There’s quite a bit more to consider, especially when considering how to use CD2 in a lifestyle design, but first let’s look at what not to do from a real-life example…my own.

Continue reading How to Add Development and Accomplishment into your Lifestyle Design: Lifestyle Gamification Examples 2/8

This series is written by Erik van Mechelen, based on the Octalysis framework by Yu-kai Chou. 

Gamification in your life

Yes, gamification can be used to improve your lifestyle.

You’re probably already doing it. If you’re a parent helping your child with homework, you’re helping your son or daughter be the best they can be because you believe in education to change their life.

Gamification, depending on how you define it, is essentially positive psychology combined with game design. Throw in a bit of behavioral science, motivation, and design and you have a working definition of gamification.

Yu-kai likes to call this human-focused design (not to be confused with IDEO’s human-centered design).

This contrasts function-focused design (this chair is for sitting, nothing else).

Because human motivation is complex and complicated, we need to account for the various drives that play into it. Why do we want to move towards something better? Or away from something worse? Because we want what’s best for our life. Isn’t it as simple as that?

Simply stated, perhaps. But creating a life is what we are all doing and aim to do each moment of our day. How well you execute or live within the framework and models you’ve constructed (whether internally or externally) give you some experience on the spectrum from suffering to satisfaction.

In Yu-kai’s Octalysis framework, there are 8 Core Drives (and one hidden Core Drive) to behavior. If none of the drives are present, there is no behavior.

In this series, I’ll take each of the Core Drives one at a time to give you a detailed look at how each contributes to lifestyle and how you can apply more or less of each into your lifestyle design to improve your life satisfaction.

Ready to get started with Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling?

Yes? Good, me too!

Continue reading How to Add Epic Meaning and Calling into Your Lifestyle Design: Lifestyle Gamification Examples 1/8

This post was written by contributing writer Erik van Mechelen based on the Octalysis framework designed by Yu-kai Chou.

Entering the Audible Scaffolding phase

Getting beyond Discovery and Onboarding is impressive. But products and experiences really need to shine during the Scaffolding phase if they want to get Players to the Endgame.

Scaffolding starts once a player has learned the basic tools and rules to play the game and has achieved the “First Major Win-State.”

Yu-kai wrote about Scaffolding over here, but this is the key piece:

Regarding the scaffolding phase, one thing to note is that more often than not, it requires the exact same (or very similar) actions on a regular/daily basis, and the Gamification designer must answer the question, “why would my users come back over and over again for the same actions?”

Once you understand the intrinsic and extrinsic trigger/action/reward loops, you can deliver them via the experience.

Keep note that usually extrinsic rewards are better at attracting people to participate in the first place (Discovery and Onboarding), but towards the Scaffolding and EndGame, you want to transition to intrinsic motivation as much as possible.

Continue reading Gamification Analysis of Audible: Octalysis Level 2, Scaffolding Phase

This article is written by Contributing Writer Erik van Mechelen along with Yu-kai Chou.

Making moves

Snap Inc. is making moves.

First, it built a cool mobile-only camera and messaging app with millions of engaged users. Snaps are ephemeral and the app opens on the camera.

The founders famously turned down a $3-billion offer from Facebook.

Snap Inc. continued improving the Snapchat product and attracting new users, rising to the most-used teen app in 2016 and making big dents in the over-35 age demo, too. They want to change the way we think about cameras and storytelling.

What’s next for them?

The short answer is Spectacles, a pair of Snapchat glasses, a foray into territory where Google Glass seemed to fail and where others like Vue aren’t quite making it yet.

In this article, I’ll use Octalysis glasses to investigate the Spectacles launch and speculate on Snap Inc.’s future plans for augmented reality.

Continue reading Gamification Analysis: How Snapchat Launched Spectacles

This article was written by Erik van Mechelen with input from Yu-kai Chou and Jun Loayza. 

Attention and time are arguably the two most important resources we have. Wearables are a growing trend in behavior change technology. If designed appropriately, they stand a chance at helping us drop bad habits and spend more attention and time on good habits. As we’ll see in this article, non-wearables are also on the rise.

I’ll be comparing two habit-related products: Pavlok focuses on breaking bad habits, while Moti’s main idea is to form good habits.

Pavlok came on the market to criticism, but has added new functionality since its Indigogo launch in 2015, with more to come soon. Moti is a new product, currently in its last couple weeks of the Kickstarter.

As always, I’ll use the 8 Core Drives of Octalysis to see how these products are designed to affect our underlying behavior, our motivations themselves.

Continue reading Creating Habit-Forming and Habit-Defeating Products: Pavlok and Moti

Why Epic Meaning and Calling Matters in Learning

This article was written by Contributing Writer Erik van Mechelen with input from Yu-kai Chou and Jun Loayza. 

It’s easy to get behind products, projects, and people that are changing the world of learning. Previously, Yu-kai wrote about contemporary social gamification examples. This article will continue the ongoing discussion as it seems likely for human-focused design (and gamification) to continue driving world-changing products, projects, and people for some time to come.

Today’s examples will focus on knowledge and learning. Because education is a major part of maintaining and improving culture, these products and services have the potential to change the world.

Since products like Wikipedia, Quora, Edudemy, Skillshare, and Coursera are very well known, we won’t focus on them for this article. Instead, we’ll take a look at some products and services you might not have noticed (or that have made big strides).

As we move forward, consider the 8 Core Drives of Octalysis and this previous article by Yu-kai about intrinsic/extrinsic motivation in education. Recognize that in the first place, each of the following examples plays on Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling.

Continue reading 5 Gamification Examples Changing the World of Learning