Author: AverageJoey

Octalysis of 8 Gamified Alarm Clock


(This is a post by one of the very few people who hold a Level-1 Octalysis Certificate in Gamification: Average Joey. To check out their other writings, go to the StartMyQuest Blog!)

The “Eye-Opening” Gamified Alarm Clock Industry

Alarm clocks. We have a love, hate relationship with them.

There are alarms that fly around sending you on a blurry chase in the morning or ones that wake you to the gentle rising of a fake sun. These innovative alarms rely on harder or softer sensory feedback to get you up, but some of the most exciting wake-up solutions are coming from a growing market of gamified alarms and app designs.

I present to you here, 8 of the most engaging gamified wake-ups to help illustrate the gamification techniques at each point around the Octalysis Alarm Clock.

1) Epic Meaning & Calling: Shadow

The team behind “Shadow” have got epic meaning nailed with an epic goal for building the world’s largest database of dreams for the betterment of humanity, no less.

2) Development & Accomplishment: Wake n Shake

Wake n Shake is one of the gamified alarms heavily using achievement symbols in its design.

3) Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: Sleep Cycle

The “Sleep Cycle” iOS app doesn’t just work as an alarm, but tracks and records your sleeping hours enabling you to analyse and adjust your sleep-play.

4) Ownership & Possession: AlarmMon

The AlarmMon app gets you to set-up your alarms with the different choices of cute characters to build your own wake-up experience from scratch.

5) Social Influence: Spotify The Social Alarm Clock

This alarm from Spotify is still in concept stage, but shows an app that will give you the ability to create and send re-mixed alarm tones and wake-up messages to friends.

6) Scarcity & Impatience: Starbucks Early Bird

As soon as you accept the ‘Starbucks Early Bird’ wake-up it gives you a 1 hour countdown to get yourself down to the nearest store to claim a discounted cup of coffee or build up points towards future ones.

7) Curiosity & Unpredictability: Brian Blessed Alarm

For pure mischief (Game technique #51). I give you the ‘Brian Blessed’ alarm. Will it be Shakespeare, an insult or Brain on a rocket?

8) Loss & Avoidance: SnuzNLuz

The SnuzNLuz alarm still stands out as putting the most interesting and perverse twist on the idea of charitable giving as something you’d want to avoid!

How Gamification at 750words.com keeps you writing every day

Writing Gamification

This is a guest post by secret gamification agent and webland wanderer, Average Joey. Joey doesn’t believe in real names or for those bringing gamification to life, that you should worry too much about a single construction of reality. Imagine, explore, play. Isn’t that what games and life is all about?

750words.com: The Gamification of writing

I have been using Buster Benson’s gamified writing site, 750words.com, for over 100 days now and I’ll admit to having a bit of a site-crush. I visit it on a daily basis and though I’m only at the beginning of what might become a beautiful friendship, other long term users clearly feel the same.

Among them, many have been engaged with the site for years. Writing their 750 words every, single, day.

Gamification is often put forward as a solution that promises this kind of  passionate and committed long term engagement. But how many gamified sites really embed themselves into your daily habits not just a month, but over years?

I was curious to look a little deeper through the lens of the Octalysis framework and the 4 experience phases of  the player journey.

The Empowerment to just write

Firstly and importantly the site’s every design choice feels tightly focused around a central goal. Write every day.

Sounds easy, but anyone who’s actually tried to write that novel, get down some of that essay or write a journal entry after a long day knows that finding that writer’s flow is often difficult.

This is why it feels such an empowering first experience when you log-in to the site. Before anything else, any browsing or the site showing off, you are simply challenged to write. In our digital lives filled with endless procrastination and distraction at every turn, a blank page with its sole intent at its centre feels refreshingly honest.

This is simple Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback (Core Drive 3). Like any sandbox game you are given the tools early on and all the freedom to attack it anyway you want. The site name itself is all the tutorial for the on-boarding phase you need and the objective is clear from the moment you type in the url, “750words”. Go.

Here’s how it could have all gone wrong; A standard frame of menus, the badges, list of other users and challenges all gamified elements used later, if introduced at this point would have been a disaster. Those sparks for another chain of thought and suddenly your writing muse has wandered off.

Instead the gamification  recognizes the different player journey phases and by focusing in on empowerment gets you to that early win-state of a successful writing day completed.

Simple and visual feedback on progress

Continue reading How Gamification at 750words.com keeps you writing every day