4 Application Fields of Gamification
This is an excerpt from the second part of the introduction of Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. Buy a copy here or listen on Audible.
Table of Contents
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
4 Application Fields of Gamification
Now that we have covered the different implementation methods for gamification, we will explore the various applications of gamification in several industries.
In general, the majority of my clients represent four fields that I consistently see innovating time and time again, indicating a tremendous amount of application and growth in these sectors:
- Product Gamification
- Workplace Gamification
- Marketing Gamification
- Lifestyle Gamification
Product Gamification is about making a product, online or offline, more engaging, fun, and inspirational through game design.
Most companies struggle to create products that customers fall in love with, continue using, and passionately share with their friends. Some of these products have great “functional” purposes, but don’t focus on the motivation and Core Drives of their users.
In a previous era, consumers didn’t have adequate information and were accustomed to slow gratification. Along with immense barriers for starting new companies, it was not as detrimental for a company to simply assume that customers would use their products, provided that they were marketed correctly.
However, people today are spoiled with instant gratification through the Internet, with immersive empowerment and real-time feedback through games, and the constant connection to their social network.
Your users, customers, and employees are becoming less tolerant of badly designed products that do not take into account their motivations, especially when they have a variety of competitive alternatives they can choose from.
Many corporations and startups excitedly tell me, “Our product is great! Users can do this; users can do that; and they can even do these things!”
And my response to them has been, “Yes, you are telling me all the things your users can do. But you have not explained to me why the user would do it.”
That’s the problem with a majority of company products: great technology and functionalities, but no traction. People don’t have a reason to go out of their way to use the product.
Sometimes, a startup founder tells me, “Hey, Yu-kai, there’s no reason why people wouldn’t use our product. We save them money, we save them time, and we make their lives better.”
On lucky days, customers themselves would even say, “Yeah, there’s no reason why I wouldn’t use your product. It saves me money, it saves me time, and it makes my life better. I’ll definitely sign-up sometime tomorrow.”
For those who have run startups or launched products before, you know the crucial part of the entire phrase is the ending. When people say they will do it “tomorrow,” more often than not it means “never.”
This is because at this point they are motivated by Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance, and specifically by something I call Status Quo Sloth (Game Technique #85). They are avoiding a change in their habits and behavior.
Remember how we talked about how Gamification is actually Human-Focused Design learned from decades, even centuries of game design experience? When you are launching a new product, its motivational standing is similar to a game.
No one has to play a game. You have to do your taxes; you have to go to work; and you really should go to the gym. But you never have to play a game, and let’s be honest, oftentimes you shouldn’t.
Because games have invested an amazing amount of creativity, innovation, and resources into figuring out how to get people to want to spend more time on them, there are definitely many great lessons you can learn from games for your own products.
The key here is to make a product so exciting that customers become obsessed with using your product and are compelled to share how exciting their experiences were to their friends.
Workplace Gamification
Workplace Gamification is the craft of creating environments and systems that inspire and motivate employees towards their work.
More often than not, employees show up to work every day just so they can earn a paycheck (Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession) and to not lose their jobs (Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance).
As a result, employees only work hard enough to earn their paychecks and to not lose their jobs (if you recall, Core Drives 4 and 8 are great examples of Left Brain, Extrinsic and Black Hat Motivation).
In fact, Gallup’s 142-country study shows that only 13% of employees are categorized as “engaged” with their work.
In comparison, 24% of the workforce is categorized as “Actively Disengaged,” which means they are so unhappy with their work that they minimize their productivity, spread negativity, and even sabotage productive efforts that require them to do more work to keep their jobs.
That is something pretty scary to think about. It means that, chances are, a quarter of your company is poisonous!
How can any organism be competitive at anything if 24% of its body is composed of cancer cells?
Contrary to popular self-denial, it is actually not the employees’ fault they are disengaged. Companies like Zappos and Google (especially in the old days) are known to get their employees motivated, driven, and excited about their work on a daily basis.
I firmly believe that everyone has the capacity and the longing to become motivated and driven for something that is worth their cause. It is bad environmental and cultural design that turns good employees into toxic cells.
Of course, you don’t need a Gallup study to know how disengaged employees are at work. Just think about how often people close to you complain about their work or their bosses.
Think about the movie Office Space, the quintessential comedy about life in a typical bland, rigid, and oppressive company in America.
The movie was such a great hit and now a cult classic because people can actually relate to the frustration and disengagement of the characters in the movie (a good example of the “relatedness” piece within Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness at work).
Why does that matter? Because research has shown that on average, the companies with disengaged and unmotivated employees only obtain 50% of profits and only 40% of revenue growth when compared to companies with engaged and motivated employees.
If I told you that you could double your profits and improve your revenue growth by 250% without opening new markets and without introducing new breakthrough technologies but by simply making your workplace more engaging and motivating, would you do it? Most people would say yes.
But from my own personal experience, there will still be people who say no, simply because, “I don’t want my employees playing games. It’s a distraction!”
Workplace Gamification is critical for today’s economy and the future of creative innovation.
The Gen-Ys entering the workforce are used to being in environments that provide them Epic Meaning, Relatedness, Autonomy, and more.
This will only get worse as the even-younger generation enters the workforce, so it is wise for companies to start setting up the correct motivation systems as early as possible to avoid the devastation of having a surplus in labor but a shortage in talent.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification?
- Human-Focused Design: The Better Term for Gamification
- Top 10 Enterprise Gamification Examples
- 90+ Gamification Stats, Examples & Cases with ROI
- Books by Yu-kai Chou