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.
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Gamification Presentation and Research from Sebastian Deterding
I recently stumbled upon some Gamification research by Sebastian Deterding, and I think it is a great piece of work in the industry.
Deterding is now a Chair in Design Engineering and Professor at Imperial College London. He co-founded the Gamification Research Network and co-edited The Gameful World (MIT Press, 2015).
His presentation shows a heavy amount of research and application of Gamification.
Sebastian Deterding’s full talk: “Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right” (Google Tech Talk, 2011)
Why This Presentation Matters
As you know, I have always been saying that Gamification is not really a good word to use (sounds very gimmicky and suggests it is created from games), but it should really be called “Human-Focused Design.”
Sebastian calls it “Gameful Design” which I think is appealing but difficult to gain significant traction.
Regardless of the naming debate, Deterding’s research aligns with a core belief in my Octalysis Framework: good design starts with understanding human motivation, not just bolting game mechanics onto existing systems.
I strongly recommend going through the entire thing. If you prefer slides over video, the full deck is on SlideShare.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification? Definition, Examples & Framework
- Human-Focused Design: The Better Term for Gamification
- Implicit vs Explicit Gamification
- Points, Badges & Leaderboards: The Gamification Fallacy
- Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges & Leaderboards