Ivan Milev’s Habitica Design Challenge: Using Octalysis and the Strategy Dashboard to Recommend Product Changes
In Spring 2017, The Octalysis Group opened a design challenge to gamification fans and experts. The challenge: use the Octalysis Framework and the Strategy Dashboard to analyze Habitica — a popular gamified productivity app — and recommend concrete product improvements backed by the science of gamification.
Several submissions were so strong that Yu-kai Chou decided to share them publicly. Ivan Milev’s entry was among the finalists, applying Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity and Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness to identify gaps in Habitica’s engagement loop and propose evidence-based design changes using the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard.
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
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 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Best Gamified Productivity Apps
- What is Gamification?
- Simón Duque’s Habitica Design Challenge
- The Strategy Dashboard for Gamification Design
- Books by Yu-kai Chou