Epic Win! An ultra successful 3-Day Gamification Workshop Online!
One of the frustrations I have is that, in all my public speeches, since I can never assume the audience has previous knowledge of Octalysis, I always have to cover the fundamentals of gamification as a whole, Human-Focused Design, and the 8 Core Drives of Octalysis.
As a result, I keep making similar talks over and over without being able to go in depth of unleashing the powers of the 8 Core Drives to improve peoples’ designs.
I started to do 3-Day (4 hours a day) online workshops with a variety of attendees from all over the world. I’m thinking about doing three to four of these a year, each being in a different time of the day so other continents can find a time to comfortably attend too.
We recently just finished the first European/US time zone focused 3-Day Online Workshop, and it was a tremendous success! Over 40 people took part in this great journey of learning and applying the 8 Core Drives, the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard, and creating Concept Wireframes towards their own projects.
A few have already written to me about how taking the workshop has changed the way they do things with a lot of results. An attendee from South Africa even gave a generous testimonial too:
“So I would like to let Yu-Kai and all of you know that one of the companies that I work for has already been transformed thanks to the Strategy Dashboard. Our projects have a much better direction, we have found new ways to monitor the projects as well as monetize them. Our designers love it as it has helped them design more focused interfaces with direct links to the actions we want to encourage… the CEO is itching to get on the next course as well. So Thank you Yu-kai Chou. You have truly helped me.”
— Ryan Julyan, Former Workshop Attendee
Table of Contents
- Quick Summary of the 3-Day Gamification Workshops
- Gamification Workshop Day 1: Fundamentals
- Gamification Workshop Day 2: Implementing a Campaign through the Strategy Dashboard
- Gamification Workshop Day 3: Custom Octalysis Design for Attendee Projects
- Join Yu-kai Chou’s Gamification Workshops
About the Behavioral Designer Behind These Results
Yu-kai Chou designed the behavioral strategies described in this case study. As a Human-Systems Architect, his Octalysis Framework has driven measurable results for LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast — impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou lectures on behavioral design at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His methodology has been validated 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+ academic publications. Read his books here.
Quick Summary of the 3-Day Gamification Workshops
Gamification Workshop Day 1: Fundamentals
Day 1 was great as we consolidated much of the 8 Core Drives knowledge so that everyone who has learned from me in the past will have a strong foundation over the motivation design pieces within the framework.
In my public talks, we merely introduce the 8 Core Drives and list out some examples. In the Day 1 Workshop we went into details about the nature of these 8 Core Drives, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to balance White Hat with Black Hat as well as Left Brain and Right Brain Core Drives.
It made me happy that a couple folks who finished Day 1 asked if they could do Day 2 last moment.
Gamification Workshop Day 2: Implementing a Campaign through the Strategy Dashboard
Day 2 was about putting that knowledge into action on a real design project. Even though it was a bit more similar to traditional project management and design learning materials, it is based on the Day 1 foundation and has a strong focus on creating activity loops, reward schedules, and feedback mechanics.
This is important because so many people figure out how to create great ideas that motivate people when they learn about Octalysis, but fail to incorporate that into a process that outputs a fully engaging system at the end.
Sometimes just using the Octalysis Strategy Dashboard to define the priority list within Business Metrics and defining the Desired Actions leading to them can really change a business around from my own experience.
Gamification Workshop Day 3: Custom Octalysis Design for Attendee Projects
To be honest, I was fairly nervous about Day 3, since it is always a little bit unpredictable — Core Drive 7.
I could prepare for Day 1 and 2, but couldn’t really prepare for Day 3, as it depends on the preparation work of the attendees, questions, and specific cases they present.
Either no one prepares anything, and I need to come up with things to talk about, or everyone prepares too much and I need to figure out how to make sure everyone gets (and not just the person presenting) a ton of specific case-driven value out of it.
There’s also always the risk where I would end up being like, “Umm… I don’t know how to solve this problem” which would make me look pretty bad, haha (although so far I am blessed to have never gotten stuck like that yet).
I’m also unsure if other attendees would get bored when I’m going through improvements on another person’s project. This also makes Day 3 the most fun for me though, based on Core Drive 3 principles: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback.
Luckily, Day 3 turned out to be a big success (Core Drive 2 accomplishment!). Everyone was engaged, I managed to answer most of the questions, and more importantly showed attendees how to apply the methodology everyone was learning in the past couple of days.
For some attendees, we drilled down and refined on the fundamentals — the Strategy Dashboard; for others, we examined through the 8 Core Drives to make their campaigns more engaging; and then for a few we came up with some hyper creative ideas that at the minimum are worth exploring.
We covered a multitude of projects, from banking, to medical websites, to a Hollywood movie project, education, and more.
I smiled in relief when I saw an attendee mention in social media that Day 1 and 2 were amazing, but Day 3 was the best.
Join Yu-kai Chou’s Gamification Workshops
Note: The original 2014 Eventbrite workshop registration has ended. Yu-kai continues to offer workshops and consulting — visit the Consulting & Speaking page or Octalysis Prime for current opportunities.
If you plan to take your life and all your projects to the next level (why aren’t people using my product? Why aren’t my employees motivated? Why aren’t my students studying? Why am I not studying?), you should seriously consider participating in a workshop — the earlier the better because every week you don’t have this knowledge is hurting your future wellbeing.
I am biased in this statement, but I wholeheartedly believe in it. I use this knowledge literally on a bi-hourly basis and it has transformed my life.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification?
- The Strategy Dashboard for Gamification Design
- Consulting, Speaking & Workshops
- White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification
- Books by Yu-kai Chou