Education

I’m Dyslexic and it isn’t a Superpower!

by
Byp5ttxubl0 I 8217 m Dyslexic and it isn 8217 t a Superpower

I’m dyslexic. I was diagnosed 30 or more years ago. So I say with all respect, stop calling Dyslexia a superpower. It belittles & glamourises a condition that is, to many, crippling and leads to terrible anxiety and self-esteem issues.

When I was young, I was labelled stupid by my school. In fact, my maths teacher even told my Mum – to her face – that I was dumb and should just be left to get on with it. I am very lucky my parents took me to a specialist in the early 90s to get a diagnosis to force the school to “reassess” their opinion. I was the first in my school! Read More ...

The Dark HEXAD – Star Wars has inspired a new HEXAD!

by
Dark hexad The Dark HEXAD 8211 Star Wars has inspired a new HEXAD

I was having a think about the User Type HEXAD and it occurred to me that I have never considered Star Wars and how that might fit the HEXAD! You know, as you do 😀

As I did so, I was reminded of the fact that when I started building the user types, I used to split based on whether they interacted with people or a system AND if they acted on people or the system – I.E. imposed themselves on them rather than working within them.  This got me thinking about light and dark side HEXAD types. If you have seen my DODECAD you will know that there are actually 12 types in my overall taxonomy – but I really like this idea of a Dark HEXAD! Read More ...

New Podcast – The Andrzej & Roman Show

by
A and r New Podcast 8211 The Andrzej 038 Roman Show

Before I get on to giving you all Part 2of the managing expectations blog, I wanted to officially say that Roman Rackwitz and I have a new podcast coming soon!

We will be taking a look at the state gamification, talking about topics close to us in the gamification world and how gamification might relate to current events in the world. With luck, it will be fun, light-hearted and insightful!

We will start recording soon, but if you want to get set up now to receive notifications of when the first episode is ready, you can head to Spotify now! Read More ...

Gamification Challenge: Can You Defeat Bigotry?

by
5466266 Gamification Challenge Can You Defeat Bigotry

As I walked through town recently, I was reminded rather forcefully that homophobia and bigotry still exist in a big way.

As my family and I were walking through a charity store, a man was loudly saying the following to his 3 or 4-year-old son.

Don’t tell me you kissed a boy. Stop kissing boys, it ain’t natural!

I am a parent to two girls, both of whom are open about the fact they don’t label themselves in any specific way when it comes to their preferences towards gender. Hearing this made them both upset and mad as hell – as it did me.

So here is my challenge to you all. How would you use gamification to try and solve this kind of bigotry, to get through to this kind of Neanderthal that it is not ok to be like that?

My way involves behaviour modification and counting lost teeth, which is just as unacceptable in this day and age!

You and I have all the theory in the world by now and have applied much of it – but in reality, this is the sort of issue we should be trying to turn our skill to in our own time. Is the answer to creating training programmes that we have to somehow encourage them to take? Is it more about changing the way the government treats this sort of behaviour? Is it a social change that will take decades, but needs the likes of us to guide and design? I think we all know the answer, but I refuse to believe that we can’t make any impact on this problem, that there is no way with all our knowledge on behaviour that we can’t somehow make a difference.

Or is that where gamification becomes a lie? Is it just about making more money for others? Has my faith over the last 10 years or so been totally misplaced?

Prove me wrong, prove that gamification is more than a way to make people take mandatory training, buy more products or click more links. Prove to me that my children don’t have to live in a world like this and that we can make a real difference.

Who’s with me?

The Engagement Channel Model 2.0: Fun, Flow and Engagement

by
Engagement Channel Model 2 0 The Engagement Channel Model 2 0 Fun Flow and Engagement

Fun. A three letter word you won’t hear me mention often when discussing gamification! Why? Well, fun is really subjective. What you find fun, I may not. However, for the purposes of this blog, we will assume I like fun as do you and when I mention fun – it means something you will find fun!

With that out of the way, here’s the thing. If you look at Flow or my Engagement Channel stuff, you will see that to enter flow and be truly engaged, the challenge of whatever you are doing should match or slightly exceed your current skill level.

As with my Engagement Channel model, you can soften the impact of a challenge being too much by adding meaningful rewards and you can soften the impact of your skills being greater than the challenge, by adding personal challenges.

However, in games I am seeing more and more games that drop you straight into a scenario where the challenge instantly far outweighs your skills. By all our models, this should lead to instant frustration and most likely disengagement – but it doesn’t always. For some reason, there are some games that I play, that no matter how tough they are and how far off my skills are from the challenge – I keep coming back over and over again. Why? Because they are fun to play!

Does this mean there is another dimension to the Engagement Channel or the our view on Flow?

BJ Fogg

If we look at BJ Fogg’s famous Behaviour Change Model, we can see that there are three main dimensions in his B=MAP formula. Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Prompts.

Basically for a behaviour to happen, motivation, ability and prompts all need to align. If a task is hard, but you have high motivation to do it – the right prompt will start to encourage the behaviour. If the task is easy, your motivation can be lower with the correct prompt. A third factor can influence the outcome without anything else changing.

So, how can I steal this idea and start to add a new dimension to my Engagement Channel Model. Well, I’m glad you didn’t ask!

The Engagement Channel Model 2.0

To simplify the original concept, what I am now proposing is that fun can act as a buffer between engagement, frustration and boredom, essentially widening the Engagement Channel.

Now, I am not trying to tell you what your users may find fun, what I am saying is the older I get, the more I realise that fun makes a huge difference to your motivation to do things, even if they are really hard or if they are slightly boring. Adding that element of fun can make all the difference.