We recently moved office, which has offered me the chance to bring to mind a concept my Mum would refer to as “Honest Work”. What is honest work? In this case manual labour involved in building flat pack chairs and setting up networks, but in Mum’s definition, it is anything that has a physical or visible outcome. For instance, stacking shelves in a warehouse, putting up some shelves, creating a routine in a bit of software. Anything where you can quickly see results and even better, results you can be proud of.
Gamification
A New Year for Gamification
As we usher in a New Year, I wanted to make a few New Year wishes for gamification in 2018.
The industry finally matures and stops acting like a petulant teenager!- 2017 saw a lot of advances in gamification, but the industry still has a way to go. Misogyny, pettiness, immature attitudes towards research and evidence are just some of the problems we still face.
- And don’t get me started on the concept of 1-week courses producing gurus and specialists!
Intrinsic Motivation RAMP Misconceptions
As we head to the holidays I wanted to revisit an old “model” and just clarify a couple of items that have cropped up in conversation over the years. The item in question is RAMP. This, as you may remember, is my core intrinsic motivation model of Relatedness, Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Obviously, based on Self Determination Theory, this has been a really handy tool in all of my gamification exploits over the years.
The basic idea is these are 4 motivations that are core to all people in some way. In self-determination theory, Deci and Ryan only speak about Relatedness, Autonomy and Competence (Mastery), as altruistic purpose is part relatedness. Whilst true, for gamification it is useful to separate this out into its own.
Underjustification Effect
Overjustification Effect
Before we get onto Underjustification effect, let’s talk about its inspiration. Many of you will know about The Overjustification effect, first described by Daryl Bem in his work on Self-Perception theory in 1967[1].
Put simply it is the decrease of intrinsic motivation to perform a task or tasks when an extrinsic reward is introduced, and the reward becomes more important than the original task. So, for instance, if you love painting and then start to get paid for it, the money can start to become more important than the love of painting. Once the money is removed, you may be reluctant to go back to it for free, your intrinsic motivation to paint has been undermined by the extrinsic rewards. There is plenty of research out there to back this up!
The 3 Layers of Motivation 2018 Edition
Ok, so it isn’t quite 2018, but near enough!
I wanted to present a new graphic for my Layers of Motivation (Found here), with a little bit of explanation about one aspect!
For those that don’t know, this was created as a way to explain where purely extrinsic and trivial methods of motivating people, such as points badges and leaderboards, sat within general motivation.
Based on good old Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Self Determination Theory, my own RAMP and gamification mechanics.
The key learning is that to engage and motivate users, you need to understand what their needs are. If they are starving, offering them digital badges won’t really hold any motivational drive for them! If they are generally satisfied in their day today base needs but are unhappy in their role because they lack autonomy, adding a leaderboard to their day job will not help!