Gamification

A small gamification victory with my daughter!

by
Behaviour meter A small gamification victory with my daughter

Whilst I spin through a really busy time, I wanted to share with you a minor gamification victory with my daughter.

Anyone who has read my blog in the past, will know that I have been trying to use gamification around my daughters behaviour for a few years now. Not all (any) attempts have been 100% successful. The most gut wrenching failure was the use of the reward chart! However, in March, I decided to try a slightly less rewards based system – the Behaviour Meter.

This was a simple chart that displayed numbers 0 to 10, with an arrow pointing to the value that best described my daughters behaviour at the time. Whenever I felt her behaviour changed, I moved the arrow – simple! Read More ...

Flow & gamification: a misunderstanding

by
CvSoT Flow and other points v3 Flow 038 gamification a misunderstanding

Flow. A popular concept in gamification, goodness knows I have spoken about it often enough – just last week in fact.  It was that article that actually made me realise that there is a distinct misunderstanding of flow as Mihály Csíkszentmihályi describes it.

The image below is how we in gamification tend to view it, our simplified version.

We talk about the Flow Channel, the point where skill level and challenge level are in a good balance. So this would mean that Flow could be achieved when you have a balanced low skill and low chalenge. However, when we look at how Mihály Csíkszentmihályi originally described it, that would actually be apathy – not a state we want for our users! Read More ...

User Types – an expansion to consider

by
Gamification glossary User Types 8211 an expansion to consider

I have not mentioned User Types for at least a couple of blog posts – so though it was time to mess with your heads a little.

When I first started the user types, there were four intrinsic types (Socialiser, Free Spirit, Achiever, Philanthropist) which represented the four intrinsic motivators I speak about in RAMP (Relatedness, Autonomy, Master, Purpose). There was also one extrinsic type called the Player.

I later moved to eight types by expanding the player into four basic types that mirrored similar actions to the intrinsic types, but for rewards. These new types were; Networker, Exploiter, Consumer and Self Seeker. Read More ...

The Flow Shift and Bounce

by
Flow shift The Flow Shift and Bounce

This is more a thought and possibly even a question to those who know more than me about the Flow concept.  I have spoken about Flow in the past and use it as a core principle to engaging long term design.

However, recently it occurred to me that long term exposure to extremes in frustration or boredom, could alter our perception of flow.

For instance, you spend months in the boredom phase. You have little to no challenge. It seems reasonable that you would need to boost the level of challenge to help improve engagement and in turn try and get closer to this idea of flow. Below is the “ideal” mix of skill and challenge as described in flow theory – only this time plotted against time. Read More ...

Non-Competitive Leaderboards

by
Wearables1K Non Competitive Leaderboards

Leaderboards are evil. They create competition in environments that may not benefit from competition. They make more losers than winners and only engage the top 10 players on the board.  Right? (out of context quotes ahoy!)

Well, yes and no.

In reality it is not quite as simple as that. It all comes down to intent, presentation and interpretation. If the point of your leaderboard is to create unnatural competition between groups of people, then you may find you don’t get the results you expect. Not everyone wants to compete, so if that is your intent you will often find very short lived engagement. As soon as people find they are not in the top ten, you tend to find they lose interest. The competition then revolves around the top players, leaving the rest actually disengaged from the process. Read More ...