Is Gamification Really a Long Term Solution to Anything?

Designer 5 Is Gamification Really a Long Term Solution to Anything

When you look at how gamification has been used over the years, I personally have seen the greatest successes coming from short term “interventions”.

  • Use gamification to improve onboarding into a product
  • Use it to make a learning module, or course more interesting
  • Use it to learn a few words in another language
  • Use it to help build better excercise habits
  • Use it to build better medication routines

All of these have great success stories, but by their nature are short interventions being used to either reduce the barrier to entry, create short term engagement or help to build intrinsic habits.

I ask you this – who has become fluent in a language using Duo Lingo?

However, gamification experts (myself included) always talk about gamification being better used as a long term strategic change, rather than a quick win enabler? Read More ...

The Gamified UK Behaviour Change Model

Yeah, a bold title – but AI told me it was true and ok to use!

Over the years I have looked at various behaviour change models and have used them in varying degrees. Early on, if you look at my blog and books I used BJ Fogg a lot. These days it is referred to as B=MAP; Behaviour = Motivation * Ability * Prompt. It used to be B=MAT – T being trigger. I think prompt is better as it covers more ground.

More recently I have been using COM-B model for behaviour change. This was created by Susan Michie, Maartje M van Stralen, Robert West. I liked this model because there was a lot more behind it and it introduces capability and opportunity, splitting out ability into “Can you personally do it” and “Is it possible to do”. I then adds this to motivation to create a flexible model. Read More ...

New Solution & Gamification Design Lenses Card Deck

For the first time in a while, I have a sort of new product for you! The Solution & Gamification Design Lenses Card Deck!

Basically it is a series of cards that contain questions related to various frameworks I use in my life as a solution designer. They cover ground from the User Type HEXAD, to the COM-B behaviour change model and lots in between – including the “What’s the worst that could happen” card!

Available through DriveThruCards, they come as a deck of 44 cards – which is actually 2 decks of the 22 cards, just to try and make them better value for you. I am also providing a downloadable deck for you if you want that instead.

Buy Them!

The link to the physical cards is https://www.drivethrucards.com/product/362861/Gamification-Design-Lenses

You can get the download and print deck from here [purchase_link id=”8718″ style=”plain” color=”” text=”£10 Download Buy Now!” direct=”true”]

 

Behaviour and Behaviour Change

One of the things you often hear around talk of gamification is the term “Behaviour Change”. At one time, gamification experts and platform providers began to get nervous of the word gamification and started to talk about “Behavioural Science” and “Behaviour Change Platforms”. I remember writing a post somewhere about what would happen if you could not use gamification as a word and even suggested behaviour change as one of the options.

However, over the years I have realised that this is probably a bit naive and possibly arrogant. Behaviour is a complex thing and one that does not change easily, especially when you are trying to do it with nothing but shiny trinkets with a cut and paste bit of JavaScript!

What follows is a very brief overview from a non-expert. Use it as a base to start your own research into the topic!

What is a Behaviour

First things first, what is a behaviour? As it happens, this is an area of some contention in the scientific world. As I did my research, I even came across an article called “Behavioural biologists don’t agree on what constitutes behaviour” [1] in which the researchers did an analysis of 174 expert responses to the question of “what is a behaviour” and got huge variation! They proposed a somewhat cumbersome meta definition of behaviour:

behaviour is the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal and/or external stimuli, excluding responses more easily understood as developmental changes

However, I very much like the definition offered by Hobbs Campbell, Hildon & Michie [2]:

“anything a person does in response to internal or external events.”

For our purposes, we would add the following as well

“For a behaviour to occur there must be a trigger, a process and an observable response”

Those of you who have read my blog for a few years will notice that last part is very, very like my definition of a game mechanic!

The trigger could be environmental, internal, deliberate or pretty much anything that, within the context of the behaviour, could induce it. The process refers to the various mechanisms involved in the behaviour occurring. This could be voluntary or involuntary. The response is the behaviour physically occurring, it is what can be observed or at least measured in some way.

Context is key for all of this to happen, it is not random!

An Example

A simple example of a behaviour would be this. A person drinking an alcoholic drink.

Let’s break that down into trigger, process and response.

  • Potential Triggers: Offered a drink. Compulsion / addiction
  • Process: The person weighs up the pros and cons of having the alcoholic drink based on the information they have available. Is it appropriate in the current situation or environment? Is it healthy? Is it sensible? Would a nonalcoholic drink be more appropriate?
  • Response: The person drinks or does not drink the alcoholic beverage.
  • Read More ...

    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!

    Anyway, fast forward to this weekend.

  • Daughter: “Daddy, how come I am on an 8 on my chart. I thought I had been naughtier than that”
  • Me:  “Well, generally you have been pretty well behaved”
  • Daughter “I can’t wait to get a 10 on there”
  • Me: “That’s great, but you know there is no prize for getting a 10”
  • Daughter: “I know that, but I really want to prove I can do it”
  • Read More ...

    Exit mobile version