We’ve all been there. You stop at traffic lights, and a frenzied delivery cyclist swiftly zips in front, ignoring the light. Perhaps you’re at KFC, jostled by a swarm of Deliveroo and Uber Eats drivers, all clamouring and gesturing at order numbers on their phones. Or maybe you find yourself unable to access your driveway because a colossal white van obstructs it, while an Amazon delivery person leaves £300 worth of electrical goods on your neighbour’s doorstep in the pouring rain.
Whatever your story, you’ve likely fallen victim to the gig economy and how it incentivises undesirable behaviours.
How does this relate to gamification?
It’s easy to point fingers at the drivers, but they are just as much victims. Their earnings depend on meeting tight and often poorly compensated goals. More deliveries equals more money; that’s the crux of the system. While gamification experts may argue that such incentivization has evolved into good narratives, the truth is that elements like badging, reward systems, and leaderboards remain as prevalent as ever.
If you were to look up gamification on Wikipedia (not recommended due to a poorly written page), the first things mentioned under “Game design elements” reveal that this is nothing new!
I mean, why have we bothered all these years?
Putting that aside, the key issue is that when significant to the user, incentives can drive negative behaviours to attain them. This phenomenon is termed the Overjustification Effect, where the reward becomes more crucial than the activity itself.
But how does this apply when the reward is the very point of the activity? We often discuss the Overjustification Effect concerning scenarios like “Children drew better pictures when doing it for fun vs. being paid.” That’s great, but a delivery driver isn’t delivering parcels for fun; they’re doing it solely for financial incentives. If more deliveries equal more money, they might resort to inconsiderate parking, breaking traffic rules, illegal parking, or hastily leaving parcels without knocking – anything to shave off a few seconds from their delivery times.
How can we combat this?
The first step is to establish clear rules. Clearly outline what is expected from your workforce. Without explicit expectations, complaints about rule-breaking lack merit. It’s astonishing how often people gripe about rule violations without presenting the rules in plain English or at all.
The second step is obvious: reward fairly and set achievable, sensible goals without driving negative behaviours. Instead of “More Deliveries = More Money,” shift to “Complete this number of deliveries within a reasonable time, and you will be compensated per hour to achieve them.” This way, drivers won’t feel the need to break rules or act inconsiderately to meet their goals.
Finally, penalize negative behaviours. The prerequisite for this is having the first step in place. If everyone agrees on fair rewards and sensible goals, punishing negative behaviours becomes reasonable, as there should no longer be a need for them.
2023 is underway now and most of us have probably already given up on our goals for the New Year! You are not alone though, a study in 2021 found that two-thirds of us give up our New Year’s Resolutions within a month!
There can be many reasons for this, but in my experience, it more often than not is down to unrealistic and unachievable goal setting. “I’m going to go to the gym every day”. “I’m going to practice my scales for an hour every day”. “I’m going to do 10,000 steps every day” etc etc etc.
In all of those cases, the goal is crazy, unless you are already doing something similar. Take 10,000 steps a day. You get a FitBit for Christmas (I did) and you set your goal to 10,000 steps a day (as seems to be recommended). After the first week, you are only managing 5,000 steps. After 2 weeks, still 5,000 steps. After three, you just get disheartened because you realise your lifestyle means (in your mind) that you can’t even do 10,000 a day, it’s impossible.
Of course, it isn’t impossible, it is just unrealistic. You are naturally taking 5,000 steps a day, it is not likely that just because you got a step counter you will be able to double that amount overnight. You need to plan that kind of change and you need to set yourself incremental goals that are more achievable!
That is where AMP may be able to help.
What the heck is AMP?
Well, glad you asked. AMP stands for Achievable, Measurable Progressible. Yes, progressible is a word… in some dictionaries!
amp
To explain this, I will just break each one down and then go back to how this would work with the 10,000 step goal.
Achievable
The first thing to do when setting goals is to decide if it is possible. Sounds daft, but if your goal is to walk on the moon and you are a 45-year-old, overweight computer geek – is that really realistic and achievable?? No, probably not! I was going to add realism to the start of this little acronym, but I already have a RAMP framework 😉
Once you have decided that your goal can be achieved, you must figure out how to break down the macro goal into smaller micro-goals, each of which should be incrementally achievable. This means that as we increment our micro goals targets, they remain achievable.
Measurable
So how do we decide if a goal is incrementally achievable? Well, first we need to be able to measure something! In the case of steps per day, we can do that with a step counter. Next, we need to decide what our starting point is. With your steps, take an average number of steps you are taking per day. Day one is 5000, day 2: 5500, day 3: 5200 etc. The average is your starting point, in our case we will say 5,000 steps a day.
Progressible
And this is where progressible comes in. Take a look at the variance. What is the most you have naturally done? In this case, it may be 5,500, so our variance is 500. So we set our first micro goal as half of this – 5250 steps – because we know that can be achieved (you already did it), but it is not too much. 5,500 may have been an odd freak incident that is currently impractical to replicate straight away.
Now we kick in our incremental/progressible goals. So the first week has a goal of 5,250 daily steps. Our next goal should be incrementally and achievably larger than this. 5,500 (as again, we know this is possible). The week after that, 5,750, then 6,000 and so on – until we hit the macro goal of 10,000. Of course, we don’t have to stop there – we could then make a new goal of 20,000 and create larger jumps of 500 steps to get there. Of course, there are other practical limits to this, but you get what I mean.
In a Nut Shell
So put simply, we break our macro goal into achievable micro goals. We ensure that we have measured our baseline and have a way to measure our progress. We create progressible goals, each of which can be measured and achieved. We smash our goals and move on to become an astronaut!
I was recently chatting to a guy who was complaining that his task list was so long that he couldn’t even work out where to start from. He had all the tasks in Excel but just couldn’t figure out what to do first. Nothing had due dates, just he knew they all needed doing “at some point”.
We had a long chat and I gave him a simple algorithm to help get started.
Algorithm 1.0
First, prioritise each task with a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being vital and 5 being “whenever”
Next, give each task a difficulty rating of 1 to 5, 1 being easy and 5 being mega tough.
Finally, sort by priority then by difficulty.
You will end up with a list a bit like this
Task
Priority (1=Highest)
Difficulty (5=Hardest)
Get the kids bags sorted
1
1
Fix iPad
1
5
Paint the Fence
2
2
Learn new song
3
2
Tidy wiring in living room
3
3
Wash the windows
4
3
Mow the lawn
5
1
Create an app
5
5
Then, what you are looking for is a “quick win”. Look for the task that has the highest priority with the lowest difficulty, in this case, “Get the kids bags sorted”. This is an easy job that is very important and will get you started. The first step of any journey is always the most difficult and all that jazz.
Algorithm 2.0 – gamified
After this chat, I came home and decided to work it into a slightly more advanced version, that had a little sprinkling of gamification. From one perspective it is already gamified, you have many tasks, broken down into organised manageable tasks. I decided to add a little scoring system though, that would just add to the experience for some (not all of course).
In the new version, there is a little formula that assigns a score based on the difficulty and the priority, The higher the difficulty and the priority – the higher the points value for the task overall.
This allows me to create an overall score and % completion – providing a little progress measurement. This changes as you mark each task completed. This way, whilst there may be more tasks added, the overall score will always increase as you complete them, even though the progress may go down. This still gives you an overall sense of achievement.
What you personally do with this is up to you. You could set yourself some milestones so that at 30 points you may decide to go out for something nice to eat. Then you can decide if you do 2 or 3 low-value tasks or one high-value task.
So you have progress, goal setting and points – not a bad combo really!
The Spreadsheet
I attach the spreadsheet for you to play with, I’d love to see what you can do with it 🙂
You want to use gamification as part of a solution you are building, but resources are limited and you can’t take a fully gamified approach. What is the one gamification element that you would insist was included, no matter what?
For me, it would be progress.
Start with Goals
This is not a single element, so this may be a bit of a cheat. Progress is linked to two main concepts. Goals and Feedback, something I spoke about at length in Part 5 of my Introduction to Gamification (which I will return to writing very soon!). So to include progress in a design, I need to be able to create goals for the user. As I mention in the linked article, these can be large goals that are then broken down into smaller goals:
Quest –> Levels -> Missions -> Task
But you can’ have goals without feedback – otherwise, how do you know how close you are to completing goals. Again, as I say in the article, feedback comes in many shapes and forms, from progress bars to full virtual currencies!
Now Feedback
So that I don’t cheat too much, I will limit myself here to one simple feedback mechanic, a progress bar.
The Humble Progress Bar
It isn’t glamorous or exciting, but it works a treat! It is a simple way to tell users how close they are to achieving their goals.
The nice thing about a progress bar is that it can be presented in so many different ways. From dials to pie charts to simple bars. But they don’t always have to be positive. Think about lives in a video game. They give you inverse progress. The further from your goal you are, the fewer hearts you have!
How Many Lives Left?
The only limit is your imagination really.
What would your one gamification element be – your desert island element if you will?
The core of gamification can be boiled down to two key components. Goals and Feedback. Of course, there is more going on that supports these, but those are the two keys of gamification.
Gamified systems need to set specific tasks for users to complete, and then provide them with feedback as they progress towards completing those tasks. A good gamified system then uses other techniques, elements, mechanics etc to support the user towards those goals.
The hard bit is setting good goals, creating good feedback mechanisms and wrapping the experience in something that is engaging! But that is for later.
Let’s start by justifying the statement that gamification can be broadly split into two main headings, starting with goals!
Goals
Games are great at setting goals. They start with one big goal, “save the planet from destruction”. That is a pretty big goal though, so that goal is split into small goals. “Get to the end of the first of ten levels”. That is then split into smaller goals. “Find the magic sword”. This is then further broken down to smaller real-time tasks. “Kill the bad guy, navigate the map” and so on.
We can consider these in the following way.
Quest –> Levels -> Missions -> Task
In our example, the quest is to save the planet. The levels are the stages within which the action is. Collecting the magic sword is a mission. Kill the bad guy is a task. Not all games can be split this neatly, open world and RPG games often don’t have specific levels, just collections of missions (sub-quests) and tasks. Your quest may be to save the planet, but first, you have a sub-quest to return all of Miss Mable’s chickens. To do that you will need to have 100 experience points, so you will have to complete multiple tasks in the form of killing rats (grinding).
You get the picture, games break up large goals into much smaller and palatable chunks. This is one of the core aims we have in gamification, to make an activity easier to achieve in some way. That may be technically easier or psychologically easier, where the gamification makes the task less of a pain to do.
The core component of goals, in this context, is challenge. Every part of the overall goal completion is a challenge of some type. Be it grinding to get experience points or fighting the big boss at the end of the level, they are all challenges. The trick is to make sure that the player has the right skill level to meet the challenge as set out in Flow mentioned previously.
If you are interested in diving deeper into the theory of goal setting, check out Goal Setting Theory by Locke and Latham, who set out five considerations that help an individual achieve a goal, Clarity, Challenge, Commitment, Feedback, Task complexity1. It is also worth looking at my Attainable Maintainable goals model.
Feedback
Feedback is both easier to talk about and harder. It is easier because it seems obvious. Feedback is what a system tells someone when they act. If a player succeeds, the system says, “well done, keep going”, if they fail the system says, “bad luck, try again”. But that is just one type of feedback.
Rewards, points, progress bars, badges, leaderboards, certificates, prizes, social status and more are all forms of feedback.
You must decide what feedback types will work best for your solution and what schedule you will use to provide the feedback. Will it be just in time (i.e. as the activity is completed), will it be later as part of a larger report, will it be random feedback like rewards for actions the user may not be expecting rewards for? I will explain reward schedules in more detail later, but it is worth being aware that it does have to be immediate or linear!
Whatever the type of feedback is, it needs to follow a simple rule RIM, Relevant, In-Time, Meaningful.
Relevant
Feedback should make sense, it should have context. If a user gets a quiz question right, the expect to see a tick or a “well done”. They are not expecting a 5-minute fanfare and a million points whilst unicorns sing “You are the king of the world”! Actually, that sounds pretty cool, but you get the idea!
In-Time
Just as feedback needs context, it needs to be delivered at the right time. Again, if a user gets an answer correct, they expect to know about it then and there, or at least at the end of the test. Unless it is an exam, they don’t expect to see the feedback weeks and weeks later! At the same time, a leaderboard does not need to update every 10 seconds if it is measuring large shifts in large sets of data. It could just update once a week at a set time, and users can go and look at it as and when they want.
Meaningful
This is essential, especially when considering rewards as feedback. If it has not meaning it has no value to the user. A badge for clicking a button 100 times will have less value to a user than their degree certificate! That is not to say feedback has to be as epic as that, progress bars as feedback don’t do a great deal, but the feedback is meaningful to the user!
Building and Supporting the System
When building a system, you have to start with what the main goal is, what is it that you need the user to do or achieve. Then you can think about how that goal can be split up into smaller goals. After that, you look at what challenges you can set to get the user closer to each goal.
After that, you consider how you are going to provide feedback to the user so that they understand their progress and achievements. Will points and badges help. Do you need a leaderboard, a progress bar etc? What reward schedules will work best for this situation.
Finally, you can look at how to support this. Is there a narrative or a theme that would fit the system? Do you need to include social mechanics to create a sense of community or competition, avatar building tools, strategy, time pressure etc?
I will go into much more detail about these in time.
Key Learning Points
Gamification is all about Goals and Feedback
Goals should be attainable and maintainable.
Goals should be broken down into lots of small goals
Feedback can be many things from points to progress
Feedback should be Relevant, In-Time and Meaningful
There is loads more to it, but that is a good place to start!
References
Tosi HL, Locke EA, Latham GP. A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance. Acad Manag Rev. 1991;16(2):480. doi:10.2307/258875.
