Gamification is becoming more and more prevalent in the software industry. Many businesses are integrating game mechanics into their customer loyalty programs, websites, and other digital products to drive engagement and increase the adoption of various features. However, while gamification has become commonplace as a trend, it’s not that easy to implement correctly. Many organizations make mistakes when incorporating gaming elements into their products. Let’s take a look at some common pitfalls and how you can avoid them when implementing gamification strategies in your own organization.
motivation
The RAMP to Fun
A while back I started talking about FUN again. In that post I mentioned the RAMP to Fun, but never actually posted it! So here it is in full PowerPoint diagram glory 😀
This is obviously based on my RAMP, but also on some research I did a long time ago on what people find fun.
The idea is that you need to include elements, mechanics and concepts that people will find fun – even if these do not look fun to you on the surface. As they all hook into core intrinsic motivators – some will find them fun! The more you can link together and embed – in a way that is sympathetic and sensible to the design, the better.
The Dark HEXAD – 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!
The “Is it a now thing, or a later thing?” prioritisation framework – Beat the Post Christmas Slump
So, Christmas is done and we are now in that no mans land between Christmas and New Year. No one knows what day it is, what they should be doing or what their next meal might consist of – but know that it is in the freezer and is bit sized.
The next week or so can be really hard to stay focused during as you work in a piecemeal fashion and have slightly less direction than usual. So I thought it was time to just share the basic prioritisation framework I use in my head (which I probably stole from somewhere!). At it’s most simple it asks the question
“Is it a now thing, or a later thing?”
There are factors that can affect the priority as well, moving things more to being a now thing or towards being a later thing.
Here is a simple example of how you could consider this, a decision tree that asks a few questions to decide if it is a Now or Later Thing
This is a massive over simplification, but it serves as a simple example – not many things actually fall into the Later Thing category! However, it is important to go through a process like this to help decide if you should be doing a thing now or later. So, a client calls and their entire network is down and they are losing billions of dollars a second whilst they wait for you to fix it. That probably sits in the realms of a Now Thing, when you are sat trying to decide if that is more important than playing the latest video game you got for Christmas – or do client work!
A little less obvious, you have this new video game and there is no client work. However, you do have some training that could be done that will make later easier and possible improve your life by learning a new skill. The video game still sits in the Later Thing category.
You’ve done your training, there is no client work to be done and no other priorities you can think of that will impact you if they are left until later…. the video game is going to bring you joy and help reset your brain – it is finally a Now Thing!
As I say, it is a simplification of the process, you still need to prioritise other work and schedule correctly. I am a fan of the Eisenhower Matrix for this. I have used an image from Techtello here to show you an example – it is very very handy as a way to augment the Now or Later framework!
Anyway, I hope this helps a little and gets you back in the swing of things before the New Year!
Relationships Between HEXAD Types
It’s been a while since I wrote about the HEXAD user types, but the world does not stand still and I keep seeing them turning up in academic papers – which is amazing, so I thought it time to say a few words on things that have repeatedly come up!
I was inspired by a recent paper by Ana Cláudia Guimarães Santos, Wilk Oliveiraa, Juho Hamari and Seiji Isotani called “Do people’s user types change over time? An exploratory study ” You can grab a copy here.
Without spoiling too much, they come to many conclusions about the types, but one that stuck out for me was
“the dominant user types can not be considered stable.”
There were also a few comments around Free Spirits and Disruptors being a touch difficult as well!
“Disruptor and Free Spirit presented reliability results slightly below the acceptable […] might highlight the necessity of the improvement of Disruptor and Free Spirit sub-scale or further analysis of these user types”