Gamification - en metod för bättre konvertering

Igår pratade jag om Gamification på Web Service Award. Det jag alltid är rädd för när jag pratar om ämnet är att publiken ska uppfatta det som att allt ska bli spel. Jag försöker lyfta fram att jag använder gamification som en metod för att skapa onlineprodukter för att det ska bli

- lättare att greppa och förstå erbjudandet
- enkelt att engagera sig med ett klick för att komma in i ett flöde som
- för användaren vidare i erbjudandet tills
- målet är nått
- och dessutom gärna ha en anledning till att komma tillbaka fler gånger och
- att få fler att vilja använda tjänsten/sajten


Målet kan lika gärna vara att lära sig något som att köpa något eller ha fått en viss bestämd information.

Vi pratar om Motivation, Möjligheter och Triggers - samma ord som psykologer och lärare pratar om i Maslows behovspyramid och som säljare och marknadsförare använder sig av i trattar (funnels). Det handlar om hur vår hjärna fungerar. Vi känner alla igen grundtanken.

I gamification vill vi också gärna lyckas leda in användaren i ett härligt flow - en perfekt balans mellan trygghet och spänning, mellan kunskap och utmaning. Den balansen skapas ofta med hjälp av progression varför gamification lätt blandas ihop med badges och poängräkning. Men flow hittar vi likväl i verkliga livet - när vi slänger upp en drake i luften och dess svängar gör att vi automatiskt svarar med att parera för att hålla den uppe, eller när vi lär oss ett instrument.

Vi ser att de inbjudande tangenterna är till för att tryckas ner och vid trycket får vi direkt respons när tonen ljuder. Vi har en truddilutt i huvudet som vi försöker ta ut ton för ton, ett tydligt mål. Vi fortsätter gärna att öva fler gånger för att bli bättre och till slut kunna spela Fur Elise framför en eminent publik.

Den där publiken är helt avgörande för att det ska vara värt att fortsätta. Få spelar piano, sätter på sig en snygg jacka eller gör ett köp helt och hållet ensam, utan att någonsin vilja höras eller synas för andra. Det är mångfaldigt roligare om vi får respons från vänner eller andra. Facebook, bloggar och mer utgör den publiken långt innan vi är professionella pianister idag. Det är också ofta responsen som utmanar oss att fortsätta - bli bättre, uppdatera, förändra.

Om vi lyckas skapa ett flow och kombinerar det med att erbjuda en bra publik och en skara människor att jämföras med, kan rätt trigger vid rätt tillfälle bli mycket effektfull. Om jag påminns om att jag köpa mig glad precis när jag är i som störst behov av det kan försäljningen fördubblas på en natt. Påminns jag om vad jag kan köpa när jag inte har några pengar fungerar det sämre.

Det här är ganska komplexa system. Det kan krävas programmerare, speldesigners, affärsutvecklare, analytiker, usability designer, konceptutvecklare, specialister och ytterligare copy, form, projektledare, kommunikatör, marknadsförare och kanske kundtjänst för att det ska bli riktigt bra. Det funkar inte att vara en Don Draper som ensam talar om för alla vad som ska göras. Det blir också ruskigt kostsamt och dåliga kompromissade resultat med för många stakeholders. De här projekten måste bygga på tydliga ramverk och en stor portion förtroende för att bli framgångsrika.

Allas bidrag är lika avgörande för att projektet ska lyfta.

Gamification framtidenswebbare

View more presentations from Malin Ströman

Musing on Gamification... Motivation... Usability... Fun

John Cook refers to PopCap co-founder Jason Kapalka in GeekWire July 21

Creating a term like gamification does more harm to the business because it actually dilutes down what a game means. And, in his view, a game has one simple goal: to be fun.

On July 24 Peter Friedman suggests 'Maintainable motivation' as a new term for gamification.

The ‘science’ of maintainable motivation extends far beyond games and gamification, because it includes all aspects of persistent engagement, even when the initial intention was ‘single-action’. For instance, a sales message might be a ‘one-off’ opportunity to buy something (for instance, selling your car: ‘perfect condition, one careful owner’) but it might just as easily be sold from a dealership which will want you to only ever buy cars from them for the rest of your life.

My reflections are that
- the term Gamification feels as it is forgeting or denying that much of the knowledge of motivation powers is not deriving from games only but from sciences as pedagogy and psychology. Gamification is all about usability and goals. Previous on this >>

- the goal of gamification is to make something - anything - fun or at least without thresholds for the targetgroup, pretty much the same as a game, pretty much the same as pedagogy.

- the social games don't always have a fun core game (sow and harvest) but the game mechanics make it fun to interact, compare, invite, return, progress and even to pay pushing social or individual triggers.

- there are fun core games that get boring as game mechanics for introduction, virtual economic systems, progress and so on are bad.

- it is sometimes difficult to introduce non gaming or non social media users to the term of gamification, and easier to talk about motivations. But words such as Quests, Missions, Progress and Rewards are not foreign at all.

Games should have a guided path

I had an hour to spend today at the jury's public discussion of the Stockholm based game education programs of FutureGames. We listend to jury members from DICE (Battlefield), Teotl (The Ball), Lionhead (Fable) och Frictional Games (Amnesia)who were about to elect a winner of the final exam projects. I have not yet had the chance to play the games but the discussions aroused a few thoughts.

The first game discussed was a rhythmical batting game compared to Patapon, but the jury members could not get through it and felt there should be more instructions to it. I spontanously thought about the target group of such a game and finally the designer of the game asked the jury if they had ever played this kind of game before, and no, they had not. A game jury should probably be put together out of different gaming types to be fair I guess. No matter how great each and everyone is in their field, the mix in the jury is crucial.

The second game discussed showed this even more. Someone got disappointed by being alone in a forest while someone appreciated the well rendered pine trees as an experience all alone and yet someone else wanted to find more objects and actions to explore.

Several of the games presented lead to the discussion about whether a game should have a guided path or not. The conclusion was that you always need rewardings for your actions, some hidden and subtle progression and that every action needs to get clear response to make the game meaningful. I thought about Sims where you need to make people fall in love to get children and you need to get children to be able to make them go to school and so on. It's both rewarding and making a path of progression. (as is life)

Well finally I thought about how also fantastic but yet junior game developers tend to concentrate on the core game and forget the same thing as for example e-commerce and communities. They fail to quickly introduce the game functionalities to the user and add more by time. They don't make clear why the user should want to come back soon, or want to go on to the very end of the game. No matter how great a game idea is it is more fun if people will want to play it... a lot.

Looking forward to work with the students on this this fall.

Foursquare turns NY to a giant game of Risk

The board game Risk, in which players maneuver plastic armies on a http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmap in order to achieve “world domination,” has firmly occupied one corner ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giff nerdom for about fifty years. Foursquare stationed itself in another more tech-oriented corner of that same kingdom about two years ago. Now, at last, the two categories of nerdom meet.

“World of Fourcraft” uses Foursquare and Google Maps APIs to turn New York City into a giant game of Risk.

Read the post on Mashable

Master of Recycling

I'm dreaming of a recycle app that
- points out all and the nearest Recycling stations
- lets me check in when recycling so that everyone sees how good I am
- gives me points for recycling and displays the best recycler every week/day/year
- includes a competition of the most used station to indicate the good behaviour of the entire community I live in, and preferable list all recyclers who check in at this station making our good work progress
- lets me send in photos at poorly maintained stations

I want to become the master of recycling!

Gamification a model of Pedagogy

I found this useful blog on gamification some time ago. It's Michael Wu, Scientist of Analytics who sorts the gamification concept out to us.

I realized long ago that gamification and my knowledge of Pedagogy are very close connected and with Wu's conclusion below this connection is well formed.

So why do game mechanics/dynamics have the magical power to turn boring chores into desirable activities?

1. Game dynamics use positive feedbacks (e.g. points, badges, status, progression, customization, surprises, social factors, etc.) to build up the users’ motivation.
2. They increase the perceived ability of users by making difficult jobs simpler and more manageable; either through training/practice or by lowering the activation threshold of the target behavior.
3. Game dynamics place triggers in the path of motivated users when they feel the greatest excess in their ability. That is, triggers that prompt the user for action are designed to bring about the convergence of motivation, ability, and trigger all at the same moment.

The target of gamification and pedagogy are the same, and as pedagogy only have a target and not one model, gamification is one pedagogical model.

GreenGoose might change habits

I hope the GreenGoose game platform idea is as good as it sounds. It looks as simple as a merge of a set of different sort of step counters and a progression display.

I guess the easiest way to change habits would probably be to gamify them. Often you really don't want to change mentaly though it make sense in all other aspects. You tend to cheat as long as no one is watching you. Most people hate to see themselves fool themselves though and a game easily makes this more visible. Still you can cheat and this is what the counting sensors will avoid. The thing I like the most is that it seems all flexible - you set up your own tasks and goals.

Anyone with bad habits to change that can test it for me, because I haven't time enough to try it out...