I recently wrote two blog post about gamification design theory. One about why good gamification design is complex, the other about clarifying this complexity through my Strategic Gamification Framework. These posts discuss the ‘Why’ and ‘How’, let’s now talk about the ‘Where’.

Good gamification is in it essence sustainable gamification. Solutions in which the user, the technology, but also the business work together. Let me explain these one by one.

 

User motivation

As already mentioned before, I strongly believe that a good gamification process should be designed around the end user. Every decisions made during this process should be in favor of this end-user. This is the only way to create a successful gamification project on the long-term.

Technology

Besides the user, technology is also a crucial part in a successful gamification project. It might seem trivial to name technology as one of the key success factors, but it isn’t. Research done by Marigo Raftopoulos shows that technology is often the weakest link in gamification projects. Users are very critical these days, saying technology should just work and should therefore be invisible. Although most time is invested in the development of technology, often it is just not good enough.

Business goals

The last aspect of sustainable gamification is business (goals). Long-term sustainable solutions can only be achieved when backed up by a business or organization. You need people to manage the gamification solution, to make sure new features are being build, that the solution is evolving. Business should manage the economy around such a solution.

 

How these aspects should work together

Discussing these three aspects is nothing new. We heard about user-centric design before, we all know the technology should work and we need business to start these processes.

But what we don’t realise that well, is that these aspects should work together. Let’s take a look what this means.
If you look at the diagram you see that interaction is the combination of user and technology. The user interacts with the technology. Technology that in its turn is developed by the business. Although the interaction and development can be improved a lot, there is one collaboration between two aspects which is too often overlooked.

 

Visions should be aligned

Gamification projects tend to start with what behaviour we, as a business, want to see with our target group. That is a good start in itself, but is only going to work on the long-term if the business goals is somewhat the same as what the user want. You simply cannot let users do things (on the long-term) they don’t want to do or don’t believe in.

Therefore it is important to align the vision of your business with the vision of your users. The user should believe that you, as a business, are doing things in the best interest for this user. It’s is the only way to create a long-term relationship with the users of your product.

And this concept of aligning business and users visions ties into marketing, brand identity and loyalty. It is about the quality and service you believe you are going to get from a business.

 

Collaboration between client and designer

Creating sustainable gamification solutions is besides the collaboration between User motivation, Technology and Business Goals also a collaboration between client and designer. Clients must realise that successful solutions can only be created through certain business goals. This might often require rethinking business ideas. And designers should realise that crafting beautiful experiences is only part of the job. The other part being sitting down with clients, talking about their business goals and aligning these with the to be designed user behaviours.

There is one company (one of my clients) which I think is doing very well on the collaboration between user, technology and business. The company is called WOO Sports and they deliver the WOO, a performance kiteboarding sensor and app. Click here to know more about my part in this project.

When going through any gamification process I use a framework as guidance. It’s a framework I developed in the last years when doing projects with clients. First of all I developed this framework to explain clients about the upcoming process. That gamification ties into the core business objectives. But later on, the framework appeared to have value as well during (kick-off) workshops to get the gamification message across.

“Client input and collaboration are crucial for a successful gamification project.”

As designers, we all have slightly different views on the design process, because of different backgrounds and experience. Because I studied Design Engineering, I believe in a strategic approach towards design. In my opinion most existing frameworks directly go into solutions. Even before setting clear design goals together with the client as a basis for a strategic approach. Client input and collaboration are crucial for a successful gamification project. Some frameworks had this figured out, so my own framework is inspired on these, such as the Delft Design Approach, Design Thinking, Werbach’s 6D framework and others.

Part engineer, part artist

As my study being Design Engineering, I believe (applied) designers are part engineers. Approaching design through a strategic framework to deliver high quality results can partly be engineered. But where Gabe Zichermann at the last Gamification World Congress stated gamification designers should be engineers, I have to disagree.

There are many moments in the gamification design process which can be engineered and approached systematically. But there are also moments which cannot be captured in a framework. These are moments when jumping from abstract ideas to concrete solutions. The moments in which you, as a designer, ‘see’ a game or gamification solution. It is that moment in which you have to take the full spectrum from the discovery phase, together with intel you gathered through experience, knowledge from reading and talking to others and compile this into inspiring ideas.
For me that moment is what distinguish good designers from the really good ones. How fast can you ‘see’ this solution and how good is it going to be?

The framework

The other day I wrote a post on the complexity of gamification design, now it is time to clear things up. What is that framework I am using and how do I apply it for clients and workshops? A quick lesson in Strategic Gamification Design.

 

Three different design frameworks. No iterations, only internal iterations and both internal and external iterations.

The three frameworks above are slightly different and explain the origin of the design process. The first one being a design process still seeing at many (mostly very big) companies. I’ve had the chance to work at some of these companies and something you’ll notice is their old way of thinking. From a design brief, they analyze, frame, ideate and build and put the product into the market. If it sells it sells, if it doesn’t it doesn’t. And off to the next one. Selling a product is for them the last stop of the process. From that moment there is no contact with the product or user.

The second framework is one proposed in the early days of design thinking and shows us the importance of iterations. During the design process, the design team is performing many iterations to get the product right. They design and quickly test prototypes until it’s ready for launch. The product is shipped to the market.

Where in the previous process, iterations are done in controlled environments by the design team, the third process sees value of iterating in the market itself. More companies see this value of getting products to the market as quickly as possible, which is one of the core beliefs of the lean startup movement. Iterations are done by the design team, but also with actual users.

Closing the loop

Gamification solutions often tend to be digital or have a strong digital component. This has the great advantage of easily connecting with your users. Through your digital product you can connect to users and they can provide crucial feedback in the form of comments, ideas, analytics and behaviour.

 

The Strategic Gamification Design framework

So this digital connection with users can be used to get feedback and improve your product. But it can also be used to close the loop. Closing the loop means changing the users current version of the product with a newer one. Through these digital channels we can easily push new product updates. While the more analog products out there have different versions in the market, digital products can have only one. The shorter this cycle, the more feedback, the better your product, the better your users.

“The shorter this cycle, the more feedback, the better your product, the better your users.”

Let me explain the different phases in the Strategic Gamification Design framework. There are 7 phases, in which during the phases on the left you mainly ‘Think’ and the ones on the right you ‘Make’.

1. Business Objective

The business objectives are the thriving factor behind any business. They are always about money. Even in organisations, NGO’s or social entrepreneurship, money needs to be made in order to do good. So, business objectives all always about increasing revenue or decreasing cost.
Business objectives always start with: ‘How can we increase revenue / decrease costs by … ?’

2. Discover

In the discover phase all requirements are analyzed needed for the best gamification solution. These are business, market and user requirements.
First of all the challenges are determined. What obstacles stand in between the business objectives and the current situation? Second we do a player analysis. Who are the users or players? What are their primary needs and motivations? Finally we look at the behaviour of theses players. What is their current behaviour that doesn’t work and what is the behaviour they should be doing?

3. Frame

In this phase all information from the previous phase is coming together in one statement: ‘How can you motivate [players] to [target behaviour]?’ This statement is the start for creating gamification solutions.

4. Ideate

This phase holds the difficult transition from abstract thinking to concrete ideas. There are several ideation techniques which can be used such as making comparisons with existing video- or boardgames. In this phase it is crucial to find the loop, to find that core activity which can make players progress on the long-term.

5. Build

Quickly build ideas into rapid prototypes to test them with possible users. Use paper prototype techniques for not losing too much time building real ones. Do iterations if prototypes don’t seem to work.

6. Use

This is the first phase your products enters the real world. After the building phase, put your best (but also most simple) product in the market and let users interact with your product in the real setting. Listen to your users and gather feedback.

7. Improve

Use feedback to make iterations and improve your product. See if requirements from the discovery phase are still met and if necessary restart ideation.

Progressing from MVP to Alpha

Let’s see how you as a gamification designer can progress through this Strategic Gamification Design framework. When going through this framework and doing a couple of internal iterations, your MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is ready to ship to the market. Improving this MVP through user feedback and going through the full framework again, makes you ready for a Beta release. Some more internal and external iterations delivers your Alpha release.

Going through these loops will progress your solution into a better version, more fit for the market. But it will also improve the client and designer as knowledge and skills are increased. And with this, the principles of gamification design can also be found in the process to get there. As human beings (users, designers, clients) we are getting better at what we do, we are progressing. This is how you should approach any gamification solution. Build better users by building better products.

For me this what gamification design is. Finding those core activity loops and use these to let players progress. Together with clients we search for these broken loops in their products or business and we fix them.

As the subtitle of my blog being ‘Behind the scenes’ I will be giving more insight in my ideas on gamification and experience design. This site will be more than showing some of my inspiring projects and truly share my insights and beliefs towards gamification design.

 

It is because I feel this is needed. When visiting conferences, talking to others and seeing examples on the web, still too much gamification design focuses on the elements instead of the core activity. Too much is designed around business goals, instead of human beliefs.
In order to generate more great gamification examples, we should be looking at and borrow from other industries. Because that is what gamification is, a mixture of ideas and methodologies from well-known industries such as interaction design, psychology and game design.

As a graduate from the Technical University in Delft, I was taught Design Thinking; a user-centred methodology to design products people love to use. I get a lot of inspiration from Design Thinking as a methodology when designing gamification solutions. And even more because this theory has already found a place within business. Something gamification is still struggling with.

 

The complexity diagram

A while back I ran into this complexity diagram on a design thinking blog. It was ment to explain the position of design thinking, but is in my opinion also very applicable to gamification design. For me it explains what position gamification should have on the complexity ladder.

The complexity diagram (modified by me) can be split up into three categories (from less complex to more complex) object, service and system. Objects are those things, often tangible, which are the most easy to design. There is a brief explaining what the client needs and there are requirements. After designing, the design itself can be tested to those requirements. Services are harder to design, requirements are often vague and solutions tend to be intangible. Requirements are hard to test, often only on the long-term. Systems are the most complex. There are many parties involved when designing them and often solutions are ment conceptual rather than physical. A good read on systems, what they are, differences between open and close systems and how gamification can work within those systems can be found here.

An example to explain system, service and object is respectively the phone network (as well the physical component as the effect of mass communication), being able to make a call and the telephone itself. There is a dependency from one level to the other. A system often consists of multiple services and a service of multiple objects.

 

 

This complexity diagram explains today’s problem with gamified solutions very well. Gamification design is too often done at the object level. When designing gamification solutions designers tend to think in objects, resulting in solutions with game mechanics, but missing the true coherence between these elements.

Therefore I think gamification should be seen as a service or system. Gamification design is more complex than object (product) design. There are often vague requirements (“I want my users to be more environment-friendly.”) and solutions tend to be intangible.

 

We should start to think as service or system designers

So why intangible? Often gamification products are apps or software, which can be seen as tangible. Lines of code can be seen as an object. Before writing these lines of code there were specific requirements and the software can be tested to these requirements.
Yes, this is all true, but these apps and software should be seen as part of something bigger. This bigger being a service or system. And that is what we as gamification designers should design. Where object design designs a product, service or system design designs a series of interactions with a product. As gamification designers we are actually designing these interactions.

I am not saying that service or system design equals gamification design. What I am saying is that as gamification designers we need to take a system design approach. As well as with services or systems, we are designing multiple interactions which happen over time.  And designing those interactions over time is really complex.

When looking at products, a certain interaction with that product doesn’t change much over time (the ability of sitting on a chair won’t change over time). But interactions with services or systems do change over time. This means that when designing gamified solutions it is extremely important to get a good sense of what the user wants and needs when first using your product and when this user has been using your product for a while. The user will change (improved skills or knowledge) and as designers we should think how that will affect the gamified solution.

It is clear that this ‘new’ form of gamification design approach requires a user-centred approach and that we really need to be aware of the user’s change of needs over time. Plain game mechanic design is easy, but doing good gamification design is hard.