According to a biological research done by Spinka, Newberry and Bekoff in 2001, young mammals play in order to survive. Although this play seems purposeless, it is not. It has a function. Play develops animals to flexible kinematic and emotional responses to unexpected events in the (near) future. Through play these mammals ‘train’ to recover emotionally from unexpected stressful situations.

As adult human beings, we seem to have forgotten this purpose of play.

This form of play is increasingly important and can be very valuable for us human beings when confronted with emotions. Emotions drive behavior, but not always the best kind. People tend to fight, flight or freeze when confronted with an unexpected event. Their instincts tells them what to do. Without thinking, an action is triggered because of that emotion. Yes, your instinct might save you in a certain situation. Think about getting out of the house as quick as you can, when the place is on fire.

But in many other cases, especially the ones in which large groups need to reach safety, our first response isn’t the best one. Therefore we design safety protocols. These protocols ensure large groups of people reach safety when for instance a company building is on fire. But these protocols are designed groups of people and may not appeal to your individual fight or flight instinct.

So, how do we make people adopt this behavior? We let them play.

Gamification

Through the use of games or gamification we can educate and train people in a playful manner. When playing games words like open mindset, creative, fun, unpredictable, interactive and social come to mind. Living by these words as an attitude can make you more resilient towards the future, towards unexpected events. According to Herminia Ibarra, when we adopt a playful attitude we’re more open to a diverse set of possibilities. Training people for this playful attitude, might result in a more creative and innovative workforce.

Virtual Reality

If you want to train people specifically for unexpected events in which emotion plays a big role, you create an experience in which you mimic this emotional trigger. Think of a game in which employees need to act after discovering a fire in one of the companies chemical plants. How do you react? What will you do? Do you flight, fight or do you do something else?

Knowing how you would react in such an emotionally intense situation requires feeling that emotion. A current technological innovation in order to experience such an emotion is Virtual Reality (VR). By putting on a VR headset you are immersed in another environment. As virtual reality is never the real reality, using 360˚ video can get you truly close to the real deal and therefore create very realistic emotional triggers. Experiences from the world of movies can be used, but with a big difference. Instead of the director deciding where to look, you are the director of your own experience.

A new immersive paradigm

Virtual Reality is said to be the ultimate empathy machines, but only under the right circumstances. When using 360˚ video for example, simply copying techniques from the movie industry is not going to help. Looking at a screen (your television) or not even seeing the screen (in VR) are two extremely different ways of experiencing emotions. By displaying video on a screen the director can decide where you should be looking at. Is it a wide angle shot, showing the entire battle field, or a close up, looking at the wrinkled face of Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Those differences don’t exist in VR. When wearing a VR headset, you as a viewer decide where to look. You are there. This requires a new immersive paradigm.

And “viewer” isn’t the best term here. If you are a viewer on that battlefield, and the only thing you can do is looking around, it won’t feel that you are really there. You are just a viewer. In this new immersive paradigm, the viewer becomes the player. To be able to fully experience what you are seeing, you need to be able to act. As a player, you should be able to make choices. Therefore you are one of them. This requires a new and very close collaboration between script writers, directors and game designers.

Training through emotion

This combination of gaming and virtual reality can be used to train for emotionally intense unexpected sitautions. By combining lessons learned from biology, psychology, the movie industry and game design we can create immersive playful training solutions in which emotion is used as a basis for adopting behavior change.

Because emotion often dictates our behavior, we respond in seconds. We tend to fight or flight. But very often, this instinctive behavior is not the best behavior for all parties involved. Taking the nearest exit during a fire might be a good choice, but isn’t when taking that exit blocks the entrance of the emergency services. Through playful VR training, we can let people adopt new behavior after a certain emotional response. Through thinking first, we can let people experience the consequences of a set of choices. After enough hours of training, a new thoughtful response is created.

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.

“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.

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.

I have had fantastic years in which I designed awesome interactions. I made clients happy and made myself happy, but always wanted that extra bit more. I didn’t just want to inform people (through good interaction design), I wanted to change them. Change them for the (greater) good.

“Play is an interaction between players ignited by a to be designed product or service. I want to design that interaction.”

If you look at sports, people tend to be very passionate. Might be for the beneficial friendships, might be for staying health or it might be about winning. But this passion is something very interesting, this passion can drive people and change them eventually.

If you look into the digital world and search for passion, you’ll find the perfect marriage in video games. Players get lost in playing videogames, they can be extremely passionate and end up spending many hours playing. This passion is interesting, wouldn’t it be great if you could use this passion to drive other goals than playing video games?

With this idea in mind, I transformed Creative Seeds into The Playful Company. A one-person business for which I design, consult, facilitate and speak about changing people’s behavior through digital services by the use of game experiences.

This change has of course been gradually since I have been consulting companies for a few years already on gamification. But I felt these activities should be done via a company which reflects these activities.

In the most of my projects, play has taken an important role. For me play is a certain form of interaction between the player (or consumer, user, etc.) and the to be designed product or service or the interaction between players ignited by a to be deigned product or service. I want to design that interaction.

Gamification or user experience design is never about designing the product you are working on. It is always about designing the interaction you spark with that product. It is designing for (multiple) touchpoints with that product instead of merely designing one touchpoint, which is the moment of purchase.

I believe that play is important in everything we do. Of course in sports, but also in work in socialising and in learning. Play can set the right attitude in which players get passionate and do what they think is important.

If are your inspired, please contact me!

Gamification of education happened to be the topic of my talk on the second day. In 20 minutes I explained about the core principles of motivation, which are also embedded in succesful games. In order to intrinsically motivate students, they should feel autonomous, can truly master what they learn and feel related to what they learn. Slides of my talk are at the bottom.

A thing I did notice from all talks is the big focus on money, on the return of investments of applying gamification. From my perspective money should not be first, but people should. Gamification is always about empowering users, about creating solutions which truly motivate people and can therefore change behaviours. Money will follow.

Awesome that gamification is life and kicking in Spain, so much more than here in The Netherlands. Even awesome to have met some of the fellow gamification gurus, such as Kevin Werbach (@kwerb), Mario Herger (@mherger), Victor Manrique (@VictorManriqueY) and Andrzej Marczewski (@daverage). It would be great seeing them again on such a great conference here in The Netherlands.

Slides

Fun is just another word for learning

Not knowing why you are learning is not really motivating. As kids learning math was not fun, because you did not have any context. Once you know why you are learning something, or even better if you can apply what you learn directly, learning is far more motivating. And when the difficulty level is right, learning even becomes fun.

Raph Koster states that fun is just another word for learning. And apparently this is true, but only under two conditions. One, that what you are learning feels useful, and two, that what you are learning can be applied within a foreseeable time frame. In the math example, learning did not feel useful in the first place and secondly it could not be applied within a foreseeable time frame. You had to wait for your career.

Context and work

This lack of motivation is not only present in the classroom, but also on the work floor. According to Robert Kaplan and David Norton, authors of Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operationsfor Competitive Advantage, “…only 7% of employees fully understand their company’s mission and what is expected from them in order to help achieve this mission.” Again here, there is no context and therefore a lack of motivation to work. If you had a far better understanding of the goals of the company you are working for, wouldn’t it be more challenging? You would know why you are doing things instead of just doing things because you’ve been told to do those things.

We need context

So apparently one of the things we need in order to be motivated is context. We need to know why we are doing something. Video games do provide this context and this is therefore one of the reasons why video games are very popular. Games provide a context since there are clear goals you need to fulfill.

But the funny thing is, if we look at work and video games, we can somehow see the same ingredients. This is mostly the case within project based organizations. Most companies work in a project organized manner, so these similarities are applicable for most companies. In video games there are scores, in work there is salary. In games there are levels which can be translated into job titles. Or the guild leader in an RPG can be compared with the project manager.

But then if the ingredients are roughly the same, why are people willing to pay to play games and why do we need to pay people to work? Well basically, because work is a badly designed game. At work, company and individual goals are often not clear. There is a lack of feedback on the things you do. There is often a mismatch between your capabilities and your work. And in work you do not always have the feeling of being in control. Games do have these features.

Guild leader

World of Warcraft has been used in many of these blogs as an example of a tremendously successful game. WOW is a game that possesses the features described above. So WOW has roughly the same ingredients as work, but is designed from a game design perspective. WOW has a clear set of overall goals (completing levels) and individual goals (your part in completing a level). There is a lot of feedback on your actions. Feedback from the game in points or reputation items. But also feedback from fellow players. The skills required to conquer challenges is in balance. Skills needed at the beginning of the game are basic, since challenges are easy. But since challenges are getting more difficult, skills need to grow as well. And finally you have the feeling of being in control. Practice could get you further in the game.

Then the question is, if the ingredients of a game like World of Warcraft are roughly the same as the ingredients in project based organizations, could the skills learned from playing games be used in a work environment?

IBM did a study (Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders) into whether the principles of leadership in a MMORPG could be applied to the current work environment. Their findings were very interesting. In these games leadership plays of course an important role and follows a certain set of rules.

Leadership in these games is temporary. Leadership could last for months, but mostly leadership is being held just for days and sometimes even minutes.

• Leadership is chosen on the basis of experience suited for a task. If the next task requires other qualities of a leader, a new leader is chosen specifically for this new task.
• The skills and competence of the guild leader and other members is very transparent. Everybody knows what the experience of a member is and can give members certain roles according to these experiences.
• There is a lot of trust because of an open incentive system. Everybody knows at all times who is getting what out of completing a mission. Imagine knowing the exact salary of all your colleagues.
• And finally, failure is accepted. Risk taking is part of the job of being a guild leader and the cost of failure is seen as risk management.

Applying these principles in real work situations is a long process. But companies are already looking at resumes and giving guild leaders an advantage when applying for jobs. So this future might actually be closer than we think.

Gamification

This post is about applying game principles to real life situations, such as schools or the work floor. Applying these principles correctly could increase the context in where people are operating. The context in which kids are learning and employees are working. Because it would be great if our children would not have to ask why they are learning these math equations, but that they already know why.

The YouTube video of my talk can be viewed here as well as the Skype interview I had with one of the organizers of the conference.

 
Workshop ‘Games in het onderwijs’ voor het ‘Leren van de Toekomst‘ project
29 augustus 2012
Vergelijkbaar met de Summerschool workshop, alleen zal deze workshop wat praktischer van aard zijn. Hoe kun je nu al games en game technieken inzetten in het onderwijs en wat zijn de voordelen?

 
Presentatie over ‘Persuasive design & gamification’ tijdens de LinuxDays in Praag.
20 oktober 2012
De LinuxDays in de hoofdstad van Tsjechië is een meerdaags evenement waarbij programmeurs en andere geïnteresseerden samenkomen om te leren over nieuwe ontwikkelingen. Ook is er een Future Media Track opgezet, waar sprekers het gaan hebben over de nieuwe mogelijkheden die internet ons biedt. Gamification is er daar ook een van en dit thema mag ik daar belichten. Hoe zet je op een juiste manier gamification in voor je website of online product? En wat heeft persuasive design hier mee te maken?

 
Presentatie tijdens TEDxUHasselt over gamification en organisaties
10 november 2012
Ik ben gevraagd om voor de TEDx variant van de Universiteit in Hasselt een korte presentatie te geven over mijn visie op gamification in organisaties. Hoe kun je de motiverende elementen van gaming toepassen in de bedrijfscontext? Misschien voor klanten om je product beter te verkopen? Of intern om je medewerkers gemotiveerd te krijgen? Maar wat als je een organisatie zelf gaat zien als een game? Hoe zou dat eruit zien?

 
Verder zijn er nog twee hele interessante projecten die binnenkort gaan lopen. Beide projecten gaan over meerdaagse workshops die ik ga verzorgen, waarbij deelnemers games gaan ontwikkelen voor hun eigen vakgebied. Daarover later meer!