My current passion is gamification. While this is often (probably most of the
time) confused with either game design (which it is not) or points and badges
(which is the worst, counterproductive kind of gamification), gamification is
designing user experiences that engage fundamental and sustainable human
motivation. Of course that is easy to
say, but hard to do effectively. That is
why so many people and companies do it poorly.
And why I am writing a book on it with my great coauthor Markus Sieber.
Gretchen Rubin (of the Happiness Project fame) posted today
about a quote from Andre Agassi’s new book and the importance of how we view
the finish line. There are three ways to
frame the finish line and it is critical to pick the one that matches how you
want your users to respond.
The finish line is the end of an important journey and the
sign of a valuable achievement. This
motivates people to put all of their effort into those last, hard steps. A good analogy for this is coming to the end
of running marathon. You see some of
these folks on TV at the end of their ropes, but they crawl to that finish
line, using every ounce of their strength, so that they can officially complete
the run. Running 26.1 miles is still
pretty impressive, but getting through those last few feet makes all the
difference.
OR:
The finish line is the sad end of a fun time. This lowers attention,
energy, and motivates people to avoid thinking about it. Vacations are a good analogy for this
category. How many times have you come
to the end of a trip to some tropical island and you find yourself unable to
print out that boarding pass for the flight home? Designing the user experience for this
situation is completely different from the marathon.
OR:
What if the finish line is the end of chapter one, but
chapter two lies just beyond? We want to
motivate the urgent optimism (gamification buzzword – sorry) to complete
chapter one, but also not burn them out like in the marathon case. You need to balance the user experience to
promote the finality of the finish line for chapter one, but also highlight the
exciting chapter two. You need to begin
the onboarding process for chapter two before the user starts the exhausted
resting phase from completing chapter one.
This balance is really important or you get a huge dropoff rate.
Does this resonate?
Let me know in the comments.
