Talking about gamification has gotten me into a whole lot of “heated discussions” over the past couple of years. Sometimes it’s with the sort of ahead-of-the-curve professionals who talk at length about the intricate game-play of Call of Duty versus the simple pleasures of Angry Birds; sometimes it’s with more sceptical types who balk at buzzwords and think digital culture is an oxymoron; sometimes it’s with both at the same time.
50. Make the serious trivial?
No.
Become game developers.
No.
Learn from principles?
Yes.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56. Understand your customer,
what makes them tick
Look at offline behaviour to develop
an online experience
You know we want to achieve,
but what does the visitor want
Let’s be challenging, not daunting
Capture unique metrics
58.
Understand what constitutes a ‘win’
Understand the user’s motivation
Design for the emotional user
Scalable, meaningful rewards
Don’t re-invent the wheel
Every interaction interesting
59.
How does this fit with my brand objectives?
Is it appropriate for my content?
Will it compromise my content?
How can I measure success?
Hinweis der Redaktion
Thanks
Introduction
Olympics
Work hard develop customers
PPC, SEM, Online adverts, viral
They do come
Proud of 1million visitors
Proud of 50K a month
But then some asks, “How long do they stay?”
“Do they come back”
And we want them to stay
We worked hard to keep them
But they just keep leaving
So how can we make them stay?
How do we maintain their interest?
How do we keep them engaged
GAMIFICATION
As an expression, I don’t like it.
Trivialises good practice
Undervalues great UX
It gives the wrong impression.
Not digital – works across all activities
Not new – applying game mechanics to mundane tasks for ever – parents
Not turning data into tetris
Happy Hour, My favorite – referred to as appointment dynamics.
(An incetivised event related to interaction that occurs at a specific time)
These are examples of successful gamification.
[5 minutes]
But what is the process of gamification?
Incentives, success and rewards drive behaviour
Above all,
We need to understand our customers – really understand them.
What makes them tick?
What are their interests? Behaviours?
Design an online experience that keeps them engaged.
It’s two-way relationship – we want them to listen to our stories, while we need to keep them interested.
Why should we use these techniques? Why does it work?
I don’t like gamification as it sounds like a technology
It is not
It is based on psychology, behaviour, our basic instincts
We’ve being doing this for years, someone has just created a fancy new name.
We all like challenges
Following the Olympics – everyone is out jogging, cycling, or swimming and try to beat their BPs
We like competition
We want to be the best
You’ll always run faster in a race than alone
Ultimately, we like winning, whether it’s playing trivial pursuits, driving sales or competing academically.
We want to be the best, it’s our natural instinct.
In healthcare though, more important than winning can be competing
I live my life by lists, constantly setting goals and then ticking them off – sense of achievement
Likewise when online, I want to feel and know I am making progress
Rewards & recognition can enhance these emotions
As we saw from earlier examples, it can be applied to even the most mundane tasks; shopping, flying, buying a cup of coffee
So let’s think about our offline behaviour, when developing an online experience.
[10 minutes]
Sounds great, but how do we do this?
Goals don’t have to be big, they can be small
Goals can be progressive
When I used to play Mario I would have been bored well before I reached the very end
But every level, I completed another goal.
Weight watchers is the perfect example of this. They make dieting not just bearable, but rewarding.
Think about your online experience, think about how you can break it up into manageable chunks
Think about how you can set long & short term goals
But let’s not go crazy, they need to be relevant to the user (not always us).
We created the getting better app for Janssen and our Schizophrenia24x7 activity.
The campaign receives 50K visitors per month, with 20% of users completing a campaign objective
Patients set their own goals, across different areas of their lives ie relationships, activities, looking good.
They are small, progressive achievable goals.
And they can achieve them multiple times.
As they achieve their goals, the app encourages them to set further goals in other areas of their life.
Once they have set their goals, the service then helps them to success with tips and advice.
If they complete the goals, they are more likely to stay engaged.
To heighten the emotions and engagement, we reward goals.
The room represents their progress and with each goal users are rewarded with the opportunity to personalise it.
And with that more opportunities to set goals.
No one likes to waste their time.
We want to feel we are making progress.
When I tick things off, it makes me feel good, but it is only a simple indicator
Who would have thought LinkedIn uses gamification?
No one likes filling in forms, but creating a profile on linkedIn isn’t so bad
- I know you have the motivation of employment, but still.
LinkedIn uses a very simple progress bar
I updated my profile recently, and I really wanted a 100%
I knew the extra 10% was irrelevant, and would probably take me an hour – but I wanted to be complete.
They are very smart though. If I had to do 55%, I probably wouldn’t bother…
Which is why LinkedIn breakdown 55% into more manageable modules – are smaller, more achievable goals.
So, LinkedIn use progression, but they also use competition
In this instance reminding Kate that her colleague has done 100%.
So after goals, progression we have competition.
We work in a heavily regulated industry, we can’t hand-out cash prizes.
But look at LinkedIn, we can still have competition.
We just need to know the customer, understand their motivation
And develop the right competition structure for them.
Encourage repeat users - we all want to be the best. We want recognition.
It can become a great vehicle to build a community.
We created Ward Invaders for Hospital Specialists treating Hospital Infections
It was not right for the entire target audience, but for about 15% it worked perfectly.
Which is why we have a marketing mix.
This got into Medical schools and quickly became viral as it was shared around colleges.
A patient case was introduced, and then the participant has to select an appropriate treatment.
With the right treatment the game was easy.
With the wrong treatment, the patient’s health detoriated quickly.
I’m really good at space invaders, but I’m not a hospital specialist, I could’t complete this game.
Drs could compete through a simple leader board and email invitations.
Collaboration is another method to drive engagement.
People want to belong.
They enjoy working in a team to solve a problem.
One of my favourite, and smartest things online at the moment is stackoverflow.
I hate yahoo answers, all the answers are rubbish.
In stackoverflow, the community works together to solve problems and answer questions – a bit like Yahoo.
They then rate answers & users, and ultimately curate their own community.
So when I ask a question, I don’t get the first answer, I don’t get the most visited, I get the best.
The community working together to drive a better experience.
What could this mean in healthcare?
Drive HCP networks, with far better, more collaborative user experiences.
Status based rewards – let’s create the next KOLs
Let’s offer transparency and show credibility.
I would have done anything for a blue peter badge.
And that’s interesting, because rewards don’t have to be shiny prizes, or money.
Often when people offer cash prizes, they have loads of visitors.
And then they leave, which is the problem we are trying to address.
eBay is a brilliant example of relevant and worthwhile rewards.
On eBay users are rewarded with different coloured stars as they get more positive reviews.
I am not active on eBay, but my brother-in-law is works hard to get that red star for 1000 +ve ratings.
Again, you wouldn’t associate gamification with eBay.
But if they can use the principles, then so can we in healthcare.
[15 minutes]
We aren’t reinventing the wheel, as I said these are fundamental principles.
So who is doing what, and what can we learn.
I am going to show two shining examples
1 in healthcare, 1 outside…
It is pick-up and play.
Immediately rewarding.
It is challenging without being daunting.
The online experience is completely aligned to the offline.
Ultimatley, it makes running a more fun, engaging experience.
It’s easy for Nike they are in consumer, with massive budgets and limited regulations.
But as we’ve seen from eBay and LinkedIn, we can apply the principles to brilliant effect.
Support patient well-being – there is a lot of discussion of around the pill.
Support patient adherence – recording their compliance & illustrating the impact,
Introduce community support to motivate and empower
Share goals, share successes and encourage one another
Connects users
In the community area each square represents a story.
Users can connect with each other and comment on their stories
Quizzes and challenges
There are quizzes, challenges and other tasks for users to carry out as individuals…
Tasks for the community
…As well as tasks that bring together the whole community
It’s sympathetic to the target audience, with design and a UI aligned to their tastes
In this instance, they wanted support and not competition.
They want to be able to share their stories in a comfortable environment.
Similar to dating sites the alogrithim ensures like minded users are grouped.
It’s a closed community. This might limit growth, but it ensure loyal users.
With loyal users, we have repeat visitors, and again we maintain our user base.
[20 minutes]
I’ve demonstrated throughout what this means to healthcare, but to summarise.
It doesn’t mean we turn complex clinical data into games.
It doesn’t mean we trivialise patient conditions.
It doesn’t mean you all need to become game developers.
It means we look at the ideas & concepts that make all games engaging
And we take the best bits.
We create more engaging experiences.
We create a more active community.
We deliver better ROI.
At the beginning I spoke about driving traffic
Then I discussed how we might retain that traffic.
How can we create a more engaging experience.
We can empower users to progress
Encourage collaboration
And reward success
They we can consider how we drive traffic.
We can be more considered, more targetted.
We can drive the target audience, that we know will be engaged because we have created an experience bespoke to their behaviour.
But there will always be one….
So Gamification Summary.
We are not all going to go and gamify.
We are going to consider some basic principles that might make a big difference.
Understand your customer and what makes them tick – not just their interest in a particular therapy area – but beyond that. We saw with sistermatch, an experience divorced from diabetes but relevant to the users – a patch work quilt
Think about how your users behave offline. Think about how you might approach this activity without the internet. And try and align their desired offline experience, with the online experience we create.
Our goals might not always be aligned to the customer goals. We need to consider their goals to maintain interest.
And let’s not intimidate users, we saw how linkedIn encourages users along, breaking down large tasks into manageable chunks
And let’s capture useful insight
How not to do it.
First, it is not always possible. If your content doesn’t support these priniciples. Don’t force it.The experience will feel contrived.
- User’s need genuine engagement, without it they will still leave.
Make sure activity is aligned to your brand strategy.You could have lots of visitors, and they could all be engaged.But if it is not supporting your brand, then we are just making computer games.
Written by Gabe Zicherman who wrote Insert joke about lazy researchers here? :D
But I thought were really good to finish with.
Understand what constitutes a ‘win’
Understand what constitutes a ‘win’ for your user but also for your content/business.
- What is it that a user achieves by succeeding within the realms of your content? Is this in line with their overall motivations? Is it a meaningful win for them that they can take away from your content or just a fabrication that exists inside the world of the content
What are you hoping to gain out of engaging them in this way
How does this fir with your business objectives always have in mind how every interaction with a user is contributing towards the overall campaign plan
What metrics can you use to track this
Be realistic in your goals
Understand the user’s intrinsic motivation
Why are they here? Why have they come to your content or why should they come to your content?
What are they looking for and how can you help them?
This ties in with what constitutes a win for the user. By understanding their motivations you can better create an environment in which a ‘win’ within your content is directly linked to achieving a user’s intrinsic goals
Design for the emotional user not the rational user
This doesn’t mean that we should design frameworks that are irrational and counter-productive (as I said before a clear system of logic and rules is crucial)
However, the experience should communicate with the emotional user. After all, we’re not ruled by rationality. Problems like adherence wouldn’t exist if we were – it would simply make sense that we should keep on with our treatment programme. Thus we should appeal to users’ desires and fears so as to engage them fully.
Develop Scalable, meaningful rewards
Rewards that support and compliment elements of progression and achievement rather than distracting and driving all-together.
Don’t re-invent the wheel in terms of concept or technology
Innovation isn’t always about using something new, in fact often it’s about using something old in an intelligent way
A concept that a user is familiar with, that a user can plug into quickly, can be a concept that allows a user to engage more quickly
This goes for technology too. Consider the Nike+ system – it uses technologies that runners already have (ipod – lots of runners listen to music whilst training, facebook, running tracking sites)
Make every interaction interesting
Doesn’t necessarily mean that we trivialise, or force concepts where they are not appropriate to our needs or objectives
But consider that many of the interactions a user experiences daily are void of positive reinforcement, surprise/delight and meaningful sociability.
[25 minutes]
Before questions for me, I have some questions for you.