8 Core Value from Gamification Framework You Could Use to Drive Users
Have you ever wonder why some of us could invest a substantial amount of time on certain apps, websites, or games? What is it that keeps them engage and manage to achieve such retention? Is there any insight that you could learn from this so that it could help you deliver such an experience in your next project? Here are some highlights from the book Gamification & Behavioral Design by Yu-kai Chou that will help us uncover these questions, and mapping the core value that drives our behaviours. Enjoy :)
“Gamification, or the act of making something game-like, is certainly not something new. Throughout history, humans have tried to make existing tasks more intriguing, motivating, and even “fun.”
Excerpt From: Yu-kai Chou. “Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards.”
The objective of gamification is to derive fun and engaging elements found typically in games and thoughtfully applying them. It is driven by Human-Focused Design optimizes for human motivation in a system. As we know, we have feelings, ambitions, insecurities and reason for whether or not we want to do certain things. By understanding this and it lays as one of the foundations for designing the overall system as well as the functionality. In his book Actionable Gamification, Yu-kai Chou mapped out 8 core value that make games engaging. These core drives us and motivates us in variety of decisions and activities.
The 8 core values
1. Epic Meaning & Calling
Epic meaning and calling are when a person believes they are doing something greater than themselves such as a noble cause.
2. Development & Accomplishment
Derive from our internal drive for making progress, achieving mastery, and overcome a challenge. It is often associated with trophies, badges, points, and leaderboards.
3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
It is when users are engaged in a creative process where they could figure new things out and try different combinations. This enables users to express their creativity and receive feedback.
4. Ownership & Possession
These value could prompt from the feeling of ownership or control over something. Desire to accumulate wealth, and customizing would bring a sense of ownership.
5. Social Influence & Relatedness
It incorporates social elements such as acceptance, feedback, companionship, competition, or even envy for example when your friend obtain some skill or owns something remarkable and you become driven to attain the same thing.
6. Scarcity & Impatience
Wanting something that is rare, exclusive, or hardly available. Delay gratification might increase its value to users and motivate them furthermore.
7. Unpredictability & Curiosity
Uncertainty, something does not fall into your regular pattern, could kicks in and makes you pay attention to it. These could be found in the lottery program, where the outcomes are unpredictable.
8. Loss & Avoidance
Motivation to avoid something negative or lost of an opportunity is a strong utilization factor in this core value. It appears in a countdown or special offer with a limited time.
How to use Octalisys to analyses the strengths & weaknesses of products.
First, by breakdown each feature or services from your product and assign it to related core value you will mapping out its motivational strength and see the overall Octalysis score performance. This result will bring you to the strengths & weaknesses of the product. You could utilize the map for further strategize product development.
Here’s an example when applying the Octalysis framework to Facebook
By breaking down all the motivations and metrics, it could helping you create a rich gamified experience. Furthermore this framework also suitable for you to assess user experience throughout their phases and by breaking this down you able to prioritize which experience you want user to feel, for example there are 4 user journey and you want to focus on what kind of motivational trait that you need to incoporate in order to build the desirable experience
To gain the most out of it, it is important to intergrate Octalysis strategy with an understanding of business metrics, the users, and the desired actions to fulfills its objective.
