How to use game design to improve your product & other lessons from Yu-Kai-Chou
And a few insights into how it’s helped me build better financial products.
The core idea of gamification is understanding levers that move us in life and then adopting those patterns in applications, products we build & in our life. Games have known these secrets for a long time as there is no direct utility one gets out of games only joy. I delve into some of the things I’ve learned from Yu-Kai-Chou’s book ‘Octaylsis — complete gamification’.
The first thing that comes to our mind when we think about gamification is leaderboards, points, badges & levels. And it’s just natural. We’ve all enjoyed collecting cards and badges in several online and offline games we’ve played. But these are just the final manifestations of gamification.
To truly gamify a system, one needs to understand what drives and reinforces this behaviour. A lot of these are good lessons for management and product managers especially where one has to motivate people to be more productive.
Yu-Kai-Chou explains this using an Octalysis framework — a set of 8 core drives that explains how humans function. Let’s dig into the core drives.
Core Drive 1 — Epic meaning and calling
When a person believes they’re doing an action for something greater than themselves or were ‘chosen’ to take that action.
Example — People contributing to Wikipedia because they want to improve the world’s knowledge.
This is a very powerful drive, no wonder it’s used by leaders of nations and communities, asking you to put ‘the greater good’ above self.
Core Drive 2 — Development and Accomplishment
Our internal drive for making progress and overcoming challenges. Points, badges, leaderboards focus on this. But the ‘challenge’ is important. Iron-man wouldn’t be as fun if it was easy nor would climbing Everest. Or finding Pikachu in Pokemon Go. Or getting ‘Metal’ in the OneCard waitlist :)
Core Drive 3 — Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
When users are engaged in a creative process, they try to figure out new things and combinations and feel satisfied doing it. Like making a painting or starting a new project.
Now you know the reason for the n number of domains in your GoDaddy account.
Core Drive 4 — Ownership
Users are motivated because they feel they own or control something. If a employee feels ownership over a project, they want to do more to make it better. It’s why we want to accumulate wealth or collect virtual coins.
Core Drive 5 — Social Influence & relatedness
This incorporates social elements that motivate people, a feeling of kinship, companionship, competition and envy. It’s why we’re drawn closer to people or places we can relate to.
Nostalgia is a part of this. And one of the reasons why the Saregama — Caravaan is so popular. In an age of new age & high tech Alexas, it’s looking back at a simpler age, an older time.
While everyone was adding more ways to listen to songs, Saregaama looked the other way. Till Jan 20 they had sold, 2 million units of Carvaan in 2020! Probably Tik-tok is also doing something similar with their new app Resso. Hopefully it’ll finally solve for music discovery.
Core Drive 6 — Scarcity & Impatience
When we want something because it’s exclusive, rare or not immediately available. In game design language it’s called Torture breaks or Appointment Dynamics (come back in 2 hours to get your reward).
The most famous example is definitely Tinder — where one has to wait for a 24 hours to swipe again. Pitted against a problem of limited available inventory of user profiles of either sex which would have led to no profiles & thus dissatisfaction & anger at the network.
Instead here, a user waits to start swiping again. And this feature even leads to monetization!
Fig 1 — need to find a mate -> swipe -> disappointed when you run out of profiles -> disappointment when you don’t get a match
Fig 2 — need to find a mate -> swipe -> oops, you have to wait -> excitement builds up as you wait, mind time -> happiness when you swipe again
Core Drive 7 — Unpredictability & curiosity
This is the most common drive used by social and internet apps around the world. It’s the drive of being constantly engaged because we don’t know what’s next. It’s why we’re constantly refreshing our twitter feeds — a production innovation is the simple — ‘pull to refresh’ gives you a trigger for action every time you scroll down the feed.
Core Drive 8 — Loss & Avoidance
The last drive is the motivation to avoid something negative. It’s why we’re so seduced by offers ‘Stocks out in 5 mins’, Get 20% off till tonight 12 pm. We’re trying to avoid losing out on an offer. Daniel Kahneman in his epic book ‘Thinking Fast & Slow’ also outlines ‘loss avoidance’ in great detail.
Finally, the author outlines a 9th drive as sensation. It’s a hidden drive.
Hidden drive 9 — Sensation.
It’s the physical pleasure we get from taking an action. We do drugs, have sex, get messages to fulfil this hidden drive.
That’s it for now. Overall the book was very helpful to me when i was designing the waitlist program very recently at OneCard. I’ll dive into those details some other time. If you’re excited to re-imagine credit cards in India, do give me a shout out, we’re hiring!
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