# aka/7CITFwcyiUbb.xml.gz
# en/7CITFwcyiUbb.xml.gz
(src)="1"> I' ve talked some now about what gamification is and about what games are .
(trg)="1"> COACH :
(trg)="2"> I 'm Brent Coach .
(trg)="3"> I work over in Google Ventures .
(src)="2"> It 's time to get into the challenge of thinking like a game designer , understanding problems through the lens of what I call game thinking , the core skill for gamification .
(trg)="9"> I started working with a lot of the startups that we worked with and are all interested in game design .
(trg)="10"> And so I thought , " Oh , crap .
(trg)="11"> I need to learn about this . " And I went on the web and I looked at all the stuff that was out there in game design and there was just tons of noise .
(src)="3"> And I 'd like to start doing that by posing a fundamental question .
(trg)="12"> Eventually , I ran across some slide decks at Sebastian Deterding had posted and they were just amazing .
(src)="5"> Why would you even think to take a site or a business process and try to make it more game- like if you 're interested in some serious results and achieving some real world serious objectives .
(trg)="13"> I was impressed with both of the depth of the stuff that he worked -- looked at , all the different techniques for gamification and the depth .
(trg)="14"> He really understood why these techniques were working and when to apply them at different contexts .
(trg)="15"> So , I 'm very pleased to have him here at Google today .
(src)="6"> So , let 's look at an example and try to think about why gamification made sense for this service .
(trg)="17"> He currently is a UX designer and a researcher which is a nice combination to have .
(src)="7"> The example is Dodgeball .
(src)="8"> Dodgeball was one of the first successful smart phone applications .
(trg)="18"> He 's working on his Ph. D and studies Persuasive Design and bringing game design principles into different context .
(src)="9"> It was developed by a group of graduates from the Interdisciplinary Technology
(trg)="20"> So , hi everyone and thanks for having me .
(src)="11"> And these guys like to hang around in bars .
(trg)="21"> And just as Brandon said , I 've tried to spread myself a little through the world .
(src)="12"> So they built an app for people who like to hang around in bars .
(src)="13"> Here you see a screenshot of the web client and Dodgeball gave you this map that showed you where you were and then you could check in .
(trg)="22"> Usually , if people need somebody who played the contrarian then they ask for a grumpy German scholar which I am just sort of played the opposite to the enthuse venture capitalist [ INDlSTlNCT ] .
(src)="14"> And say , here I am .
(trg)="23"> So , that is usually my role .
(src)="16"> This bar that 's on this street .
(src)="17"> And then you can see where your friends were .
(src)="18"> Where other people were who were using the application where they had checked in .
(trg)="24"> And one of these advance , actually , last year in London in the Playful , a friend of mine said , " Well , all of your critiques and your ideas , they 're all nice and fine .
(src)="19"> And this got some notoriety .
(trg)="25"> But is there actually anything that you do like ?
(src)="20"> Started to get some pickup in New York and San Francisco and places
(src)="21"> like that .
(src)="22"> And in fact , Google bought the company .
(trg)="26"> And do you think actually it can be done well ? " And for me , that sort of what 's the starting point what I 'd like to talk about today .
(src)="23"> But , Dodgeball had a problem .
(src)="24"> The problem was that it 's a chicken and egg situation .
(trg)="27"> What exactly I believe or how exactly I think gamification ?
(src)="25"> If lots of your friends are on
(trg)="28"> Applying game design and non- game context can be done right , so to speak .
(src)="26"> Dodgeball , and there 's lots of check- ins that you can find , then there 's a great incentive for you to check- in as well .
(trg)="29"> I 'd like to do that basically in three level steps .
(src)="27"> You want to get access to all the information .
(src)="28"> You get a lot of value from seeing all of your friends and you know they will get a
(trg)="30"> First of , for those of you who are not familiar with the topic , I would just like to jump through a quick introduction .
(src)="30"> On the other hand , if you go to
(src)="31"> Dodgeball and there 's a blank map , not too much reason for you to bother checking in .
(src)="32"> So , how does the service get to critical mass ?
(trg)="32"> And then basically , for the majority of the talk , talk about three essential things that I think in the current discourse and in the current applications that I see or most definitely missing and how to address those missing ingredients , so to speak .
(src)="33"> Get above that level where there 's a not , not enough acti vity to get people involved .
(src)="34"> So , that was one of the basic challenges that Dodgeball had .
(src)="35"> After leaving Google , Dennis Crowley , one of the founders of Dodgeball started a new company , they had a fairly similar basic structure .
(trg)="33"> And in the remainder of the talk , I then would like to , say , we 'll find what does that mean for user experience designers for product managers in practice ; how to translate that into your own job practice .
(src)="36"> It involved going and checking in on a mobile client at locations that you would go to .
(src)="37"> But this time , his new company , Foursquare implemented what we would now call gamification .
(src)="38"> So think about , why would Foursquare use gamification ?
(trg)="35"> And I 'd like to start really with three little stories because in my mind or in my opinion , all of us are basically game designers or gamification designers , at least , in our childhood .
(src)="39"> What are some of the aspects of this service that we saw originally in
(trg)="36"> Now , this is not me but this is basically how mile walk -- how my walk home from school usually look like .
(trg)="37"> It was a very boring dready work .
(src)="40"> Dodgeball , that might lend themselves to a gamified approach ?
(trg)="38"> So what I did to make that walk less tedious , I sort of looked at the cracks in the pavement .
(src)="41"> There 's a number of different things that you might come up with and there is clearly no right answer .
(src)="42"> But let 's think about some of the aspects of this problem that might make gamification appropriate .
(src)="43"> The first is that Dodgeball had what we could call an engagement gap .
(trg)="39"> I imagined , " Well , let 's say I 'm not just , you know , a boy walking home to school , but let 's imagine I 'm a research scientist and I have my cover suit on and this here is really a volcano .
(src)="44"> It needed to get more people to engage within use the service and making the service fun , making the service feel more engaging and game- like is certainly a powerful way to do that .
(trg)="40"> And out of these little cracks in the pavement there is hot lava coming . " And I basically made a game out of it by deciding ,
(trg)="41"> " Okay .
(trg)="42"> I imagined there is lava and I do not -- I should not step on the little cracks in the pavement , " which turned that very boring walk home less boring and more exciting for me .
(src)="45"> The second is that , Dodgeball didn 't have a lot of variety in it .
(trg)="43"> Second story which some of you might also have a memory of them .
(src)="46"> Basically , it was check- in or don 't check- in and then again , you could get some analytics or information , as well as seeing where your friends were checking in but there weren 't too many different things to do but there weren 't too many different things to do .
(trg)="44"> They are childhood .
(trg)="45"> My parents had a pretty big lawn in the backyard of our house and it fell to me to mow the
(trg)="46"> lawn .
(src)="47"> And when things are unitary like that , where it 's either do something or don 't do something , it doesn 't tend to engage people as much , unless there 's some very direct result that they get .
(trg)="48"> So to make that daunting task less daunting to me , what I did basically was that I would slice up in my mind that lawn into smaller chunks and I would say , " Okay .
(src)="48"> If it 's go to this website , click a button buy this product , then you can see the relationship .
(trg)="49"> This is the whole lawn but I 'm going to do the third first and that one , I 'm going to do in long rows .
(trg)="50"> And then ,
(trg)="51"> I do the second third and then I 'm going to do in short rows and so on .
(src)="49"> But if it 's not that clear , if there 's some value in the exchange but it 's not as direct having options , having choices as we talked about in discussing games with meaningful choices could potentially make the experience more popular .
(trg)="52"> Slicing the whole thing up into smaller achievable goals so that the whole experience got less daunting to me .
(trg)="53"> And the third example I 'd like to give is just the playground , the sandbox that we had back in our house where our parents would usually let us play or let me and my friends play .
(src)="50"> And the next is that Dodgeball didn 't really have any progression .
(trg)="54"> And what they were thinking , it was that basically what we would do there play in the sand , play little sand castles .
(src)="51"> Check- in or not , you really didn 't get anywhere by virtue of what you d id .
(trg)="55"> But the great thing about the experience for us is that we were left alone to our own mischief .
(src)="52"> And so , checking in the hundredth time was kind of like checking in the first time , again limited the motivation of players to want to participate actively in that system .
(trg)="56"> So what we usually end up doing was doing all kinds of weird stuff with Lego or playing with weird things .
(src)="53"> The good news is that Dodgeball was a very social application .
(trg)="57"> The real enjoyment there for us was exactly the fact that our parents were not observing us .
(src)="54"> It involved relationships with your friends .
(trg)="58"> It was a free space to play around , to toy around with stuff .
(src)="55"> And social interaction is very powerfully tied to games because we love to compete against our friends .
(src)="56"> We love to collaborate , and share , and team up with our friends .
(src)="57"> We love to have status visa vis our friends and also see what our friends our doing .
(trg)="59"> And I think , as I said , in these three little stories , there are already a lot of principles that game and game design put to good use to make an experience more engaging and more fun .
(src)="58"> And so all of that is potentially quite consistent with a gamified approach .
(src)="59"> And finally , there was an opportunity with a service like Dodgeball to make the action a habit .
(trg)="60"> Like having a make- believe story wrapped around in experience or adding rules and challenges to make it more interesting ; setting goals and having feedback , like looking in the lawn and saying , " Oh yeah .
(src)="60"> If you have to think each time , oh , I better get out my phone and go and check- in , you 're not going to do it all that much .
(trg)="62"> lines , " or having a free space play -- free place to toy around with other people .
(trg)="63"> So ,
(trg)="64"> let 's move on today 's software word .
(src)="61"> If it 's habitual , if it 's just a natural thing that you do , you just kind of automatically when you go to a new bar or a club or a restaurant or even one that you 've gone to many times before , you just pull out your phone and check- in then you 're much more likely to do it .
(src)="62"> So the challenge for Dodgeball and for its successor , Foursquare was how to make this action a habit .
(trg)="65"> As you may have or may have not heard that is sort of the word , although many people don 't like the word , that is sort of the word that people have agreed on , " gamification " , describing can we not use elements out of games , elements out of videogames , use them in non- entertainment software to make them more motivating , more engaging to the users .
(src)="63"> Something again that is very well suited to games which create this environment that encourages people to come back and come back .
(trg)="66"> Just a quick couple of examples , in fitness of course , there is
(src)="64"> So , those are few of the reasons that I think gamification seemed to make sense for Foursquare , the successor service to Dodgeball .
(trg)="67"> Nike Plus , which you 'd basically see at every second UX conference now thrown around .
(trg)="68"> And it 's also an example thrown around for how to -- at points and challenges and competition to the experience of just jogging , it becomes more encouraging and engaging .
(src)="66"> The most prominent thing that it did was implemented a concept called Mayorships .
(trg)="69"> One of my personal favorite , Health Month by Buster Benson which is basically a game where you set for one month rules for your own health behavior .
(src)="67"> So , if you check in the most times , out of everyone who 's checked in at that particular location , [ sound ] you 're the Mayor on Foursquare .
(trg)="70"> Like drink no alcohol or something like that , and you earn points and badges based on whether you make it or you don 't make it .
(src)="68"> And here you see the badge , badges is another aspect of gamification in Foursquare I' ll talk about .
(src)="69"> This is the badge that you get for being the mayor of ten locations at the same time .
(src)="70"> It 's actually the super mayor badge .
(trg)="71"> Mint . com always an example that people often give , where you set yourself financial goals , like get out of debt or save up for a holiday and then it gives you feedback on how good you make on those goals .
(src)="71"> But it 's a representation of that achievement of becoming the mayor .
(trg)="72"> Sustainability .
(src)="72"> And Foursquare buil t a system that made it very easy to notify your friends on Twitter and Facebook that you 've become the mayor of a place , who you displaced as the mayor .
(trg)="73"> Nissan My Leaf just came out with the Nissan My Leaf challenge where you basically try to beat others in taking a certain a road more efficiently than your competitors , so to speak .
(src)="73"> It created this friendly competition which made the act of checking in , something more fun and something that had more of a reward to it .
(trg)="75"> This is one of the example that was just up in the gamification summit in San Francisco this Thursday .
(src)="74"> Not necessarily a monetary reward , although some venues do give incentives to people who are mayors .
(src)="75"> But a reward in that you see something and other people see that you are on top when you become the mayor of a venue .
(trg)="76"> A Club Psych , basically a website around a TV show where with challenges , with mini games , with point earns for doing stuff on the website , people would try to bring in more and to engage more with the brand .
(src)="76"> Simple but potentially valuable use of gamification .
(trg)="78"> There 's stuff like Barcode Hero where you earn points for checking into shops or writing reviews for products .
(src)="77"> And then
(src)="78"> Foursquare built a whole other set of game mechanics around this check- in process .
(trg)="79"> And finally , more close to home , even stuff like debugging .
(src)="79"> So this was a screenshot from the Foursquare page of Dennis Crowley , the CEO of
(src)="80"> Foursquare .
(src)="81"> And you see a variety of data points about what he 's done .
(trg)="80"> That is -- try to be -- turned into a game like play nicely where you earn badges and points for depending on how many and how well you submit box .
(src)="82"> And then here on the right you see the badges .
(src)="83"> Badges were an important element of what
(src)="84"> Foursquare did .
(trg)="81"> And to round it all off , in the past year , quite a couple of service vendors have popped that sort of try to offer a service platform or a kind of turn key -- turn key solution to add game design or to add game design elements through your website .
(src)="89"> It depends where you check in .
(src)="90"> If you check in at a certain place like a health club , you get a badge .
(src)="91"> If you check into the health club a certain number of times , you get another badge .
(trg)="82"> Now , if you zoom out of it and if you look at all of these from a little bit more afar , you 'll notice that the blueprint that all of them are still thinking about or that really still sets the scope of what is meant with gamification , was the initial four square .
(src)="92"> If you check in at , say a conference , like South by Southwest , there are special purpose badges you get that you can only get there .
(trg)="83"> Basically , you have an activity that you want your users to do more often .
(trg)="84"> Thus , you give points for the users if the user does that activity .
(src)="93"> So suddenly , this one act of checking in , becomes something that seems very rich and complex and nuanced for the users .
(src)="94"> It also is something that allows you to level up .
(src)="95"> So , Foursquare implemented different levels within their badges , so checking into an airport gives you one badge .
(trg)="85"> Then , you have some sort of goals or badges or trophies that the user wins for a certain amount of points or for a certain kind of activity and then you have some sort of leader boards to add an element of competition in all of that .
(src)="96"> But checking into twenty different airports say , gives you a higher level of that badge which is harder to get .
(src)="97"> And Foursquare also had an independent leveling system based on points for number of check- ins which you see here .
(src)="98"> Dennis was a super user le vel three when this screen shot was taken .
(trg)="86"> And the whole discourse is pretty much split between the one side , like Scavenger , start up here where they basically think , " Well , gamification is the future of user experience design in general and it 's basically pure mind control .
(src)="99"> And these are all examples of game mechanics built around the basic process of checking in .
(trg)="87"> We can do users -- we can make users do anything with this kind of stuff . "
(src)="100"> Did it work ?
(src)="101"> Well , Foursquare now has over twenty million users .
(trg)="88"> And mostly game designers , on the other hand , where you see a big back collision , they say ,
(src)="102"> They 've raised over $70 million in venture capital , valuing the company over $600 million and they 've successfully overcome challenges from major companies like Facebook that got into this social location marketplace .
(trg)="89"> " Well , this is really , " as Margaret Robertson from the UK says , " an inadvertent con . " This is trying to sell you that there is an easy way and slop on way to make something as motivating , as engaging , as a well- designed game of just some medley bits there .
(src)="103"> Now , Facebook Foursquare still has a long way to go and correlation isn 't causation .
(trg)="90"> So , the question that
(src)="104"> That doesn 't necessarily tell us that the game mechanics were the reason for their success .
(src)="105"> This is something that will come back to later .
(src)="106"> But it 's worth thinking about how the gamification that Foursquare implemented ties back to the challenges that they face .
(trg)="91"> I 'd like to take you through the day today , " Is there something as a secret ingredient that current gamification designers missed out or is that some sort of snake oil 2 . 0 talking ? " And as I said in the beginning , I think there are three missing ingredients right now that we have to take care of really .
(src)="107"> So , consider how gamification addressed the engagement gap , the desire for habit formation , the need for more choices and more progression , and taking advantage of the social dimension of what Four Square was doing .
(trg)="92"> The first one , going back to my first story : meaning .
(trg)="93"> How to make the experience , the activity ; connect to the user in a meaningful fashion ?
(trg)="94"> To his interest , to his passions , to his goals .
(src)="108"> That 's the kind of thought process that you need to engage in , in approaching problems through the lens of game design .
(trg)="95"> The second thing , and that connects to me to the story about the lawn mower is mastery .
(trg)="96"> How to craft an experience in such a way that the user gets the sense of progressing towards his or her goals ?