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Gamification Journey of FinneyCanHelp

What has been my life’s journey through Gamification and what interesting things did I see or do?

There’s a podcast episode for that. With Erik van Mechelen, an awesome writer that I met through Octalysis Prime, we explore this.

Below, I expand on this podcast episode which let’s me share links and lets me expand on some items. It even has juicy nuggets of knowledge I didn’t mention! However, there’s no substitute for listening to the podcast.

How Did Gamification Come To Me?

I grew up knowing that life’s a hardcore serious heck-of-a-game. With that mindset, I grew up with video games, programming computers, sports, psychology, and spiritual exploration. Combined all together, I decided to actualize my potential, level up in life, and to help make paradise on earth. Maximizing human flourishing is the goal. This tweet sums it up nicely:

First Exposure To Gamification

Some teachers are shining stars. One of them was a seventh grade teacher of mine who taught computers on the side. I’ll never forget her. She did it for free, bless her. It was a learn at your own pace and earn the right to unlock the next challenge approach. It was a level up and unlock strategy. In Octalysis, we would say she combined Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience (CD6) with Core Drive 2: Development and Achievement (CD2). It was my first taste of Gamification before Gamification was even a thing.

What’s the Word, I’m Looking For?

So, I had a mission, goals, steps to take, and wanted to ensure that I positively reinforced myself by applying behavioral psychology. That’s quite a mouthful. What would it look like if I combined all that together? The answer was Gamification.

Ah hah! That's it!

Ah-hah!

Inspirational Gamification Videos

In late 2012 / early 2013, I saw the famous Ted Talk by Jane McGonigal, The Game That Can Give You 10 Extra Years Of Life [SuperBetter]. Although this didn’t give me the word Gamification, it showed others are out there who believe in using the power of game design and behavioral psychology to make life richer and more humane. I still needed to find that google-able word.

“Keep searching! C’mon! Get creative!”, I told myself. It was quite a challenge! Finally, I found Goals Become Games: Gamification for High Achievers, presented by Jon Guerra at GSummit, a Gamification conference. I had found my word and a new world. Although not perfect, Gamification was a term we all could easily google.

All of this searching also led me to a fun and inspiring Jesse Schell video from DICE 2010 about integrating technology and game design into your daily life. It was extreme, crazy, and fun. Craziness aside, I knew that Gamification was google-able and could tie together some fantastic people and their ideas!

Maximizing human flourishing is the goal.

Learn, Learn, Learn 

Looking for the fantastic people, I found and took a free Coursera Gamification course by Kevin Werbach. I also read many of Jon Guerra’s Living for Improvement blog posts since I was strongly interested in applying Gamification to my personal life.

Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis

Googling more like crazy for Gamification, I found Yu-kai Chou’s awesome Octalysis videos and TEDx talk, Gamification to improve our world. “Here’s a person who truly gets it!”, I said. I memorized the 8 Core Drives of Octalysis, co-founded an Octalysis Explorers group on Facebook and went to GSummit 2014 where I had the honor of meeting Yu-kai Chou in person. I even got to go to Yu-kai’s awesome and exclusive three day Octalysis workshop.

Nir Eyal’s Hook Model

From a product perspective, I also got to watch a fantastic presentation by Nir Eyal about the Hook Model. Although I also started a Facebook group called Hook Model, it has grown inactive. As I highlight in Communities in Nonsocial Mobile Apps, you have to dedicate multiple people and continuous marketing resources to support an online community.

Gamification Books

At the authors’ request and to my delight, I was able to read and provide feedback on Gamification and Product Design books. Often it was before the material was even out to the general public! These great books are:

All the Way

Books are great. However, there’s a deeper self-improvement experience called Octalysis Prime which applies Octalysis to your life. Yu-kai Chou kicked off the kick-starter and I joined right away:

Apply, Apply, Apply Gamification At Work

Extreme Programming Software Development Methodology

Extreme Programming (XP) is a Software Development Methodology. The requirements you implement have story points associated with them. When a feature is done, you’ve earned those points. You count them up every week or two and see how many points you got. Since XP supports fundamental values and is fun, I have introduced and championed it in several companies. Where I currently work at CARFAX, our software development roots are in XP.

ZTEP – Zombie Technology Elimination Project

At CARFAX on a side project that I created and managed, ZTEP – the Zombie Technology Elimination Project had a strong story narrative. In other words, it was strong in Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling (CD1). If you killed a zombie, you unlocked some zombie narrative. Getting rid of a certain type of technology meant that you would unlock a different kind of narrative. It was very creative. Credit goes to the fantastic author, Sean R. Frazier. There’s more about ZTEP in my old blog, tagged as ZombieTechnologyEliminationProject.

Technology Mentor Program

The mission of the Technology Mentor Program (TMP) was to share technology and agile knowledge in a fun way. People from multiple departments played / participated. Although we had PBLs (Points, Badges, and a group level Leaderboard), we also had strong social support. For one department, we would personally shake the hand of the person who had either shared or received an extraordinary amount of knowledge. They had leveled up. There’s more about TMP in my old blog, tagged as Mentor Program.

Instructor and Student Mentor Heroes

Mentor Heroes (Names Blurred Out)

Remember Me? Name / Face Matching Game

I didn’t mention it in the podcast, but there’s a side project at work that I am product managing called the “Remember Me?” app. It’s a name / face matching game aka training app. The app presents a face and a name. It then asks you if it’s lying. You can tap Yes or No and it will let you know if you were right or wrong. If you’re wrong, it tells you the correct name. Although still in the early stages, it holds a lot of promise and there’s plenty of excitement from people across the departments!

Apply, Apply, Apply Gamification To My Personal Life

On to the personal stuff! My personal life revolves around meditating and getting things done.

Meditation

A specific example of Gamification applied to my life involves my son’s interest in meditation. We started with a Mindful Minecraft Meditation technique and then later used Headspace which has cartoons and more explicit Gamification techniques. There’s more about Headspace in the blog post Anxiety? How Does One Start To Meditate? As a side note, my go-to for suggesting a meditation app is 10% Happier even though both apps are very good.

For my daily tasks and activities, I use the Gamified Habitica and Argus respectively. Both have a strong social aspect. For the Gamification part, you have to look deeper in Argus to see the Gamification than you do Habitica.

Habitica

Habitica is explicitly a Gamified to-do app with support for teams aka a party. You can have a party of players defeating monsters by those same people just getting their own tasks done. There’s accountability in that if you don’t get your daily routine tasks done, the whole party suffers damage from the monsters! There are multiple classes (roles) that you can adopt if you wish such as healer, warrior, rogue, or mage. For example, you can cast spells that help the whole party if you’re a mage (wizard).

Book glowing as if magical

Magic Book

Habitica deserves its own article that uncovers the social and creative aspects of the to-do list game. Unfortunately, I don’t see a great one out there. While keeping in mind that there is a strong social aspect if done right, I recommend going to the Habitica section of the following article Why You Get More Done When You Gamify Your Life to learn a little more about Habitica.

Argus

Argus is a dashboard on your life. It’s tied into a social network and has a news feed.

Argus Dashboard showing meditation and other items with each item in a six figured shape

Argus Dashboard

Since there is so much to share about Argus alone, I wrote Argus and Octalysis to help keep this post short enough.

CARROT To Do App

It should be noted that I used to use the CARROT To Do app daily. It’s a well done and funny Gamified to-do app. I cover how impressed I am with their marketing in CARROT iPhone App Video Marketing Done Right. However, CARROT lacks the social features which are so much more enjoyable.

Shift to FinneyCanHelp

How did FinneyCanHelp come about? In every online account I approached, Finney was taken. So, how to solve the unique identifier problem? After some deep introspection and reflecting on my calling to help make paradise on earth, I initially came up with “LoveFinney.” The idea was to express the idea of unconditional love. I got strong feedback that LoveFinney was a horrible idea. Since love has many meanings, I needed another word.

In Star Trek The Original Series’ episode The City on the Edge of Forever, there’s a scene where Captain Kirk said the words “Let me help” is recommended over anything else. “Let me help” is even better than “I love you.” So, I went with FinneyCanHelp. As a result, I am FinneyCanHelp on Twitter and have this blog of FinneyCanHelp.com.

Final Tips for People Who’ve Gone Past The Beginning Parts of Learning About Gamification

If you’re just starting out, I would say learn and apply. As you advance, form allies with others and write what you learn. I’ve formed allies by co-creating communities and joining other key ones such as Octalysis Prime.

Definitely write about what you have learned. When you write, the ideas will crystalize in your mind. You can get synergy between the different concepts. It lets you later search your own content for old ideas which can help make new ideas.

As soon as you can, get your stuff out there for all to see. Publish. People will come to you with their ideas too. Go all out.

Summary

As someone said to me at a Gamification conference, Gamification is a tool to use. It’s not the whole thing. A wise person named Yu-kai Chou said Gamification is Human-Focused Design. Although Gamification is not the whole thing, designing everything in life with humans in mind is still quite a bit!

We’re a social species that need each other. The human race is an extended human family. If each of us use our talents to their fullest and design experiences that support human flourishing, we can truly make paradise on earth.

Argus and Octalysis

Argus is powerful and extremely popular. As mentioned in a section of the Communities in Nonsocial Mobile Apps blog post, Argus is a dashboard on your life. Since I look at many things in life through an Octalysis lens, I will be referring to the Octalysis Core Drives here.

Argus Dashboard showing meditation and other items with each item in a six figured shape

Argus Dashboard

Argus is tied into a social network and has a news feed. An example will serve best here. When I get done meditating, I can share how long I meditated and associate an image with it. A six sided “meditation” indicator shows on the dashboard and into a news feed similar to Twitter. The kinds of things I can share are food, cups of coffee or tea, sleep patterns, almost any activity you can think of, and it even syncs with my Fitbit to get the steps.

Since we can see each other’s posts in the feed, there’s a strong people aspect to it. We can share messages, images, and give each others’ posts “likes.” We personally can hold each other accountable, learn from each other, or even just ask how it’s going.

Argus News Feed

Sometimes when a person has not had much sleep and if they share their sleep data, we can say that we hope everything is going ok. There are some wonderful and supportive people in Argus. There’s clearly a strong Octalysis Core Drive 5: Social Influence and Relatedness in there.

We personally can hold each other accountable, learn from each other, or even just ask how it’s going.

On a creative note, one person has even held weekly philosophical discussions in a challenge using the Challenges feature. Another person used Argus to get over apathy in life. That’s huge! Here’s a word of caution though. Please, see a Mental Health professional when needed.

Sharing Personal Data

As long as you choose your online friends carefully, there is a continuous sense of support from the group. Yes, I saw at least one scary person in there and that person was reported. Like any online social app, my advice is to control what Argus data you share. For myself, I am just careful to not share exactly where I live.

Through the app’s search feature, I’ve met others and through them learned more about different customs around the world. For example, I learned about an Asian holiday known as Tomb Sweeping. That’s fascinating! I’ve also learned about other customs and people from Spain, other parts of the USA, Canada, and many others.

Accomplishment and Curiosity

Since the app also measures things like the number of steps you’ve taken and tracks goals, you get a strong sense of Octalysis Core Drive 2: Development and Accomplishment. As you know, you never know what you’re going to see in a Twitter-like feed. So, there’s Octalysis Core Drive 7: Unpredictability and Curiosity at work as well.

Speaking of curiosity, there’s a new Meals section of the app that I have not fully explored yet. Trying that part out is something for me to consider aka chew on. ?

How To Optimally Enjoy Argus

As in any social app situation, the key is to carefully pick those online friends whose relationships you will nurture on an ongoing basis. Since you only have so much time in life, you have to pick and choose. Originally, I did this by limiting my friendship list to a top ten. Since I have been sharing my meditation expertise and guidance with more people on the app and in life again, I am thinking of accepting more friendship requests to allow more communication opportunities for others. Helping others achieve their optimal potential is a calling in my life and this would support it.

Whatever your calling in life is, I hope you find all the tools and resources you need to make it happen. Have fun!

Communities in Nonsocial Mobile Apps

Nonsocial apps with a social community inside of them. It seems to make sense since you already have a captive audience. However, does it always make sense? Let’s first dive into mobile apps that come with communities.

Besides the obvious social mobile apps, there are multiple apps with communities aka groups inside of them. These apps are not primarily social apps, but they attempt to support a community. Since humans are social beings, it can be a nice feature which can make the app more appealing and thus used more often.

Some Community Supporting Apps:

  • Argus – It’s a highly social activity tracker app that has a groups section. There’s more on Argus further down in this article. iPhone and Android apps exist.
  • Coursera has a “Discussions” area in the iPhone app. There’s an Android app too. Discussions are not available until a course starts. So, one cannot peek inside right away and explore it.
  • Lose It! – Weight Loss Program and Calorie Counter – Has a “Social” section with many groups in it. The group activity in it is kind of strong. Strongest are the groups which are promoted as “Featured Groups”. iPhone app and Android app exist.
  • Not quite a discussions area, but Udemy has a Q & A section which has questions directed at the instructor in a particular instructor. This provides longterm value with credibility in the information since the answers come from the instructor. However, there is no sense of community. They offer an iPhone app and an Android app.
  • It’s worth noting that I have seen apps drop support for groups. That can sometimes be the smartest move.

More on Argus

The target audience of the app focuses on people who like to be social while tracking health, fitness, meditation, sleep and other trackable activities. Even though the semi-new groups section is pretty dead, there’s a novel tie in from a group into the tracked activities of group members which I find interesting.

It’s interesting in how it provides a kind of newsfeed style of tracked activities. You can tap on a button in the group and see a combined newsfeed from the group members. Compared to the messages button, this has much more activity. Unfortunately, most of the activities have nothing to do with the particular group you are in since they are not filtered. At a glance, it’s also a slightly confusing user experience.

Also, the downside of the groups section is that it’s slow to load and has an annoying bug which makes the iPhone app crash when you click on a link. As a side note, I happen to run a meditation group in Argus that has 25 members.

All that said, it’s worth a look. The groups has potential if a few things are tweaked, promoted, and fixed.

Externally Support the Community?

Should one just tie into an existing social app such as Facebook to support a community? It’s a fair question. Facebook has a groups feature which can be successful. The most successful Facebook group I have been a part of is the Octalysis Explorers. It has over 2000 members. Like any group, a lot of effort goes into keeping the community engaged. Fortunately for the Octalysis Explorers, Yu-kai Chou is a master at the art and science of engagement. He has a handful of awesome and loyal people who support the effort.

The people supporting the Octalysis Explorers group are continuously driving people to the Facebook group through multiple channels. Even in its own “Join the Movement” section, the group is highlighted in Yu-kai Chou’s great book titled Actionable Gamification – Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. There are also multiple administrators for the group. Also, there is always at least one person actively interacting with every post. A successful community relies on that kind of wonderful support from its administrators and its members.

Summary

Even though the implementation and user experience is pretty rough, it seems like the app with the most group activity without overt support is “Lose It!” However, that’s not saying much. The app with the most potential from a technology point of view may be Argus. However, Argus is already a highly social app so its group feature doesn’t add much.

If one can dedicate people to supporting a community on Facebook, that might be your best bet. If you go that route, you will need to continuously drive people to the group through your existing email marketing, verbal announcements in events or podcasts, and every other chance you get. Communities require care and feeding.

No matter how you support a community experience, it can provide an advantage over other solutions who don’t provide such. If one cannot dedicate the resources to the community experience or if the community experience doesn’t ever pay off, my advice is to drop it and refocus on other things.