Games, Design, User Experience and Getting People to Do Stuff
For years now, I've lived with a 75% completed LinkedIn profile. I'm happy to, but it annoys the hell out of me every time I look at my profile. There's some deep psychology thing going on there which is tugging at some internal bias. It's "half-finished" - incomplete. Isn't that a clever little bit of design? It gets even better in that it provides useful tips on completing my profile - with "points" I can score for each one.
These are Games
I think of this as a little game. Perhaps I shouldn't call a system where I'm playing myself a game, but there you go.
There are some great elements to this game:
- Progression - the more I do, the more progress I make. Isn't it great to make progress! Forward momentum. I must be doing something right. I'm sure this is tugging at a lot of my internal psychology.
- A finite, achievable goal - the best kinds of goals. Look, right there, all I have to do is X, Y and Z and I'll complete it. The goal posts aren't vague. They're concrete, and I know what I have to do and how far I have to move to get there.
- Reward. Well, I'm sure all of the above are rewards, but imagine the reward (and I have to, not having completed mine) of reaching the goal. Accomplishment. Aaahh.
It's not Pac-Man, but I think there's something of Pac-Man in there somewhere.
Social Games
There are so many folk talking about social media this and that. I suspect there's a lot more to the new web that will be created than social media. It will be about social interactions. And it's about games like these - and of course social games too (not just social games like FarmVille, but games in the sense that I'm using the word here) - where I can interact with others to do something.
I surfaced this theory in a conversation with friend Sally , and a few days later she spotted Facebook doing the same thing:
It's perhaps not as refined as LinkedIn's, but it's got something else. Social. This is now not only a game that Jill's playing, but that she can play with other people helping her. They're not competing - but helping her achieve her goal. So they have all the elements of LinkedIn's game but with an extra ingredient:
- Do a good deed/kindness/help (not sure what to call this) - I can help Jill by suggesting something. "She's not there yet, poor thing. Here, Jill, don't you know Carl?"
Design
This morning I spoke to friend Andy about this topic, and then he told me about something he was looking at - architecture & design. Imagine those clever design folk who come in to a restaurant and look at how people interact, how people go about doing what they do - and then move the till there, or the tables here, and Bob's your uncle but you have a much more efficient restaurant where customers are happier, seated more quickly, and staff now know which tables they're supposed to serve.
In a way, that's a game too. The design of the restaurant is going to influence how the staff and clients interact.
The design of the restaurant is such that, given our natural tendencies, some ultimate goal will be achieved (efficiency).
In LinkedIn/Facebook's case - the design of the site (progress bar) is such that, given our natural tendencies, some ultimate goal will be achieved (they'll get more data).
So this is user design, site design, architecture, psychology and games - all wrapped up in a little progress bar. Now, what's the smallest amount of data I can add that will get me to 80%......
