Gamification project #1

Task:

You are approached by Rashmi Horenstein, the CEO of ShareAll, a prominent company in the hot collaborative consumption space. (If you aren’t familiar with the concept, some good resources are CollaborativeConsumption.com and the March 9, 2013 cover story in the Economist.)

She knows you are one of the top experts on gamification, which she has heard can revolutionize business.

She asks you to present a proposal for a gamified system to take her business to the next level.

ShareAll’s mission is to make shared use of products and services as common as individual purchases. It follows the path of companies such as AirBnB, Buzzcar, and Uber, which allow sharing of particular products (cars, housing, etc).

ShareAll ’s patented technology makes it easy for consumers and business to share any product or service.

ShareAll has also developed a global virtual currency, called Shares, which can be used to purchase access to any asset in the system. Shares can be exchanged for real money, and users can generate more Shares by sharing items or volunteering their time to complete tasks for others.

ShareAll charges a small transaction fee whenever Shares are generated, traded, or spent. Therefore, the more activity, the more money ShareAll makes.

Horenstein tells you that she cares about the social benefits of sustainability. However, ShareAll is a for-profit company, with investments and partnerships from some of the world’s largest corporations, so profits matter.

Horenstein believes gamification could significantly help ShareAll’s business. She is eager to read your ideas.

GAMIFICATION SYSTEM

Profits matters, sustainability matters, activity matters.

There is already an external reward for sharing, money(shares).

So, adding another external reward(motivation) can affect users negatively.

Now, why would any user share their products or services?

Let’s be honest, other than some noble souls who want to do it just for the environment and sustainability, most of us are doing it for money.

I wouldn’t mind sharing my unused products and giving my services if I could earn some extra money.

So, how to encourage people to share more?

By showing them the progress they have made.

More sharing means more profit for users as well as ShareAll.

We can have a progress counter which can show every user, the amount of money they have saved by using shared products and services rather than buying, and the amount of money they have earned by sharing their unused products and services.

When users will see the money they’ve saved and earned, it will motivate them to share more.

Now, relatedness or social cause is also a part of intrinsic motivation for some people, so after every sharing/activity we can show a pop-up saying some motivational message like “Good job-saving Earth’s resources” or “Well done, you just took one more step towards sustainability”, etc.

In addition, one more thing that can be done to encourage people to share new products and services is a game, we will call it HiddenHorizon.

Let me explain it to you, remember that game “FOLDIT” which professor Kevin Werbach talked about in one of his lectures, finding out different patterns to cure diseases.

We can similarly make a game where we post different scenarios and situations and let people figure out what new product or service can be shared.

This would trigger the creative part of the brain and encourage people to find out new things and services to share! Plus this would bring the fun element!

Now, I thought about adding some competitive or co-operative gamification elements, but I realized that people are more prone to share what they spent on stuff(bragging) rather than how much they saved on stuff, so both competitive and co-operative elements would not have the desired effect.

Define business objectives

Increasing profits
Increasing sustainability

Delineate target behaviors

Share more and more products and services with others
Use more and more of shared products and services
Engage in our game to find out new products and services that can be shared

Describe your players

People who want to earn and save money
Age group would be 18-50, because below the age of 18 people don’t have that many things to share and services to provide, as they are busy with their studies.

Also, people above 50 would be too less tech oriented and sharing with strangers would be a very foreign concept to them.

Devise activity loops

Loop 1 : user uses shared products or services, then sees a pop-up message reminding him/her about the good he/she just did for the environment.

User feels good. Then he/she sees the amount of money they saved by sharing instead of buying, user feels motivated to save more!(Achiever – Bartle MMOG player type)

Same loop for, when user shares his/her unused product/service.

Loop 2: user plays the game, tries to find out new share-able products/services and feels creative, innovative(Explorer- Bartle MMOG player type)

Don’t forget the fun!

Being able to sit at home and let your unused stuff earn money for you is fun, to be honest. But, other than the money side, when people will see the amount they have saved and the amount they have earned, it will give them intrinsic motivation to indulge more in ShareAll.
Also, the game(HiddenHorizon) is made for users to explore and innovate, it will focus on the core drive of empowerment of creativity and feedback!

So, it will also increase engagement!

Deploy the appropriate tools

Progress bar showing money saved and earned.
Pop-up message targeting the social side/relatedness
Game(HiddenHorizon) for finding out new share-able products and services.

Tell us in the comments sections what you liked about this gamification/gamified system!

Feel free to share it with your friends!