Analysis of gamification principles - QuizUp

I have become quite fascinated with the theory around gamification, more so after completing the course by Prof. Kevin Werbach (Highly recommend you sign up for this course whenever it is offered next, if you want to understand gamification beyond points, badges and leader board)

It was exciting to come across an app like "QuizUp" that has applied the best practices and principles of game design and game mechanics in a fun and engaging way.


QuizUp is a basic trivia game on the mobile that challenges you on various topics ranging from Math, English grammar and spellings and even on the popular sitcom "Friends".  You pick any topic you like, start the quiz with any player in the world who is using the app (or challenge your friends from your social circle) and play the trivia which lasts for 7 rounds. Points are rewarded based on your performance in each round and the final end state. You gather points to reach different levels and the game progresses further.

What's done well?

The key challenge to such an app is to keep users engaged, not get bored easily and keep coming back for more.

In terms of time commitment from the user, the trivia quizzes are short and doesn't take too much of time to *finish* a game. In the middle of the day, whenever I feel like taking a short break, I would play a game or two, which doesn't take more than 5 minutes. So it feels like a nice and quick distraction from whatever else I was doing.

Looking at the game elements, *points* are the building blocks to reach various levels and climb up the leader board. Points are decided not only based on the correctness of your answer but also on the speed at which you get the correct answer. Sometimes, this can be a crucial factor, which ensures you are completely hooked to the game once you start. You also get instant feedback on your total points as well as points gathered in this present quiz with a breakup of various components. It gives more clarity to the player on where he has done right and what he needs to do in the next quiz. The game also nudges you to play the quiz again, by displaying the points required to reach the next level.

The basic principle to get a player to play any game is that the game should neither feel too easy nor too hard. The game should capitalize on the "achievement" factor which can be fun to many people. In the gamification course, Prof.Werbach lists down 14 attributes that players claim to be "fun". I would say QuizUp scores well in 7 of these attributes.

1. Winning
2. Problem solving
3. Exploring
4. Chilling
5. Teamwork (collaborating with others)
6. Recognition
7. Triumphing (crushing an opponent)
8. Collecting
9. Surprise
10. Imagination
11. Sharing (being altruistic)
12. Role playing
13. Customization
14. Goofing off

QuizUp also leverages the human trait to "complete" a task. Because of the need for a shorter time commitment, the time pressure to get the answer right and complete focus on just "one" question at a time, the game tends to hook you once the quiz starts. I would presume that the drop-off rates in the middle of a quiz would be quite low.

Where can it be improved?

Game progression is an important requirement for any gamified system. Without progression, monotony sets in and chances of drop off are high. QuizUp does get tougher as you progress into the category. You need more points to reach higher levels. However the quality of the trivia in itself doesn't seem to change much. For instance, I'm in level 21 of "Spellings" category and I get a simple spelling like "keyboard". It doesn't seem to challenge me and I have lost the initial enthusiasm I had. One of the key aspects of an engaging game is that the player has to feel a sense of mastery towards the task. If I'm able to crack harder spelling quizzes, I would feel a sense of pride and achievement.

As I mentioned earlier, levels get progressively tougher as the game requires you to gather more points to level up. It does get boring after a while as you are stuck in the same level and had to gather more points to go up.

*Badges*, though present are somewhat given lower prominence and is hidden inside the navigation drawers. I wasn't quite clear on their meanings and the progress bar. I presume the team is still working on implementing a "Collections" element which will entice the player to collect all badges.

The game is presently more driven by *intrinsic* motivation where a player wants to cross different levels and feel a sense of achievement. Only when a substantial social circle is developed for a player, the game will be able to leverage the pull through *extrinsic* motivation in the form of challenges and friends leader board.

The game can also provide ability to play group trivia that encourages cooperation and collaboration (Challenging an opponent is fun but collaborating/partnering together can be interesting too)

Though they display a leaderboard for various groups under friends, country and global, I'm not so bothered about it. I personally feel that a leader board makes sense ONLY if you are in the top 10. For the rest of the players, it's better if it's not even displayed in the first place.

Please do share if you have come across other web products/apps that have implemented the principles of gamification really well.

Minimum Wow Product (MWP) - a slight twist to MVP

Much has been written about Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - its relevance, expected outcome and its pitfalls. There have also been many variations of MVP, among which I personally like these two - Minimum Viable Transactions and More Valuable Product.

One of the attributes of a product manager that I personally like is that a PM should have a view of the world. It needn't be a fool-proof theory or a validated hypothesis but something you frame in your mind, which will obviously be based on your previous learning, ideologies and biases. So here's my view of the MVP concept.

The primary idea behind an MVP is that it allows you to test the waters with minimum effort. You want to validate your idea/hypothesis with a sample of the target market and get a better sense of the reaction, which helps you to formulate your future course of action.

Looking at it from a customer/user perspective, he comes across *yet another* new product/app. With information overload from so many sources, people are already feeling the cognitive drain, which in long term, can even lead to obesity (read this insightful post by Kathy Sierra).

Getting users' attention amidst this chaos is a humungous challenge. But it gets a little easier if the idea is radically new and users don't have an equivalent mental model to compare. An important personality trait which is closely linked to gathering new experiences is "novelty-seeking". This trait can push people to try out a new product/app, especially if it calls out to their dominant personality.

On the other hand, if the product/service is an improvement (however big or small it might be) over existing offerings, then the resistance to switch is quite high. This can be attributed to a behavioral economics concept called the "endowment effect".

"people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them"

Though the verb "own" is not quite relevant for most technology products, the investments that users have made in the form of time, information and connections will decide if the switch to a new product makes sense.

In both the cases, the user should feel a sense of "wow" when he tries out the new product - something that doesn't just appeal to the cognitive abilities but touches a chord at the emotional level. That's precisely the reason why I would go for a MWP - a minimum wow product.

What is the minimum work you need to invest in your V0.1 that make your users go "wow"?

A MWP should trigger a positive emotion from the very first experience, which gets reinforced during subsequent visits. The subtle messages, the intuitive interface, visual elements and outside-the-product experience (emails, notifications etc) all provide ample scope to get a "wow".

The more time spent in understanding the problem statement of the consumer, the better the chances to identify the scope of creating "wow" moments in the overall product experience.

For instance, though the travel e-commerce space is well established, there are multiple ways by which a "wow" experience can be brought in, by focusing on little details. Hipmunk's search results page was one such experience, thanks to schedule focused, color coded calendar layout, which was new and caught attention.

A few ways I could think of, related to leisure travel, that can bring about a "wow" experience:
- send a list of things to do in the city, the weather, the local events, what/where to buy return gifts, emergency contact details - all neatly presented in a printable format (or even mail a hard copy to the address if possible)
- provide possible comparison options between various places to visit in the user's consideration set. If I'm planning a vacation at the end of May and I have narrowed down to 3-4 places, help me decide which one is the better choice, given various parameters such as activities to do, distance, accessibility, on/off season, cost etc
- display pictures of happy travelers next to the hotel / city monuments to bring in more authenticity and personal touch to the whole booking process. Or maybe display the number of travelers who booked a specific hotel from the site (something like "900 travelers have booked this hotel so far through us")

Would like to hear your thoughts/comments on MWP and if it resonates with you or not.

Immerse in the problem

A couple of weeks back, I was chatting with a wannabe-startupper. The key problem he wants to solve is that consumers spend a lot of time on purchase decisions by visiting online e-commerce sites as well as offline retail stores. He plans to build a price aggregator (somewhat similar to what compareindia does). We discussed about many aspects of decision making including
- involvement level of product categories
- different stages involved
- showrooming behavior

During our chat, I did sense an urgency towards building the solution, rather than understanding the context and framing the problem statement. It's quite natural as engineers that we want to jump into the solution to the problem for which we have a reasonable understanding. But is this knowledge sufficient?

In this specific scenario, I suggested him to pursue a few initiatives in parallel to building out the solution.
- Narrow down a specific product category, preferably one that requires high involvement like consumer goods.
- Spend a few days in different retail stores, observing the conversations between potential consumers and salespeople - their body language, questions, their interactions with the demo product
- Talk to a few of them to understand their buying process and motivations, online v/s offline concerns
- Identify if consumers are willingly spending their time and effort visiting different offline retail stores, just so that they can understand different offerings, narrow down to a specific brand and get a better deal
- Go over the product description material available in e-commerce stores. Identify what's available and what's missing, from a consumer research perspective

From his subtle reactions over phone, I got a feeling that he wasn't so enthusiastic about these activities :-)

Paul Graham in his essay, "18 mistakes that kill startups" brings up an important point -
" you create wealth in proportion to how well you understand the problem you're solving, and the problems you understand best are your own."

Immersing into the problem is extremely important
- to identify the motivations and emotions that run in the minds of consumers
- to get more clarity on the context and situation
- to understand the current alternatives available to consumers and why they are (or aren't) solving the problem

Steve Johnson suggests a possible solution to understand the problem
"Do the job to understand the job and its challenges. In most cases, the customer doesn’t know he has a problem. A product manager must understand the customer’s situation better than the customer does, and use that knowledge to develop a solution for the customer."

I'm quite impressed by movie stars who get into the shoes of their characters to understand their daily routines, pains and struggles, challenges and wins. I would love to use a service that enables such passive interactions between target consumers and a product manager. Potential startup idea, maybe?

I'm actively looking for a framework that helps to unravel consumer problems along all possible dimensions. If there is none, maybe I'll give a shot at it !

Jobs-to-be-done framework in product design

As discussed in my last post, customers try to satisfy their needs by going after specific goals. They evaluate a product/service to see if it helps them achieve these goals. The evaluation criteria is based on multiple factors but the bottom line is to conclude whether the product helps to achieve their goal or not.

When I came across the jobs-to-be-done framework by Professor.Clayton Christensen and the famous milkshake example, it felt like an "aha" moment. The key learning is that people choose to "hire" a product or service to do a job.

Couple of his lines that made a lot of sense to me:

"marketer's task is to understand the job the customer wants to get done, and design products and brands that fill that need."

He also emphasizes that every job has a social, functional and emotional dimension to it and that's where a marketer's focus should be.

"the job, not the customer, is the fundamental unit of analysis for a marketer who hopes to develop products that customers will buy."

Though the reference point is from a marketer's perspective, this framework is equally relevant and applicable to product design.

As part of the product conceptualization process, many tech startups have started to imbibe the "jobs-to-be-done" concept as a replacement to user stories.

A user story is typically written in the form -
"As a [type of user], I want [some action], so that [outcome]"
whereas a job story is written in the form -
"When _____ , I want to _____ , so I can _____ ."

The key distinction here is that user story focuses primarily on the end outcome expected out of an action whereas a job story focuses more on the context and causality. I came across this very detailed comparison between user story and job story in Medium a few days back. Worth a read.


 Reflecting on the same fitness example I used in my last post, the goal can be broken down into smaller jobs. For instance,

Goal => I want to lose weight

Jobs

• Whenever I'm sitting continuously for an hour, I want a reminder to get up and stretch for 5 minutes so I can be more conscious about being active
• When I'm inside a store to buy groceries, I want a list of healthy ingredients to buy so I can plan a healthy meal for the week
• When I'm meeting a friend who is also interested in fitness, I need a few good articles to discuss and plan our workout together so I can engage in interesting conversations
•  Whenever I'm enjoying a high calorie dessert, I want to know the equivalent workout to do to compensate for the calories consumed so I don't feel guilty about the dessert

The context in these 4 jobs could help the product manager / designer to understand the trigger situations as well as motivating factors.

In an interview on user onboarding, Ryan Singer from 37signals talks about how the job identification can help to create a great onboarding experience.

As he talks about product features and user motivation, he says 

"attributes do not cause you to do things. It's your situation that you're in that triggers your causality."

So a clear focus on the context can give clarity on the reasons for "why we do what we do".

The key take-aways for me from this jobs-to-be-done framework are
- Take a deep dive into the context or situation ("When" and "Where") that is applicable to a specific job
- Get a clear understanding of the reasons behind the context ("Why")
- Identify the potential issues the customers face because of the context

A model to map customer needs and goals

It all started with diving deep into the phenomenon (yes, it is!) of user retention. What makes a user come back to a product/service? Books, blogs, articles, research papers - my search continues and takes me to interesting directions. I haven't reached a conclusion yet but all roads seem to be leading to the basic premise that a user takes the help of a product/service to achieve his/her goal. After the first use, if he "believes" that the product will help him reach his goal, he is sure to come back.

This belief has to be reinforced with each visit, until the user accepts the product as his support / companion that helps him accomplish his goal.

For product creators, the key challenge is not just ensuring that user *gets* this connection (user's goal <=> my product) but also to understand what these goals are in the first place. Talk to any product manager about his job profile and the first thing he would say is that I need to "understand my customer needs".

These 4 words are of vital importance and each of them can be dissected further (which I shall do so in subsequent blog posts). For now, let's focus on the "needs" part for a little bit.

Every individual has needs which are further classified into
1) Innate or primary needs - physiological, need for food, water, clothing etc
2) Acquired or secondary needs - psychological, need for social acceptance, self-esteem, accomplishment etc

If there is an unmet need, the individual feels a state of "tension" that drives him to take action which he believes, will reduce the tension and satisfy the need.

This "drive" that pushes the user to take action is what we all know as "motivation".

Now that we have a basic idea of what needs are and what motivation means, let's talk about "goals" and where it fits into this model.

A "goal" is a concrete form of expression of a need. For any specific need, there could be multiple goals. The selection of a specific goal to address the need depends on multiple factors such as individual's past experiences, his beliefs and values, societal norms etc.

Presenting these different elements together** 

Taking fitness as an example,

I find this model of dissection to be extremely useful to get to the actual customer needs. While talking to customers (or prospects), you could use a technique like "5 whys" to elucidate responses which can give you a breakdown of motivation, goal, tension and finally the actual need.

**Adapted from "model of the motivation process" presented in Consumer Behavior by Schiffman and Kanuk