Habituation as your ally

Habituation is a decrease in response to a repeated stimulus. Like our response to paychecks, repeated “I love you’s”, or bonus systems.

Today’s magic wand is called gamification -behavior management-persuasive design-motivational design, you name it.

Every day we read about companies that implemented gamification at their workplace. In fact I work in one. I have promoted and implemented here a game meant to change the way employees and companies look at the induction and accommodation process. A game that allows sharing of knowledge literally without frontiers, giving instant feedback across the company, rewarding engaged behavior and many others.

Have I fully succeeded? I have succeeded in designing a product, in delivering requirements every sprint, in being a productive and inspiring Product Owner that proudly wrote the release notes after 1 year of development. We are live.

Was it a success? 5 months after its implementation I can say it is a success indeed but I could have done much better. I have failed to use in my best interest habituation itself. Our players strive to get the branded umbrella or the voucher they need but their need to master a skill is not tickled as it should be, their curiosity has limited walls to crawl onto and their sense of belonging is missing. Our tribe has yet to be formed.

My wisdom to others is: do exactly as I did. Learn, experiment, fight for implementing your gamified solution, believe it will change the world and it will, eventually.

It might be a trend, but it is one that reaches for the child within us, so it will always have a better response than other motivational 2.0 techniques.

If your game design tackles universal themes like community, tribes, collecting interesting and rare things, then players might be curious and motivated enough to engage in it. You just have to find a way to keep them engaged. Then you got yourself a motivated crowd that will give you insight in their thoughts, beliefs and preferences.

And you will be able to make habituation your ally.

Strive for 4.0 knowing that 3.0 is not released yet to production.

Game on !