Octalysis gamification of “Forest App” UX case study
The Octalysis Framework is a human-centric gamification design framework that lays out the eight core drives for humans motivation developed by Yu-Kai Chou. It can be used as UX of any product and experience.
The 8 core drives are :
- Meaning
- Accomplishment
- Empowerment
- Ownership
- Social Influence
- Scarcity
- Unpredictability
- Avoidance
About Forest App :
Forest is an app that helps you stay focused on the important things in life. Forest team partners with a real-tree-planting organization, Trees for the Future, to plant real trees on Earth. When users spend virtual coins they earn in Forest on planting real trees, Forest team donates to their partner and creates planting orders.
Problem Statement :
To perform an Octalysis analysis on an app called a forest. The assignment problem is given by Aaryaman Singh from the atom.
Initial Research :
- Explored the forest app for 2 days.
- Before moving further, I have gone through this very informative book Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards by Yu-Kai Chou.
- Watched this youtube talk: “A Framework on Actionable Gamification” | Talks at Google
Octalysis Analysis on the app(8 core drives) observations-
#1 Epic meaning and calling
- When a person installs the app he/she believes they are doing something greater by planting virtually trees.
- The onboarding itself says that “Use forest and be present in your daily life” it adds some meaning in user’s life.
#2 Development and accomplishment
- After completion of one full-grown plant, the app has a beautiful timeline screen to know your past grown plants. This shows you are developing.
- Apart from that, the app also has an achievements section which includes some pre-determined achievements like ‘expert planter’, ‘novice planter’, ‘3 days in a row’ and many more.
- The user can also check his/her progress in terms of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly in the overview screen.
#3 Empowerment of creativity and feedback
- The forest app lacks in this core drive and has only 1 element, which I found somewhat creative. At the timer screen, the app allows us to play the sound of growing plants.
#4 Ownership and possession
- The app provides “adjust time” according to you, which feels user have its control over time.
- The user can customize the different species of plant in select species, it feels they are the owners.
#5 Social influence and relatedness
- The app shares good insights from your friend’s current status like timings, coins, rewards etc. This results in healthy competition among friends.
#6 Scarcity and impatience
- This means that wanting something simply because it’s rare, but I didn't found anything related to that.
#7 Unpredictability
- This core drive was also missing in the app.
#8 Loss and avoidance
- When you set the timer, and if you decide to give up on your timing, the app notifies that your plant can be withered tree. This is the sense of loss, one can feel.
Conclusion :
I have used octalysis tool to check the score and other parameters.
Result: The experience is heavily focused on White Hat Core Drives, which means users feel great and empowered. The drawback is that users do not have a sense of urgency to commit the desired actions. Think about implementing light Black Hat Techniques to add a bit more thrill to the experience.
Also, it seems to have a great balance between Left Brain and Right Brain Core Drives, which means you likely have a good balance between Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation. Just be very careful because Extrinsic Motivation designed badly may kill Intrinsic Motivation.
This is my first octalysis analysis of any app, the above-discussed things are just my personal views.
I am glad that, I got this opportunity and this case study may not be that perfect but I learned core parts of user experience through it.
