New Location

There's a new location for my blog posts called Finney Can Help and is located at http://www.finneycanhelp.com/ Come on over!

ZTEP's New Member and More - Zombie Technology Elimination Project

ZTEP is the Zombie Technology Elimination Project: Gamifying The Destruction of Old Software (gamification.co link). Now that it's live, many of the details have changed. Regardless, activity is picking up and the future looks bright.

ZTEP Welcomes A New Member

Trey, a talented software developer, has just joined our group of ZTEP leaders.  

So our list of ZTEP Leaders are now as follows:

• Brad C., Developer - graphics design
• Mike B., Developer - front end 
• Mike F. (me), Founder / Product Owner / Chairperson 
• Sean F., Writer - Zombie narrative content creator 
• Thomas D., Developer - back end server / database work and some front end
• Trey G., - Developer - front end

Trey will be diving into the front end work for our new ZTEP Radiator for Players. A radiator is a large monitor displayed in our work area. Thomas has already done the backend work which is great! Why have a screen that focuses on the players, you ask? Players want to see on the overhead monitor a brief summary of easy to see accomplishments displayed in our department's working environment.

Another Zombie Technology Type is Coming!
There is a 4th zombie technology type (ZT) that is coming soon. Brad and Sean are working together to make sure the images and narrative surrounding this ZT is ready to go. Without giving anything away, this next zombie type might meow.

Open Sourcing ZTEP is Getting Closer

On another note, there is serious interest in open sourcing our ZTEP system. We're pretty close to being able to do that. There are some technical challenges that we need to overcome first. Thomas will be investigating those challenges. To his credit, Thomas has been spearheading this effort since it was first discussed.

Which Comes First, The Chicken or the Egg?

If the egg is data, it comes first. Before our next set of ZTEP can be released, some database changes must be promoted. Thomas and Mike B. are communicating about this now. Thomas will promote the changes when he can. Thanksgiving has kept the database changes from going out right away. In this case, the turkey leg stopped the egg for a little while. 

Reaching Out To The Hunters

In hopes of stirring up even more interest, I will point out to the players and candidate players that some zombies have been killed by anonymous people. Thomas has already made sure we have the needed data for this. From a user friction point of view, the only thing an anonymous person will have to do is claim the kills.

Brainstorm Session

As part of a brainstorm session, Thomas brought up that editor plugins could be created which scan whatever project is open for zombie technologies. It's a neat idea. If someone knows how to create editor plugins which do such a thing that is something we can jump on.

The Future

The future looks bright! Beyond motivating people to replace old technologies, we're celebrating good deeds through this program. What better time to ramp up our activities as we enter December, a time of celebration and good deeds? 

KISS The Zombie Technology Elimination Project

When designing a Gamified system, it's important to keep the design as simple as possible. In other words, KISS aka Keep It Simple Student of life. This helps get a release done sooner and communicating the concepts to the players an easier task.

So, what happened? In the initial design of the Zombie Technology Elimination Project (ZTEP) system, there was a concept called WIP points. It was there to combat a potential behavioral side-effect. You might ask, what's a behavior side-effect?

The best example of a system which promoted a behavior side-effect is the Bay Bridge toll example where people paid less toll money if they waited to cross it after a certain time period. Unfortunately, people will do dangerous things to pay less money. Slides 10 and 11 below are the things to see related to the bridge and also are shown in the article written by Nicole Lazzaro titled Gamification Can Kill.

Chasing Wonder and the Future of Engagement from Nicole Lazzaro

With that toll bridge design tragedy in mind, I decided that my ZTEP system would avoid such unintended side effects.

In order to give people a sense of progress, I designed in WIP points for changing code and Zombie Points for releasing the code into production. The WIP points followed by the Zombie Points were in place to encourage software developers to change the code and then release those code changes into production. Hypothetically, the worst case situation is where a code defect could be inserted and another person much later would push the defective code into production. Picture someone stepping into another person's gum and you get the picture. It turns out the WIP points were not needed.

Professional software developers pride themselves on writing code that works and is used by people. If you will pardon the expression, the WIP points were overkill.

We are in the process of removing the WIP points from the system. This frees up webpage screen real estate and the backend system can also made be simpler. So, its removal is a win.

If I had it all over again, I would have had the WIP points as something to add later if it was proven to be needed. At least the cost of the lesson learned was not too high; live and learn. As Mahatma Gandhi said "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."



(Photo by BK on Flickr)

Mentor Program's Best Quarter Ever At 120 Hours!

This last quarter (March, April, May 2014), about 120 hours of awesome knowledge was shared through the Mentor Program. To be exact, it earned 4790 points which is a new high score. In order to make it more fun for all, the program is gamified where 10 points equals 15 minutes.

Looking at the activity in the program, I see many more presentations were given. Many of these presentations are the same presentations that will be given later at conferences all over. This includes presentations about Gamification, Data Science / Big Data, and possibly even Rails.

I appreciate all of those who took the time to share and/or receive knowledge essential to the company. We’re all stronger and happier as a result. So, good job and thanks!

update: For those of you who were curious, check out the blog post about the program that I wrote last year.

New Gamification Definition

Inspired by Yu-kai Chou, Nir Eyal, Gabe Zichermann, and a discussion on Facebook led by Andrzej Marczewski, I created this definition of Gamification:

Gamification is taking fun and habit-forming elements found in games and applying them to productive activities.

If you wish to go deeper, see "Human-Focused Design” by Yu-kai Chou.

Hook Model Presentation Today

I am giving a presentation today about the Hook Model. With Nir's permission, I will be showing a large subset of these slides.



For sure, I am going to show the slide with his great book called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

 If you like, you can ask me how it went at our Facebook Hook Model community or go to nirandfar.com and click on "Join The Discussion" in the upper right of the screen. See you there!

Update: I had a great interactive audience! It made all the difference.

The Mentor Program Viewed Through Octalysis

As it exists today, I am the founder and Product Owner of our company's Mentor Program. The mission of the Mentor Program is to empower people to share knowledge essential to the company such as technology knowledge.

The program has an internal web app which displays the names of people who have participated by either sharing or receiving knowledge. Without getting into the details about how to earn levels, those who have participated heavily receive a digital and an in-real-life badge reflecting how they participated and when.

A Sample of the Dashboard Screen

A player can see the web app either through a browser or in the software developer lab on a large monitor screen in the corner.

Meaning, Accomplishment and Loss

On the monitor, we showed the same thing that the browser version showed for about two weeks. It couldn't show everything which was a problem. So, we had two key changes made to the monitor version of the web app:

1. Sort names by most recent activity 
2. Show only those who have contributed to the current quarter, our Current Mentor Heroes

Sorting the names by the most recent activity, is a newsfeed inspired approach. It helps deal with the issue of having too many names to show on the monitor. It also highlights the accomplishment and meaningful contribution just made by the players for their recent participation.

Showing only active participants as Current Mentor Heroes got interesting results. Doing this introduces into the program a feeling of loss. Can you imagine what happened when the new fiscal quarter came in March and everyone saw a blank page that said nothing more than "Current Mentor Heroes"?

One of the key developers in the program asked me if I wanted to revert it back to showing the normal dashboard. I responded with a "nope" and a smile. Sure, it bothered me to see nothing up there. It bothered everyone and that's the point! We were all used to seeing those colorful accomplishments and names. We were now feeling loss which was instilling a sense of urgency to get something up there.

In less than a week, I had a helpful person email me saying they wanted to help us out. They let me know about some recordable participation. That person understood the program vision and wanted to contribute to our cause in a meaningful way. Other people followed up in that same week and we had over 13 hours worth of knowledge sharing!

Similar to Octalysis Core Drives

The decisions recently made are similar to pieces of the Octalysis Gamification framework. The framework is centered on Human-Focused Design and created by Yu-kai Chou. Having watched all the Octalysis videos available, I see Octalysis Core Drive #8, Loss & Avoidance which instills some urgency. Urgency does overcome a problem we've had in the past. These changes also highlight what could be called Core Drive #2, Development & Accomplishment. FYI, the Octalysis community discusses these drives at https://www.facebook.com/groups/octalysis If you like, you may join our friendly Facebook group.

What's Next?

Although I have ideas, what is next will come out of a discussion with my Mentor Program team. They are wonderfully insightful people with a variety of skills. Undoubtedly, one of two things will be worked on. We may focus on a progress bar approach or reduce the friction of getting knowledge seekers hooked up with knowledge givers. These ideas came from members of the team who are passionate about empowering others with sharing and receiving knowledge. If you're not surrounded by awesome people and ideas such as I am then I highly recommend you seek some now!

Stormy Habit Weather

In the USA this winter, Mother Nature has thrown snow into many peoples’ lives. Schedules and internalized daily habits were disrupted through imposed external forces. New opportunities and habits took shape. Some people embraced the moment as a time to create a snow shark.

Glancing at Amazon, I see others read and commented on the Hooked book written by Nir Eyal with contributions from Ryan Hoover.

The recent snow event got me thinking about habits extinguishing and habit competition. Do more people habitually check the weather now? What are they not doing anymore? If a mobile app provided the weather as a side feature during a snow storm, would people use it more? 

The Argus iPhone app has the weather as a daily integrated feature of its personal dashboard of your life. So, I wake up and look at the temperature high/low for the day on Argus while seeing other things like how much sleep I got.



Although it seems much of the focus is currently on building products that form long term habits, I think exploring how to keep people using their products even through stormy habit-disruption times will serve well too.

I invite us all to discuss this in the Facebook Hook Model community.

Why Create A Hook Model Community?

You may ask, why create a facebook community around the Hook Model? Simply put, the Hook Model works well. Really well! You can create products and services that people habitually use. It's the combination of psychology, business and technology. So, it's fun and profitable!

How did I discover the Hook Model? I saw a GSummit 2013 presentation by Nir Eyal, read some of his posts, and finally read twice the book Hooked: A Guide to Building Habit-Forming Products.

Want a taste via video? If you would like, just slide the YouTube video slider below and pick anything to watch for 1 to 2 minutes.

This video above and slides are available on Nir Eyal's blog post "New Video - Hooked the Psychology of How Products Engage Us"

Coming up and co-chaired by Nir Eyal, the Habit Summit is on March 25, 2014. It's where experts "share their hard-won insights on how to build habits (user and personal habits)."

So books, videos and conferences. What was missing? Well, a place where like-minded people could focus as a group on the Hook Model framework, a Hook Model community.

I asked Nir in the Gamification Revolution spreecast The Ethics and Tenants of Habit-Forming Design with Nir Eyal for a community. He suggested I create one. So with his feedback, I created the Hook Model Community

We have discussed Nostalgia, the HabitZone, ATARI acronym, the virtual reality Oculus Rift, and more.

You are invited to come join our Hook Model Community at https://www.facebook.com/groups/hookmodel Although it's free, it's habit forming. ;) Of course, the choice is yours. Hope to see you there!

I Got The "Hooked" Book For Free

I am a fan of Nir Eyal's work around habits and how to apply them in business. Below are slides giving you a taste of some of his work.

Hooked Model from Nir Eyal

Today, I got a great book of his called Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. I discovered it from his blog post titled: “HOOKED” BOOK IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD (AND $0 FOR THE NEXT 5 DAYS).

It's a collection of his past work and more. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn more about habits, human behavior and applying it to products or services.

Last Quarter Beat Previous Year And It Was Only Two Months Long!

The Mentor Program is going strong! Essential technological knowledge and more is getting shared much more than before I applied Gamification to the program. To dive deeper into the Mentor Program, check out Gamification Meets Technology Mentor Program.

I am the Product Owner / Manager of the program. Due to our company getting bought, our calendar changed. Last quarter consisted of only two months, October and November. Yet, those two months yielded a score of 1010 points which is over twice what it was the year before at 440 in the year of 2012. The year before that it was 600 in that same quarter, October, November and December of 2011.

So, a two month quarter beat previous 3 month quarters!

Income Inequality Learned While Studying Marketing

While studying Product Owner / Gamification related things such as Marketing via Coursera, I ran across income inequality. Wow.

"economic inequality" biggest issue? http://t.co/nckIeMGCd9 - See video http://t.co/XnW4s14358 - "wealth #inequality meme" going viral?

— Michael Finney (@finneycanhelp) December 8, 2013

Wow. Watch the video, really.

Oculus Rift Love At First Sight

Today a friend and I checked out the Oculus Rift recently made available for developers. It's love at first sight!

I was able to immerse myself into a world where there were beautiful things like a butterfly, water fountain, a house and a sea.  I could even see inside some things! As I was experiencing the world and got close to things, my imagination would soar! I asked myself, what would it feel like to touch that sunflower? My mind imagined what things would feel like as I got close to them.

That's something that has evolved in our brains. After we identify something as friend or foe, we anticipate what something is going to sound or feel like. The anticipation itself was exciting!

What's even more exciting are the real world solutions this technology will enable. Easy to imagine solutions involve surgery training and learning through immersive exploration. Other applications could be in helping people understand what it's like to be in a certain place or a person who is in a certain socioeconomic status such as being poor or conversely privileged.

Although I could not effect the virtual world around me, people are using the Oculus Rift in conjunction with other technology in order to be able to have such interactive experiences. A video example is Hydradeck Oculus Rift Demo.

There will be user experience challenges. As Peter Hornsby pointed out in The Oculus Rift and User Experience, motion sickness will be an issue for some people. I saw that today as someone else tried the system out. However, I think that issue can be minimized if the system is properly calibrated and systems are designed well.

Similar to the iPhone, I believe we are at the beginning of a new era of experience and perhaps understanding.

515% Lift? Gamification and Mentor Program

I am the Product Manager aka Chairperson of an internal company effort known as the Mentor Program. It's our mission to empower people to share technological and other essential knowledge with each other. To dive deeper into the Mentor Program, check out Gamification Meets Technology Mentor Program.

We had a fantastic last quarter (July, August, September):

• Our program goal was 1600. We did twice that at 3200!
• Compared to FY13Q2 of 520 points, 3200 is a 515% increase year over year (YOY)!  

I believe increased productivity, morale, self-esteem, and a sense of empowerment has also resulted. 

Some of the new elements added / changed in this last quarter are:

• Badges have a new easy to understand theme with a level of progression on them via stars
• We added leaderboards that shows how the different departments are doing as instructors and students
• Although not new, I have an awesome team of people dedicated to this effort!

Most of all, it's fun! 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me, Mike Finney. My favorites are LinkedIn and twitter.

ZTEP - Zombie Technology Elimination Project; Spoonful of Zombies

Spoonful of Zombies

With a team of about 10 people, I am leading an internal engagement enhancement project to make the conversion of old technologies to new technologies more fun and more likely! As suggested by my friend Rebecca who is also one of the likely players, we're using Zombies!

I drafted up the Gamified experience complete with a narrative / story that frames the player experience. Since that time, valuable feedback has been received and the concept refined. The story is:

“Zombie Technologies (ZT) are plotting to take our community over. Why? Zombies Technologies are jealous of anything that is prosperous and fun. We, the Zombie Hunters, will take them down with new technology. It’s time to engage the enemy ZTs with a Zombie Technology Elimination Project (ZTEP).“

Our specific target behaviors are for the players to:

• Replace an old technology code item with new approved technology
• Support a player via news feed. Guest support is even welcome

Progression Loops

A player can progress through different levels of zombie technology engagement. Levels based on Zombie Points are:

• Zombie Hunter Newbie - 0
• Zombie Hunter Apprentice - 100
• Zombie Hunter Journeyman - 500
• Zombie Hunter Master - 2000
• Zombie Hunter Hero Level I - 10000
• Zombie Hunter Hero Level II - 20000

And so on for every 10000 points thereafter…

Points are calculated as: 10 x ZT Code Item Difficulty x number of Code Items converted

Example difficulty levels are 10, 20 and 30. We opted for values like 10 and 20 in case we want to adjust them up or down. If we chose 1, 2 and 3 we would have no room for motivation adjustments.

The points go through a promotion process. Thus, there are two types of points: WIP (Work In Progress) Points and Zombie Points. WIP Points reflect source code changes just saved to the source code repository. Zombie Points reflect code changes that made it all the way to production. Having source code changes that made it to production means that the people are using the changed code. We're talking about internal and external products. Since I work for CARFAX, that could even mean www.carfax.com. (Disclaimer: All opinions are my own and not CARFAX's).

Since levels are based on Zombie Points, a level is not earned until the code change is in production.

Player Has a Big And Elaborate Avatar

To appeal to the different player types (Amy Jo Kim), we are using an avatar to show successes and let people collect different reward items aka Item Drops. The avatar reflects the names (real and nickname), Item Drops obtained while promoting converted code items and his or her scores. Here's a very rough stickman representation of the concepts.

"Pete the Zombie Hunter Newbie” is composed of two parts: 1) a nickname field 2) the level achieved.

When zombie code items have been replaced in production, player gets a chance of getting item drops listed in a secret document titled Zombie Technology Item Drops.

Some example Item Drops are swords, plants, and zombie art. A complete list of all the items owned is available on an inventory page. On that page, I envision placeholder areas existing for items not dropped yet in order to excite the player’s imagination of what might be discovered. The complete list of specific items is a secret because we want the specific items one can get to be a surprise.

So at a general level, the Engagement Loop loops like the following:

1. Player changes code
2. Player stores code into source code repository
3. Player tells a game coordinator
4. Game coordinator see the changes, enters in the WIP points and change-management related information needed to track the changes going to production aka live. 
5. WIP Points are assigned and show up in the avatar immediately
6. The coordinator will follow up to make sure the code change has been put into production. Once the changes are in production, the coordinator converts the WIP Points to Zombie Points earned for those player(s). The coordinator personally notifies the players and tells them they did a good job!

As an aside, points are divided up between a pair of players as needed since we do pair programming at CARFAX.

Zombie Technology News Feed
System generates feed items in response to achievements entered; Examples include (items in bold are data driven variable values based on achievement):

• July 10: Lucky Judy found a Baby Green Plant!
• July 10: Adam is now a Zombie Hunter Master!
• July 10: Adam and Judy earned 1500 Zombie Points each by killing some <some zombie technology> zombies! (Note: total points earned was 3000 but split between Adam and Judy.)
• July 8: Lucky Bob found a sword!
• July 8: Bob cashed in WIP points and got 2600 Zombie Points for killing some <some zombie technology> zombies!
• July 6: Bob earned 2600 WIP Points by killing some <some zombie technology> zombies!

Dashboard
There will be a dashboard available which shows the players and their levels of achievement with stamping out Zombie Technologies. The person can navigate from the dashboard to the specific person profile page via click. Players are sorted by their real name. On purpose, we are not sorting by score at this time.

Summary
For this project, we are out of the inception phase and into implementation / execution phase. It should be noted that items specified above are subject to change based on player-concept-testing, what is discovered during detailed user experience (UX) design, small releases and any resulting product pivots.

I look forward to play-testing the ideas before we get too far into the implementation. Even more than that, I look forward to helping people get the recognition they deserve and enjoy their lives more while they are serving everyone well by shoring up our systems with the new technologies. Thank goodness for this fun approach and great people!

Update: See this article and more on Gamification Co