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.

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.