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.

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.

Surrounded By Failure and Still Winning

As you know, "failure leads to success." A quote really brought it home to me again today:

Read Quote of Michael Wolfe's answer to Survey Questions: What are common misconceptions in your field that non-specialists refuse to believe aren't true? on Quora
Whether it is trying out new ideas like Gamification in engagement projects or something personal like a new exercise plan, try and try again.

 One more thing, I am trying out a TODO / good-habits-building web app called HabitRPG to see if it is fun and life enhancing! It's another micro-try. In other words, micro-failures lead to macro-successes! It looks promising.

So, try it out and let me know what you think!

Here's to failures and successes!