A great talk here from Thomas Goetz, exec editor at Wired, looking at how Wired redesigned medical data to make it more accessible and engaging for patients - if it is more accessible and engaging it will help behaviour change (eg the redesigned data shows you are at risk and it also clearly tells you what you should do next).
This is a great example of how content can be redesigned to really engage with the user. And with medical data the stakes are higher as easy to understand information can help patients to take action.
An interesting theme here is personalisation - turning data into content that resonates for the reader, it addresses them directly. I'm sure there are other pools of data out there that could be redesigned in similar ways.
At the heart of this project was the user - the patient. Put the user, your user personas, at the heart of what you are trying to achieve with your content and you will be much better placed to engage with them.
This project is a really good example of exposing data that has very limited relevance to the reader - in this case patients - and transforming it into something relevant and useful (ie engaging).
This week's connectinghr chat - #chrchat - prompted this post. In the chat I raised the issue of using game mechanics in developing learning apps. More of that later in the post.
Game mechanics - the techniques that are used in games to help participants progress through the game and to get fully immersed and engaged with it - can be usefully applied to increase user engagement with content - that could be a learning app or it could be B2B content.
Essentially we are talking about the psychology of user behaviour and understanding how certain elements within gaming lead to behaviour change ie doing something different. Gaming is very good at achieving behaviour change, motivating us to do the next thing and take the next step.
It is also worth noting - and this is a point Richard Sedley made at last year's Design for Persuasion Conference - that anyone who chooses to play a game plays freely - as opposed to a task they have been told to do, for example. Playing a game against your will simply does not work - you have got to want to do it. You either want to play or you do not. And implicit in this is that participation will be enjoyable. Yes, gaming is fun.
Richard expands on this point here:
In terms of learning apps, his final point is very important - intranet users may see taking online training as a chore. Put a gaming interface on it and that chore suddenly seems like something fun that they will enter in to freely.
On a separate point, I think fun is hugely overlooked when it comes to publishing content - be it an app, an article etc. In B2B publishing, for example, the really fun stuff can be rare. Why? Because most of the time readers and users are seen as being serious not people who also had a sense of humour.
Back to the mechanics. Here are some . . .
Points/rewards - you are rewarded for achieving certain goals. Central to this is the idea of collecting and completeness. Gain a certain number of points and you get a reward. Notice how Linkedin uses completeness for profiles eg your profile is 95% complete. Once your profile is 100% complete you should attract more eyeballs to your profile. The psychology of collecting is also discussed by Richard in the Audioboo above.
Levels - players strive to get to the next level to get rewards. Progress is rewarded so we are motivated to continue. This affects their profile.
Profile/status - once players accumulate points their profile/status changes to reflect their achievements. This is clear for others to see. Location services such as Foursquare have this at its heart - collect badges and gain a different status.
For a more complete list check out this list of game mechanics at Gamification - it is an excellent resource.
Game mechanics have an important and powerful part to play in engaging users. The challenge is to adopt some of the psychology behind the techniques in game mechanics.
Final point about learning within the enterprise - this is not about turning training content into games (although Richard Sedley provided a great example of how his agency developed a games interface for training content on an intranet which hugely increased engagement), this is about thinking through how game mechanics can be used to design and deliver engaging content. Especially exciting is developing content for mobile as the interface requires a whole new approach to how to use content.
I'll end with this fantastic slide deck from interaction and game designer Amy Jo Kim - there are lots of great examples - really inspiring ideas and real world examples of how to motivate users to do what you want them to do.
We are lazy - we want to be able to do things as easily as possible. So keep it simple.
We are social - we are pack animals. So, make sure what you design and build leverages that fact.
We are creatures of habit - Don't design against the grain - go with what we know and have learned about what works well on the web. The most successful sites and services have grown through adaptation.
Mappiness looks very interesting in terms of getting people to participate. At a recent conference, Design for Persuasion, persuasive technology guru BJ Fogg talked about the behaviour change equation ie what is required to prompt people to change their behaviour.
This is the equation . . .
Behaviour change = motivation + ability + trigger (all at the same time)
Motivation = is the person motivated to do the 'behaviour' (eg I want to play tennis) Ability = are they actually able to do the behaviour (eg I have a racket, trainers, kit and balls) Trigger = the prompt to make the behaviour happen (eg tennis partner comes to collect you on route to court)
Motivation, ability and trigger have to happen at once to spark a behaviour change. If one of these elements is missing, there is no trigger for example, then behaviour change will not occur.
It looks at first glance, and I have not yet used the app, that Mappiness is providing the trigger - my phone will prompt me when I need to make a note of how I am feeling, it is giving me the ability to make a note of how I am feeling by letting me use the phone app to do this and I have the motivation to do this as I am interested in the project.
As an aside, I was triggered to find out more from this link in my Twitter stream.
Will start using Mappiness today so will see how it goes. I think it is important to note the role of mobile in this - without this as a mobile app, the triggers and ability would not be there.
For more on BJ Fogg's behaviour change work check out his behaviour grid.
