Hacking Discipline: make your hardest goals addictive with world-known gamification wizard Yu-Kai Chou.

Have you ever wondered why you can spend hours playing video games but struggle to work on important life goals for even 30 minutes? What if you could harness that same engagement for your most meaningful pursuits? 

In this captivating conversation with gamification pioneer Yu-Kai Chou, we uncover the hidden psychology that makes games so irresistible and learn how to apply these same principles to transform our work, habits, and lives.  

Yu-Kai shares his remarkable journey from being a self-described "nerdy student" who spent thousands of hours leveling up game characters to becoming a world-renowned expert who has helped organizations like Google, Tesla, and the World Bank drive billions in business results through behavioral design.

🎯 In this episode, you'll learn:  

• The 8 Core Drives of Motivation and how to use them to influence behavior — ethically.  
• Why discipline as the lowest form of motivation - and what to design for instead.  
• How Yu-Kai gamified his own life to go from “nerdy student” to global thought leader.  
• The simple strategy he used to finish writing a book… while running 3 businesses and raising 3 kids.  
• How companies are using gamification to drive real KPIs — including a $1B income boost in one case.  
• What most companies get wrong about gamification (hint: it’s not just badges).  
• How AI + gamification together can create hyper-personalized motivation systems.  
• A practical exercise you can start today to rewire your brain for action.  

✨ Aha Moments:  

• “If I need discipline to stop playing… that’s real motivation.”  
• “Design for human drives, not just functionality.”  
• “If you don’t push your own buttons, someone else will.”  

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

• 📘 Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards  
• 📘 10,000 Hours of Play: Unlock Your Real-Life Legendary Success  
• 🌐 Yu-Kai’s Website & Courses  
• 🎮 Start the free 14-day gamification course: https://yukaichou.com/gamification-course/  

Whether you're looking to boost your personal productivity, design more engaging experiences for customers or employees, or simply understand the invisible forces that drive human behavior, this conversation provides actionable insights that will change how you approach motivation forever.  

 Learn to push your own buttons before others push them for you. 

ABOUT YU-KAI CHOU
Yu-kai Chou is a world-renowned gamification pioneer and behavioral design expert, best known for creating the Octalysis Framework. With over 20 years in the field, he has advised companies like Google, Tesla, LEGO, and the World Bank on how to drive behavior and engagement through human-centered design. His work has impacted over 1.5 billion user experiences globally. Yu-kai is the author of Actionable Gamification and 10,000 Hours of Play, and was named one of the top 100 HR influencers and top gamification experts globally.  

🔗 Learn more at YuKaiChou.com  

Transcript

Introduction to Yu-Kai Chou and Gamification

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast, the podcast for change agents of all shapes and shades, not satisfied with status quo and just killing the time, but totally committed to squeezing all the juice from this life experience, feeling like a superhero on some hidden quest, conquering the world, conquering villains, unlocking more superpowers, treasure chests and helping everyone who they meet along the way. Today, guys, I'm joined by one of the world's most influential minds in gamification, Yukai Cho. You might know him as the creator of the popular Atalysis framework, the author of Actionable Gamification with subtitle Beyond Points, Badges and Leaderboards Unlock the Secrets of Gamification and Drive Engagement Like Never Before. Yukai is also the author of 10,000 Hours of Play with subtitle Unlock your Real Life Legendary Success. Yukai also is a consultant who's helped organizations like Google, Tesla and the World Bank to tap into the power of human motivation to achieve desired business results, making people the happiest they've ever been.

Speaker 1 1:32

In this episode, guys, we explore how to design life and work so people actually, so you actually want to do what needs to be done, Whether it's writing a book, adopting new behaviors, changing your habits at scale, or one by one, or driving billion-dollar business results. Us to learn how to push our own buttons and also, perhaps, push buttons of other people, to get more done with less stress, less pressure but enjoying the process more. If you ever wondered how to turn discipline into delight and transform your to-do list into a game you can't wait to play. This is your episode, so let's dive in. Before we jump into recording of our podcast, Yukai, can you tell our listeners why they should care about gamification in the first place, Like why does it matter?

Speaker 2 2:38

Yeah, I think gamification is important because I think that's the ideal world, where the things that you need to do are the things you want to do, so that people don't feel like they need all the suffering and hard work to do productive things that are benefiting for their life. They just do what they love doing anyway, they can't even stop themselves from doing it and their life automatically becomes better. So I think that is a great future, where there's joy and there's productivity that's connected together. So that's the world I aim to achieve.

Speaker 1 3:10

Yeah, that's such a great vision, you know, because people we always say like, oh, you know I want to do these things and I know I have to do those things, but somehow I just don't do them or they're hard or boring or a combination of those, right? So, uh, yes, hopefully people will get uh ideas, insights, strategies, how to um, have more fun doing things that they need to get done right.

Speaker 1 3:35

Yeah absolutely um, you are, you guy. You are like, I'm even a little bit nervous. You're like the gamification guy guru. You know someone who was at the very beginning, I think, of the whole movement. But how did you start there, like before gamification, where were you and how did you land on gamification as your career and what you do for a living?

Speaker 2 4:04

Yeah. So before I came to vacation, I was a nerdy student and this was 22 years ago and I played games very heavily. And I played games where I spent thousands of hours making my characters in my games more powerful, more strong. They have a lot of gold, they have a lot of gear, a lot of skills. And then at one point I had epiphany and I realized that, you know, I spent all this time making my in-game characters great, but in the real world I was the same loser.

Speaker 2 4:32

So I should really try to play games that make my real life better, that improve myself in the real world. So then, everything I did in my real life, I saw it as a game. So it allowed me to become pretty strong at almost everything I was doing, because before I would do the bare minimum to get my acceptable results and then stop and go play games. And when I saw everything as my game, of course you don't do the bare minimum, you do the best you can. So I started doing very well at most of the things and I started my first company a year after, in 2004. And that continued to build into all these different, very amazing journeys in the game occasion world.

Speaker 1 5:15

Yeah, you know life as a game. I always think of life as the best game ever because you can actually see and touch the results of your play If you play well obviously. Can you give listeners a little bit more details about your personal journey, like you mentioned? You know you started using gamification in real life and so you got better at a lot of things. Can you maybe share a couple of examples so listeners can really relate to like how they maybe can use it?

Speaker 2 5:49

yeah. So I mean, keep in mind I was still a student, I was finishing high school at the time, so I was still very young in 2003 and so but I started to see everything as more integral. So so before when I studied in classes, I would just try to get an acceptable grade, like maybe exactly at 90% if I could, because that's an A, 98% is an A, so it doesn't really matter. So I thought it's stupid to get 98%, it's better to get 90%. But then I started seeing, okay, all this stuff is skills that I can level up, that can help me in my later game. So I just actually became curious. I enjoyed learning and studying and so I became a 98% student. But I also started to write string quartet music. I started writing a Chinese novel. I became a strong competitor in debate. I um, you know, I did a forensic speech and I got into state competitions and swimming. So everything I did became a game that I was trying to become a top player in. So that did really well. And then that got me into UCLA as my college, so a fairly prestigious university, even though my grades before that was just kind of mediocre. My gamified life allowed me to get into a good university. But once I got into UCLA I was looking for my next big game to play in life, and that became starting a company.

Speaker 2 7:10

So I think not a lot of people do it, but in my first year in college I started my first company, and it wasn't because I had this big ambition of becoming very wealthy, it was just the most fun to do. You know, it seemed to be more like a game because, if you think about it, a game is that you have an objective, you have an obstacle and you have your current resources right and your goal is to use your current resources, overcome the obstacle and achieve the objective. And that's actually more like challenges we face in real life and work and business, as opposed to what we learned in school, which is memorize a bunch of information and then regurgitate it on a piece of paper. And so I thought starting a business was like a strategy game where you can decide what's the product you want to sell, what's the pricing, what's the customer service. It was a lot of fun. So I did it out of pure fun, and so it led to another business, another business. So when I graduated college I just never, because I already convinced some of my other friends who had full time jobs that graduate college to quit their jobs to join my company. You know, be part of this game together. I didn't have it in myself to say, you know, go find a normal job myself. So I just continue to be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 8:29

But then over the years, you know again, a lot of my startups were related to game vacation. It was one was a social network that helps at the time, younger Gen Ys to use game design to develop their careers and how big companies use gaming to recruit better talents, and that was rated a top 10 social narrow for Gen Ys by Mashable. At the time we did one of the earliest online leaderboards for social media. Back then, when Twitter just came out, we started ranking who were the most influential people in social media and different categories. We did loyalty, gamified loyalty programs for brick and mortar stores like restaurants and retail stores. So that was the journey all the way from 2004 to 2012. And you know, between you know, raised over a million dollars for my startups.

Speaker 2 9:26

But 2012 was an interesting transitional period where I stepped down as a CEO of my previous startup called Reward Me, and that was the year I got married too. So I thought, okay, what should I be doing now? And then I decided I wanted to write a lot of things I've learned over the past nine years in my game occasion journey. So I formulated a framework called the Octalysis Framework, and it's a combination between the words octagon and analysis, and I put it on my blog, yukaishacom, and that's where my own reputation took off, because a lot of people resonated with it and it was organically translated into 16 different languages in the first year.

Speaker 2 10:06

And then I got a lot of opportunity to speak at Harvard, stanford, yale, oxford, tesla, google, ido. I did a lot of consulting work, and that led to impacting over 1.5 billion user experiences. And then I wrote a book called Actionable Gamification about the framework, and so a lot of things happened. And then, up to now 2025, I published my second book called 10,ification, about the framework, and so a lot of things happen. And then, up to now 2025, I published my second book called 10 000 hours of play.

From Gaming Nerd to Gamification Expert

Speaker 1 10:30

So yes, it's. You know that your books is how I found you, uh. And then I like research and you have like your own wikipedia page and ted talk and just a lot of things. I'm like how did I not know about this person, um, working also with human motivation a lot? But you know what I wanted to ask you Like. You developed this whole framework, octalysis, and you know it has many levels and human core drives. I'm curious, how did you come up with that? Was it like learning some of the basics and then, I don't know, testing things out and then putting it together? Like how did it come to be Octalis' framework?

Speaker 2 11:09

Yeah, so the Octalis framework as its name. It's based on an octagon and has eight core drives that motivate all our behavior. So everything we do in our lives are based on at least one of these eight core drives. So if none of them are there, there's zero motivation, there's no, no behavior. And so, as your question is, how did I formulate that?

Speaker 2 11:32

So it's it's interesting because it started off with just being curious with some of the games I was playing, like diablo, and at the time, uh, this new big game that that was very popular was farmville and my, my mother at the time, who really didn't like technology, didn't like games. She always said those were bad influences of society. She really got into Farmville and I looked at the game and I was really confused because the game was totally different from all the games I was playing. It made her very, almost stressed. Sometimes she has to wake up at 5 am to clean up her crops and there was not a lot of action and all that stuff. So I was like, ok, what are all the aspects that make these games interesting and fun?

Speaker 2 12:14

And I also noticed that there are many games that are copycat cats of successful games and they have the same game elements. They have the points, the badges, the leaderboards, the Easter eggs, but they are complete failures. So I also thought there is a more subtle element that made games more enjoyable. It's not just having game elements in them, right, and game mechanics. So I did a study about what. What are the commonalities of the successful games, even though they're, from farm real to diablo, very different, and what are the differences between the same genre, the same copycat, but one successful one not successful? So I started jotting down notes and I have some early blog posts about hey, this is what I noticed, this is what I noticed. This is what I noticed and you can see some of the early blog posts were maybe 70-80% of the completed octalysis framework. And then I started studying a lot more psychology, behavioral science, kind of books, to understand these principles more and eventually it finalized into what we call these eight core drives plus one hidden core drive.

Speaker 1 13:20

Yes, it sounds like a journey, an epic journey. I want to ask a little bit more about practicality, like your personal usage of gamification in your life. Let's say you have a goal, maybe you have one right now. How do you apply this methodology and what you learned about gamification to achieve like that goal? Or maybe, uh, build certain I don't know habit behavior and make progress?

Speaker 2 13:52

yeah, I can tell you how I use gamification to motivate myself to finish my book, because you know I'm not a full-time author.

Speaker 2 13:59

I'm running three businesses and you know I have three kids, kids and so writing a book is always those things that are important but very low urgency. You know everything else. If I'm, you know, three weeks behind, some will be upset, some will push me, or there's a negative consequence A book if I don't finish it in five years, no one's going to say anything. Ten years doesn't matter, which is why it's so hard for working people to publish a book. So I had to use my own game of condition strategies to motivate me. So at the beginning, when I was writing my first book, I use what we call a black hat motivation strategy, and so I haven't explained the. Yes, but among the Octalis framework there's what we call white hat versus black hat strategies, and left brain, which is extrinsic motivation strategies, and right brain, which is intrinsic motivation strategies. So, without going into all the details, the difference between white hat and black hat is white hat makes you feel powerful and control and you feel good, but there's no urgency, so you procrastinate. So if you do it, you feel happy, but you don't really get to it, whereas black hat motivation makes me, makes you feel more urgent, obsessed, sometimes addicted, but because you don't feel like you're in control of your own behavior. Sometimes it leaves a bad taste in your mouth or it could let you lead to your burnout.

Speaker 2 15:14

So at the beginning, I used a black hat strategy to motivate myself. So I had a physical workshop seven months later and I put in the workshop, workshop material, and it's like $1,000 per person, right, that? Hey, if you attend this workshop, I will give you a signed copy of my upcoming book, actionable gamification Right. And I'm like, okay, well, look, I've already put it in the marketing. People may be paid the thousand dollars because of this. So I had to. I had to work, oh, and let me also describe the challenge I faced, because usually on my day to day I had to be working on my client projects, design of answering emails, and I would work, work, work, work, work, and I will get to a point, a milestone. Right, it's like, okay, I got this done. Oh, let me take a break. And so usually in this break, time is when I should say, okay, let me do the things that are not urgent, let me write my book.

Speaker 2 16:05

But you know usually at that time I'm like, ok, well, I already worked so hard to get to this point, let me go take a walk, Let me just hang around, let me play some games. And then, after I do that, now that it should be the time I start writing my book. But that's when the emails start coming in again more project, more crisis to solve, and then so I never actually get to my book Right. And so when I use this blackout strategy, I was, I was stressed and nervous to write it, because I wanted to, because it's a core job. It lost in avoidance. So, basically, I was really prioritizing my book and I spent hours and hours and hours a day just just pushing everything out to the side and writing my book, even to the point where some of my client work was a little bit like deprioritized, and you know I was behind on some of those things. But I worked more hours than I ever did to focus on that. However, there was one point where I realized, okay, it was impossible for me to finish the book on time because you know I can't just finish the book. There's the editing process, the publishing process, so it's impossible that I give the book in the workshop. So I felt okay, then I guess I just have to tell them I'm sorry I didn't get to finish it. Give me your address and I'll mail it to you afterwards, right?

Speaker 2 17:23

So once I got to that point, all the uh consequence of black hat design happened, which is I completely burned out. I didn't want to touch my book at all, right so? So it's like, okay, I don't want to touch it, but, um, and I just try to catch up with all my other things for maybe like a month. So then I switched my strategy to a more sustainable white hat strategy. So, and what it is? It relies on what we call first core drive seven, unpredictability and curiosity. So this is a more intrinsic black hat. But basically, whenever I get to a milestone, it's like, okay, I'm going to take a break, I want to go play a game, right, but wait, I'm going to read the last chapter or last paragraph I wrote in my book. I'm not going to read the entire chapter that I wrote because that's too much friction, too much work, I'm not going to write a new paragraph.

Speaker 2 18:14

I'm just going to read the last paragraph and see what I wrote, because most people they don't even remember easily what they ate for breakfast, right? So it's like that I write something good or bad, I'm not sure. So I'm like, okay, let's read the last paragraph, and that last paragraph, because I was intrinsically motivated by my the creativity. I look at it and it makes me want to write the next one, the next one. I started writing, writing, writing, writing. And then it's like, oh, okay, I write it. I've written so much. Now I really want to take a break. Let me go play a game. It's like, oh no, the client emails came again and I have to do my work. And then and I do a lot of that and I'm like, okay, now I finally reach another. I'm really want to take a break. I'm really tired. Now, oh wait, before I take a break, I have to read the last paragraph and I read the last paragraph and I started writing writing, writing it.

Speaker 2 18:59

And I remember at the I'm so angry because I never get to play a game. I'm constantly writing my book when I have a break. And so this is what we call good game creation design, because it doesn't rely on my discipline. I couldn't help myself. I had to keep writing my book and that was how I finished writing my book.

Speaker 1 19:18

Oh, you know that's a good question came to my head right now. I always hear this phrase don't rely on motivation, because it's so unreliable. You need to build discipline. So what do you have to say about this thing?

Speaker 2 19:32

No, I think it's the opposite. I think if you have motivation, you don't need discipline. Like you don't need motivation to play your favorite game, or you don't need discipline to play your favorite game. You need discipline to stop playing your favorite game, right? So if your game is the thing you should be doing, like writing your book, then you don't. You only need discipline to stop yourself from from writing your book. So, but keep. But also, very importantly, when something becomes a habit, then you don't need motivation, right Again, you don't need motivation to do a habit, you need motivation to stop doing a habit. So I think discipline is the bottom of the barrel, that's the lowest level. Like if you don't have anything else. You work hard, you grind, you bite your teeth Right. But, as you know, that's not as sustainable If you, if you are practicing, let's say, let's say you're, you're violence, you're practicing playing the violin, but you hate it.

Speaker 2 20:19

You're grinding your teeth for three hours a day and some, then a hundred other kids. They love it, they just like to play 10 hours a day and they don't even want to stop after 10 hours. You're going to lose to them in the long run, right? Yeah, yeah. So, instead of using discipline. You want to design your environment, design the task. So it's actually fun and enjoyable to do, and if you keep doing it then it becomes a habit and you don't even think about it. You'll just keep doing it.

Speaker 1 20:44

Yeah, I so agree with you on this one. For me, you know, discipline is like well, in order to have discipline, you still have to have motivation. You know, I also look from that on that. From that perspective, you can't just have discipline for no specific reason, and that's why you kind of want to think about your motivations, your drivers, first, before thinking about any discipline. And you are so right. Did you want to end something?

The Octalysis Framework Explained

Speaker 2 21:09

Yeah, the issue is some people have initial motivation to want to do something and then the rest of it they have to rely on discipline. But the key thing about good design is you design for motivation throughout the entire journey, every step of the way, you're motivated, you're enjoying the process, you want to do it as opposed to oh, I want to go to the gym more, and that's the motivation on step one, but for the rest of it you use discipline. That's that's not what we want to do.

Speaker 1 21:36

We want to have continuous motivation I guess, yeah, it's uh, learning how to design for motivation. So it is continuous, and I always like to use the phrase learning how to design for motivation. So it is continuous, and I always like to use the phrase learning how to push your own buttons, so you actually want to do the things that you need to get done. Such a great example you guys.

Speaker 2 21:55

Thank you so much. That's actually a great analogy. I've never thought of it, but it's like there is a remote control to control yourself as a robot, right? And isn't it worth a lot to be able to have that remote control and control yourself as a robot, right, and isn't it worth a lot to be able to have that, to have that remote control control yourself better, because if you don't, it's actually other people who has that remote control the marketers, the policymakers, the people who create the game rules around you. Those are the people that are doing making you do the things that you're doing, because they are. They're the ones that understand the behavioral science. They're the things that you do because they are the ones that understand the behavioral science.

Speaker 2 22:26

They are the people that understand the game designs, and so I think it's important that you learn it so you can design things for yourself and you can defend against other people trying to influence you in a way you don't like.

Speaker 1 22:36

Yeah, and that's actually. You know exactly what I meant. You push your own buttons instead of other people and the world pushing your buttons and leading you necessarily not to where you want to go, Because sometimes also, like we have our, you know people around us, whether that's family, friends or our work, which do certain things and then we either, you know, blow up or do stuff that we later regret. Well, what if you learn how to actually use yourself like push those buttons, play your own instruments so you do the act, you take the actions that you don't regret, but instead like proud of right. So, uh, again, thank you. You're such a great example that illustrates how you can use your different like drivers and motivators to get yourself to do what you want to do in the first place. And you know you started speaking about core drives, white black hat techniques. Can you give listeners a little bit more details, like what are those eight core drivers and then the ninth one that is hidden? And, yeah, a little bit more detail on the framework all right.

Speaker 2 23:47

So obviously each quarter there are eight of them. So you know, if we take a few minutes for each of them it takes up a lot of time, but I'll I'll go through what they are and maybe a one-liner. So the core drive one is epic median calling, which is basically you're doing something for something bigger than yourself, like in a game. You're always saving the world right. Something bigger than yourself.

Speaker 2 24:06

So this deals with things like sustainability, helping the poor, honor, faith, religion, all those things that are bigger, and you're motivating people with those kind of concepts. That's core drive one. Core drive two is development accomplishment. So that's like you're improving yourself, you're leveling up, you're achieving mastery, and so that's like points and badges inside of a game where you see yourself improving and you're getting better and that motivates you. Core Drive 3 is empowerment of creativity and feedback. So that's the idea of using our creativity, seeing feedback and adjusting idea of using our creativity, seeing feedback and adjusting. So it deals with things like meaningful choices, self-expression, autonomy strategy. Core drive four is ownership and possession, which is the idea that if we believe we own something, we want to improve it, we want to protect it and we want to get more of it. So this deals with things like collecting things or organizing our environments to the way we like and you know growing more attachment to these things that we created ourselves.

Speaker 2 25:10

Core drive five is social influence and relatedness. So this is what you do, based on what everything everyone else do, does, think or says. So there's like competition, collaboration, uh, social appreciation and gifting. Then we have four drives six, which is scarcity and impatience, which the idea that we want something we can't have or it's very difficult to obtain. So, basically, if someone says, hey, please invite all your friends, you don't care. But if they say you have, you know, three exclusive invite tickets, then you suddenly go out and see who are. You try to lure people, impress people that you have these special VIP tickets, right so? So by limiting the activity or making it more difficult, suddenly create desire in people. When you say you're not allowed to go outside, suddenly people want to go outside. But if you say please go outside, they're like no, I want to stay on my computer all day long.

Speaker 2 26:04

Core Drive 7 is unpredictability and curiosity. So this is basically saying you know, because we don't know what's going to happen next, we're always thinking about it. So this is heavily utilized in the gambling industry. But whenever you have a sweepstakes program, a Easter egg, a lottery raffle ticket program, you have this Core Drive and also it's about satisfying our curiosity when we want to finish a book or a movie. Core drive eight is loss and avoidance. It's the most straightforward one. You're doing something to avoid a negative consequence or result. It's the fear core drive. You don't want to be punished and so it's what you know. It creates immediate effect, but people don't feel great about it. So those are the eight core drives of Octalis framework and the unique thing about them and why the framework is so well known is number one. Like I said, everything we do is based on those eight core drives, plus the one that I'll mention soon. One hidden core drive called sensation, but also based on where it's on the octagon, it has different natures to it. So we already mentioned the top core drives one, two, three, epic meaning calling development, accomplishment, empowerment, creative feedback. Those are white hat motivation core drives and they make people feel powerful and control. They feel good but no urgency. The bottom ones, which are six, seven, eight, seven, eight, scarcity, unpredictability and loss and avoidance, those are black hat core drives and they make people feel urgent, obsessed, even addicted, but in the long run it could leave a bad case in their mouth and the reason why we feel we're not in control is those core drives deal with our survival instincts, you know, avoiding danger, going after scarce resources and exploring new land, things like that.

Speaker 2 27:43

Now, what I haven't mentioned is the left side versus right side. The left side, we call them left brain core drives. It doesn't necessarily mean geographically on the left versus right, that's being debated upon. But what we care about is it represents symbolically, basically, our logical brain on the left side and our emotional brain on the left side and our emotional brain on the left, on the right side. And since this is a design tool, I like it. It's easy to remember left side, left brain logical. Right side, right brain emotional.

Speaker 2 28:14

But the actual part about it is the left brain, cordial, has deal with extrinsic motivation, things you do for reward, a purpose or a goal, but you don't necessarily enjoy the activity itself. So once you obtain the reward, you hit your goals or get used to the reward. It becomes stale, you stop doing the activity, whereas the right brain quarters again deal with intrinsic motivation. These are things that we just enjoy doing, to the point that we're even willing to spend money just to experience it. So even if we lost all our progress the next day, like we lose our certificates, our badges, our NFTs, our status. We would still do the activity today, because that's how we measure our quality of lives. You know how much time we just spend on things we enjoy doing. So basically, the framework not only describes all human behavior and helps you design, for it also knows the consequences a long-term, short-term, intrinsic, extrinsic.

Speaker 2 29:05

A quick example is if you look at the right bottom of the octagon, that's core drive seven again unpredictability and curiosity. It's on the right bottom, so it's right brain, intrinsic and it's blackhead. So what? What that's like? It means your brain enjoys it, but you feel out of control. So that is like you wanting to go to bed at 10 PM. That's your plan. But then you binge watch Netflix to two o'clock in the morning, right you, your brain still enjoyed it. You love watching those shows, it's fun, but you feel out of control. So later leaves you a little bit feeling a little guilty, right? So that's how you look at octalysis. So those eight core drives are all psychological core drives.

Eight Core Drives of Human Motivation

Speaker 2 29:43

Then we have in my book I describe a ninth hidden core drive which is called sensation, and sensation is just the, the physical feeling, the pleasure that you obtain from something so, um like getting a massage as a reward, or this is why some people like japanese food over italian food. That just tastes better for to them. So there are some experiences that have sensation, like some game controllers do the vibration or you get it, you get some touch as a feedback mechanic. But most of our work is in those psychological eight core drives Plus, even for sensation. We know that most of them are powered by the psychological eight-quarter drive.

Speaker 2 30:25

So, um like, even for the food you eat, there's a lot of studies that show what food we like connects to certain emotional memories that we have. Like, some people like spaghetti as a comfort food because it reminds them of them when they were small, their mothers preparing spaghetti to comfort them, kind of food. Uh, some people eat sushi because to them it's there's the scarcity, which is core drive six about oh, this is high end and whatnot, or so. So how, what the food represents is still the eight core drives and even something, as you could say, physical sensation, as you know, sexual activity. If there's not this type of, uh, social connectivity and appreciation, there's not this curiosity, uh, sometimes it also people don't enjoy that, which is what happens in some dysfunctional marriages. Right, the physical sensation is it should always be the same, but the psychological core drive behind it actually determines if it's enjoyable or not Strong, yeah, and I guess you know everyone has like different settings in terms of what drives them stronger.

Speaker 1 31:33

Right, Like some people can be, as they say, like more extrinsically motivated. Some are more intrinsically and some like. For me, for example, epic meaning I would say it's like number one. You can imagine, the rest doesn't matter. For somebody it's social influence, maybe like relationships, Would you say, like there is I don't know one or a combination that seem to be the strongest for humans in general, like in your practice seem to be the strongest for humans in general, like in your practice.

Speaker 2 32:10

Yeah, so I would say that again, these eight core drives motivate all human beings from different cultures and different demographics. It's just like everyone wants to feel competent and everyone wants to feel appreciated, right, no one likes to feel incompetent and unappreciated. If someone actively wants to feel incompetent and unappreciated, I'm pretty sure in every culture that's seen as a psychological disease. Now, but like you said, you're absolutely correct, there are different tendencies of different types of people. Some people are definitely more driven by making a difference in the world. Some people are more driven by looking good in front of others, like status, or they just like adventures. They don't want any of that pressure, they just want to explore um so. So in our work we do create, uh, two by two, player types, so basically four different player types for each project that we do and we evaluate what core drives motivate them um more than others.

Speaker 2 32:59

I would say, when we do design, if we had no understanding at all about this group and we just take default, what might motivate them? I would say it's usually always core drive. Five and eight as a baseline, which is social influence and relatedness and core drive loss and avoidance.

Speaker 2 33:17

So these are people who you would say are not motivated about life. They just want to sit there and watch TV all day long and do nothing. So if they're like that, basically the two things they do is they'll do something if all their friends are doing it, and then two is they'll do something to avoid a negative punishment, like they're going to get kicked out of the house now. Uh, if they don't find it, if they, if they don't go find a job right or uh or that so. So those are the most reliable baseline core drives if you don't know anything else about them, but of course you know like, ok, they would actually be more driven if you give them more meaningful choices and ways to express their creativity. Or they'll be more driven if you actually show them everything they did is tracked and it builds up into something, as opposed to either going in circles Right and so. So we would take all that in consideration and design experience for people yeah, I didn't, you know.

Speaker 1 34:09

It makes me think of, uh, all the popular like social, social media platforms or different services. They are often designed around core drives five and eight and that's why and that's how they get traction with so many people. You know you started speaking about how you design experiences for other companies or your clients, and I want to transition into your work in organizations and with some companies. A lot of, as I understand it, gamification. One of the core aspects of it is to drive engagement with activities that drive desired results and obviously, if you look at business world, corporate world, that's what a lot of companies are trying to do. How do we engage people more with the activities that grow our bottom line and create the impact division that we want to see? What kind of use cases I guess companies or problems companies come to you with trying to or figuring out if the gamification is right for them and also, how do you help them to use it to drive certain meaningful kpis?

Speaker 2 35:29

yeah, so basically, in my line of work, as long as you can define a player type and his desired action, we can improve that um by whatever margin is is realistic. So um and this is important has to. We want these type of people to do this type of activity.

Speaker 2 35:47

If someone comes to me and they say hey, yukai, we're the healthcare industry. You know how can we use GameCase to solve our problems? I wouldn't know, because I'm not an expert in the healthcare industry and there's no player type and there's no desired action. It's almost like someone saying how do we, how do we solve world hunger? Like I don't know right.

Speaker 2 36:04

No, no desired action but if they said oh well, how do you get americans to donate food to third world countries every day? Or how to get people in third world countries to have better sanitation, wash their food every morning, that I can work on because it has a desired action. So, so, and of course that is a that still gives a very, a lot of working space to come up with different challenges. So our projects go from like motivating blue collar workers in the largest steel manufacturing in the world to work more safely so to avoid injuries and work better with the white collar workers. To get people to work more creatively in organization. To dealing with uncertainty and change. To motivating sales teams to help each other. To getting kindergartners to eat healthily. To getting customers to want to interact with the brand every day.

Speaker 2 36:57

So it's kind of across the board and of course we have a variety of case studies that over the years we're able to get permission to share some of the details and numbers. But it describes these kind of like either motivate, and usually they're either motivating employees or motivating customers.

Speaker 1 37:13

Customers.

Speaker 2 37:13

Sometimes it's about motivating like oneself, yeah.

Speaker 1 37:17

Yeah, and would you say that you use some sort of combination of I don't know environment design, workflow design, some technology? You use some sort of combination of I don't know, environment design, workflow design, some technology. How do you usually implement, like, let's say, I'm a company and you know I'm rolling out AI and I want everyone to use AI. How would you help us to motivate people to incorporate more AI technologies into their workflow, replacing what they used to do?

Speaker 2 37:46

Yeah, that's actually a really good question and there's different dimensions to that answer. The first one is that these eight-core psychological or eight-core drives can come in all sorts of mediums and channels. So you could deliver a feeling of unpredictability in an epic medium, calling via email communication right. But you can also do it through. You can deliver social influence through some company policies about cheering your coworkers up, right.

Speaker 1 38:16

You can do it through.

Speaker 2 38:17

A lot of our work is through software. Because software is more dynamic in the feedback mechanics, it's easier to deliver those eight core drives. When we work with um middle school classrooms, you know a lot of time it's like little posters on the wall, little board games. Maybe they, the teacher can show a video as a rewarding Wednesday to celebrate, uh. But the key is that those eight core jobs can come in many different ways. It could just be the manager talking, a trainer talking and telling you how important you are, so so it just depends on what the client has already. So one of the things is important is the solution depends on who the client is Right. Let's say you want to improve working conditions at a factory in Africa.

Speaker 2 38:59

Right Well depending on who you are, the design has to be different. No-transcript, and you know we have little physical passports that you go and you stamp and it'll give you status or rewards. Right, it's all, it's all there. Now, when companies come to us, we have a five step design process, which you know. The first step is just defining all the components. What are the business metrics you want to improve? Who are you targeting your player types? What are the desired actions? What are the feedback mechanics and triggers? What are the rewards and incentives?

Speaker 2 39:55

And then the next step is a brainstorming process where we usually come up with over 100 ideas based on those eight core drives. How can we drive those desired actions with more epic meaning and calling? How about development accomplishment? How will empowerment create feedback? So, uh, we have those 100 ideas. And then step three, we would try to uh, boil down those 100 ideas into okay, these are the nine ideas that will make it into version one, and then these other five will be version two and then version three, and then we create a game loop about how all these ideas connect together.

Applying Gamification in Organizations

Speaker 2 40:26

So a analogy I give is that just because you have all the moving parts of an animal doesn't mean you have a living, breathing animal. It could be the legs here, the head there and the lungs there, just a splash of flesh. It has to come together in a elegant way, in the right way, to become a, a living, breathing, flying animal. And so many companies say, oh well, we want game patients, so let's have some Easter eggs and badges, but they have to have the right relationship in the experience to actually be a good thing. So that's where the game loop comes in.

Speaker 2 40:59

And then we do what we call a battle plan spreadsheet, which is to find all the math, the details, the scaling If there's a leveling up. How fast do people level up? If they do an activity, how much research did they gain? If there's a drip email newsletter campaign, what's email one? What's email three? What's email seven? So we'll detail all the details. And then the final step is either the UX, ui wireframes, the experience or the storyboarding if there's no software. So usually we'll deliver that full experience and then and we the goal is every step of the way we're driving that desired behavior.

Speaker 1 41:36

Yeah, so a lot of details. You know I like, when I work with companies, I often see that they think it's like, yeah, it's like you said. You know we're going to have some points, some badges, like leaderboards here and everyone will be happy and do what we think you know they should do. But you kind of have to really think through the whole system and then probably there is a lot of like testing and seeing what actually brings the result that you want, because I bet there is no company, no collective, no human is the same and you ultimately need to test what's going to work for them.

Speaker 2 42:13

Yeah, and this is like I said. Every game already has these game elements, but most games don't connect them all together very well, so it falls apart.

Speaker 1 42:21

Yeah, you know, while we're talking about gamification and all these techniques and motivating people, making people, uh, do certain behaviors, um, there's like thought in my mind well, isn't that manipulation like? Uh, what? What are your thoughts around ethics? Um, gamification manipulation like? What's the difference? And can gamification backfire? What do you do to test that it has the positive outcomes but not the negative?

Speaker 2 42:53

Yeah, I actually have a section in my book and it became a blog post. It is called Gamification, ethics and Manipulation, based on the exact words you mentioned. So if your audience wants to check out more, you can Google that article and check out. But I would say so first of all. Yes, I do think, as some people mentioned, gamecation is a benign and mild form of manipulation. But I think most things in our lives are manipulation, like if my daughter comes to me and says Daddy, can I have that, please, please, please, please, please. I know what she's doing. It doesn't mean I have a lot of defense against it, but she's trying to influence me, right, using Core Drive 5 social influence, relatedness and then, if I say no, then she might use another Core Drive. She might say that, oh well, then I'm going to do something that is good for our study harder, right, she'll want to try to go for a core drive to develop an accomplishment and all that stuff. So, and if you zoom out even more generally, saying please and thank you is a mild form of manipulation. I wasn't going to do something for you and then you said please, and when I did, you say thank you as an emotional reward later on and I and I'm okay with I do it for you, right? Nothing about the transaction change. You did not, you know, uh, offer me more money, right? You didn't. You didn't pay me for more, you just showed more sincerity and I agreed to do it.

Speaker 2 44:18

And most people they don't have a problem with you manipulating people by saying please and being thank you. They actually expect that, right. And so it's same same thing with uh, with game creation, design. It's making people feel more appreciated. It's making people feel more accomplished, making people feel they're more creative. It's actually what they expect from an experience like. They actually want this kind of feeling when they go in um. And so the key thing is that, whether you're trying to get people to do things they already want to do or they don't want to do so, if you're trying to get people to go to the gym more often, eat healthily, be more creative at work, they actually they actually like it. They want to be in that influence. But if you're just trying to get people to buy things they don't need or work overtime with a product of compensation, then they'll start feeling upset and that's when they'll burn out and they'll leave.

Speaker 2 45:10

So again, I'm not the authority on ethics, but at least for myself, the moral standards I have for myself is two principles. Number one, opt-in, and number two, transparency. So opt-in means that you agree that I could try to influence and convince you to the desired behavior. So you don't have to agree to the to doing the action, but you agree that I can pitch you. So it's like you have a very charismatic friend who's trying to get you to go to a party, right, and so you opt in to say, hey, you can tell me how great the party is, yeah, everyone's going. It's amazing, you have to go. You don't have to say yes, but you say I can listen to your pitch. A second part is transparency, which is I know what you're trying to get me to do.

Speaker 2 45:59

So if I think you're trying to get me, to go to a party but you're actually trying to get me to do drugs, then there's no transparency and that would would, in my mind, feel unethical. So, um, and if you look at a, a different industry, right, uh, hypnotism, it actually supposedly, is more manipulative, right, it's like full compliance. They can, they basically mind control, it seems. But people are okay with it because it does follow these two principles. There's opt-in I agree, you can hypnotize me and then, too, there's transparency. I know what you're trying to get me to do. You're trying to uncover things in my past as hopefully not making me do stupid things on the stage, right, so so, so that's the principle I follow myself, but you know, I everyone out there, I think they have.

Speaker 2 46:40

they should have their own moral standards and whatever they do, just do what in their heart is right I think it's such a like complex topic.

Speaker 1 46:47

I don't think we as society figured out it at all. Like you know, you go to a store and you get certain things at your eye level manipulation, you know, influence but is it in in your best interest? I don't know like, and uh, who knows? Like you know what uh drives me or somebody else and what's their desire is. Or you could take amazon one click right. Do I always want to make it easy to to buy stuff? But you're right, at least you know you, when you go there, you are there to buy.

Speaker 2 47:14

So it's like yeah, yeah recently, um, I was talking to a student and she was saying that, um, I was telling her that school also makes you believe in things of their, their own agenda, right, or the school board's agenda. Like no, it's like it's all free things. Like well, you, still, you have to choose the multiple choice, right? And she's like, well, well, look, we can just like YouTube also. Right, I can choose what I want to watch. And I said, well, but they serve you what's in front of you. It's a multiple choice, right? So she thought, like well, I can choose to look at the ones I like, or I can, I can decide what you think, but the school or YouTube still decides the options you can select.

Speaker 1 47:56

Yeah right.

Speaker 2 47:57

You can't think unless you very proactively write something different on the site or you search for something. If you just go to the homepage, it gives you 16 options and you think you're making a choice. But YouTube decided what are the 16 options you're looking at? And that's a form of manipulation. You don't know what they're not showing you.

Speaker 1 48:18

Yeah, exactly, and I always say when I work with clients, we work on influence. They always say but isn't that manipulation? I'm like you're always influencing and manipulating. You just sometimes, often, don't think about that. Whether you're talking, I don't know, to your partner, to your mom, to your kid, when you say these are the foods we're eating, these are the choices, that's just a form of influence. Or when you propose certain choices to your client, and I guess it's just when you check in with yourself. Okay, am I transparent? Do I have the other person's interest in mind? And it's also sadly, but obviously not everyone is going to have your best interest in mind, but that's the nature of our world. Yes, complex issue, but I guess, as humanity, I see my ideal version of the world is when we care about our well-being collectively and so we don't just influence things in our interest but also think of the other side and of the world.

Ethics of Gamification vs Manipulation

Speaker 2 49:20

Yeah, there's quite a variety of clients that I've turned down. Turned them down when they want to work with me, um, and many of them are, let's say, related to online gambling or, uh or um, you know, tobacco use or alcohol use, and I tell people it's like, it's not like I'm judging people's lifestyle, but when I look at my own impact, if I was very, very successful and a lot more people were addicted to these things, I just don don't want that to be. You know my impact in the world, so you know. So I just decide that I don't want to help them because I don't feel good about it, and that you know if some other people might feel good about this and, like I said, I'm not I'm not the authority on morality.

Speaker 1 50:00

Yeah, yeah, neither was I think. On morality, yeah, yeah, neither of us, I think. So thank you, yukai, for sharing all this. You know practical tools and where gamification is and what it does and what it did you know for your clients and for you personally. Let's talk about future. Where do you see gamification going? What's your ideal vision? And, yeah, maybe just just some trends. Where do you see it all going like as a set of principles of design?

Speaker 2 50:30

Yeah, I think gamification is becoming more and more definite and I see that even in my line of work over the past you know six to 12 months where, of course, I started very, very early. Right, I started 2003. And in 2012 is when I started, more companies showing up to me in different industries, different countries said, oh, now everyone's talking about gamification, so we should talk. And I'm like, really, is there ever talking about it? I don't, I don't see that, but I'm glad you see it Right, and so I see this having interest and I believe this is going to be the future, because there are two angles that want it.

Speaker 2 51:10

Consumers want it more, because this is a generation that grew up having all this eight core drives in their experience already, all the games they're playing, their school system is all about positive motivation. Learning should be fun, classes are gamified, and so if they interact with a brand that's just very dull and boring, they don't want to buy from you. If you're a training partner, you're a company and it's just oh, just work hard with discipline and and and uh, you know stuff through the pain, they're not going to do it because there's going to be other companies that says, hey, every day you're working with us, you're like playing, it's like having fun, yeah, yeah, and and they're of course, they're of course going to join them right. So from a consumer side, they're going to want to do that and from the company says, because of it, they will have to apply GameCation to attract the right talents to grow as a business.

Speaker 2 51:58

And I think right now, I think the next two years, if you use GameCation, I think it's still going to be a competitive advantage. I think in three to five years, you know, if you do it, you're just basically like catching up with the industry, not falling behind. And I think five years later, uh, companies will start applying gamecaging just to not be, uh like become dinosaurs that's, that's eliminated, you know and for their survival. And of course, it's much better to do something when it gives you a competitive edge and can build that and do something more amazing, as opposed to only doing it when you know you're struggling for survival yeah, even now, you know you mentioned workplace, like they say it's.

Speaker 1 52:39

The engagement is lowest, as like it was, and companies are struggling to engage talent and attract the right talent, and I feel like gamification has a lot of answers when it comes to attracting talent, engaging people and getting the results that the company wants to see.

Speaker 2 53:00

Yeah, we have some amazing case studies and one of them I don't know if we have time to go through details, but actually that one is great because actually a student of mine that did it not just me, but the student of mine has most of the credit and this is why people should be learning this. They helped the second largest public bank in brazil increase a funny fire yeah, yeah, funny fire, yeah, ricardo from funny fire.

Speaker 2 53:25

yeah, so they're the one that uh helped uh kaija economic, uh federal, increased 1.06 billion dollars06 billion in recurring income not revenue, but recurring income and because of that, kaizhou went from the second largest public bank to the number one public bank at the time. So again, you do game vacation and you get an extra billion US dollar in value and you get from number to number one. It huge, it's, uh, you know, that's huge impact and I wish more and more companies will do that and I wish more and more people who study my work can also do that with their companies yeah, it's like you know the difference, like the companies always want to grow their bottom line, their new profits, their market share, etc.

Speaker 1 54:11

But at the end of the day, it's how you motivate people to do, to give their best that's going to affect all the other results. And when you're able to do that, to drive people's motivation, to drive them to do their best, that's how you get to be number one right, and especially if you can do that consistently. So it's like also for me, the difference between your worst day, when you're like not motivated to do anything, and your best day, when you're like I'm on fire, I just want to do it. Then everyone can relate that to what they can accomplish on their best days compared to, yeah, not so good days. So, such a great example. I wanted to ask, obviously well, maybe not obviously, but gamification and AI, because everyone is talking about AI these days right, how did your work change? How do you see the field of gamification changing because of AI?

Speaker 2 55:05

Yeah, so I think right now AI affects gamification in the two sides the input and the output. The two sides the input and the output. So the input is when people are designing for game case solutions. They can ask AI to help them brainstorm, even ask the AI to use eight core drives of italicists to help them brainstorm to solve different problems. And it's like well, which core drive should I use? What are the ideas for this core drive? And I think the AI still needs some time to get better and better, because you know right now how the AI learns is it learns what is common out there in the world.

Speaker 2 55:45

And you know it takes an average. So, in general, what it does? It reproduces mediocrity. Right, it's everyone's solution. But I think if you keep challenges that hey, no, this is not good, why would it be this? This should be better this way, why should it? Shouldn't be so? Black hat, it should be right brain and white hat because it's the end game phase. Then it'll start giving you better and better answers. So I think that's the input side. Um, now, the output side is that now we can give a lot more few mechanics that are dynamic.

Speaker 2 56:14

So when people do a desired behavior, what we call a reach, a win state, and most of the time it's like it's always the same copy paste like congratulations, you win, congratulations, it's the same one, but with AI it could always be different.

Future of Gamification and AI Integration

Speaker 2 56:26

It could be hey, this is a custom win state moment that takes into account all the activity you've done before and it tells and they know, right now, do you want to feel socially appreciated or do you want to feel like, wow, you're amazing, or some people at that moment, what they want is hey, don't think that's so amazing, it's. You know, you're still far away from being a, from being an amazing, uh, powerful character. Right and challenges like like, I like, oh, what do you mean that I'm not, I'm far away, I'm gonna work on harder right. So everyone needs something different. So the AI could actually know exactly what do you need. What is that Epic minion, epic minion calling message that will motivate you and pump you up the most and it will really, you know, change that feed mechanics and rewards and trigger kind of cycle. So I think that's something that's interesting in terms of having a. So I think that's something that's interesting in terms of having a almost like a dynamic, smart person that is encouraging you throughout the whole journey.

Speaker 1 57:21

Yeah, pushing your buttons the ones that you need to be pushed in a very personalized way. Yeah, my chat GPT sends me those notifications every day to work on my business based on our history of communication. So that's you know. Definitely, when I get a notification on my phone like can I, you know, do the work today, and then it starts like I'll reach out to three people, let's boost those sales, yeah, that's kind of really cool. That's how I'm gamifying my business journey these days. Thank you, kai, for sharing again all this practical wisdom to motivate ourselves, to motivate people in our companies and lead to the desired outcomes while, you know, having fun and enjoying ourselves. I think the last couple of questions around your work and how people can learn and apply your work into their lives, with a professional or personal. You wrote two books, as far as I know, the ones that I read, actionable Gamification and the latest one, 10 Hours of Play. Which one would you suggest people start if they want to learn how to apply gamification principles with that life of work?

Speaker 2 58:42

Yeah, so it depends on what they're focused on. If they have a project, they want to apply gamification design to improve their product, motivate their sales teams whatnot? The first book, actionable Gamification, is still the best bet to go. It sold over 100,000 copies. It has product, you know. Motivate their sales teams whatnot? The first book, actionable Game Vacation, is still the best bet to go. You know, sold over 100,000 copies. It teaches the eight core drives that we cover in this call. But if they're not sure, they don't have an immediate project, but they just want their lives to be better. They want to have a gamified life, they want to turn their life into a game and, you know, know, achieve what we call the legendary success in life. Yeah, um, and have fun doing it. And the second book, 10 000 hours of play, uh, would be, uh, the the good book to check out okay.

Speaker 1 59:25

And where should people go to find your books?

Speaker 2 59:28

buy them yeah, so the easiest way to find everything I'm doing is on my website, yukaicom.

Speaker 1 59:35

If you search for yeah, we're going to link it.

Speaker 2 59:39

Yeah, and if you forget, you go to Google and you search for GameCation Expert, GameCation Framework. It should be, you know, the top 100 organic results, but they're also on Amazoncom, and so Amazon, I believe you search GameCation, my first book, is the first result, depending on region it is, and then you know again, if you search my name, you catch on Amazon, you'll find both books too.

Speaker 1 59:58

Yeah, when would you want people to go, though? Like to start their journey? I know you also have your 14 day course that I'm actually going through right now getting your emails. Is that the place to start? Or you prefer people to read your books, maybe watch your TED talk. Where would you like people to start the journey.

Speaker 2 1:00:20

So I think youguyshowcom is the best because it's the hub of everything I'm doing. So then people can decide, hey, I want to check out the TEDx or do the email course, or read the book, or join a palaces prime which has, you know, a thousand videos of my, my highest level work. It's up to them. And also, if I write more books to the future, I have more projects, all this stuff that will continuously be updated.

Speaker 1 1:00:43

So I think, you guys, showcom is the best starting point of the journey um, cool, so we're gonna make sure to link all of that in the show notes. A couple of last things. I want you to, yeah, to think about one thought or insight that you'd like listeners to take away. If there was nothing else but like this insight, what would you like people to remember?

Speaker 2 1:01:10

uh, I think the main insight is what we call human focused design or a function focused design.

Speaker 1 1:01:18

We'll love that.

Speaker 2 1:01:20

So, which is basically, whenever you think about motivating people, including yourself, don't optimize on efficiency, optimize on their human drives. Why they want to do it? Because most things out there, they assume people already have motivation and it makes it easy, usable and intuitive but people might not care at all, Whereas human focused design assumes that no one has motivation at this point and everything they see is about making them wanting to do it a bit more, making them feel curious, making them feel creative or higher meaning and purpose.

Speaker 2 1:01:55

So if you assume that you're just like a game, before they start playing, no one cares about anything in the game. How do you make them care in every step? So don't assume. People have motivation. You want to be human focused.

Speaker 1 1:02:06

Yeah, you know, make people care. It's like, you know, with the eye companies are trying. Well, let me give my people every bit of technology and they will use it. Yeah, if they don't care, they won't. So so, such an important insight, love it and I. I saw it somewhere on your instagram and like reposted yeah, that's, that's gold. And another question what one action you'd like people to take to feel the effects of gamification in their life, like, if there is one thing they do differently to again feel the benefits of it that they can start getting, like, what would that be?

Speaker 2 1:02:49

I think the first thing that people could do is have some extra core drive seven, unpredictability and curiosity in their lives. So, either the tasks they do or the rewards they would give themselves afterwards, uh, write down a reward schedule attached to a dice or two, two dice, um, and you know just, you roll the dice to see what you do and then when you finish this, like you roll, the dice to see what you can do and then when you finish this, like you roll the dice, see, okay, what is the reward?

Speaker 2 1:03:15

Take a break, play a game or eat some candy or whatever it is. I think this is an easy way to first get you the mindset of thinking like a designer right, like you're designing your behavior and act activity. And it's a easy, fast way with no technology. Just, you know, I think getting a dice is pretty easy and I think that may or may not, depending on how you design it, solve your problems. But I think that's a great way to start you on the journey, to start experimenting more and adding more of those eight core drives into experience. Later you can find a game master, which is a friend that helps you motivate yourself activities right, and then you can start recording how you do things. So so it grows from there. But you want to start somewhere and the first step should always level. One should always be very easy. So that's my number one suggestion.

Speaker 1 1:04:04

Yeah, that's an amazing suggestion. I also read somewhere in the book like workplace studies where they gave people rewards on sort of predictable schedule and then the other group was getting rewards on unpredictable and they were different and they never knew. So the variable rewards system worked a lot, a lot better.

Speaker 2 1:04:21

So that curiosity and predictability unpredictability, uh, creates more excitement, but okay, caveat, if it's attached to small bursts of activity, low, low commitments. If, if you do something very easy and you pull a slot machine bar, it's fun, you do something easy. But if you have to do something for nine months and then you get to see what you win, then you're like well, I don't know what I'm going to win, so maybe it's not worth it, so I don't want to even do it because I don't know what the reward is. So you want to make sure the task that you, that you're thinking about, is a short one that you can complete in a short amount of time.

Speaker 1 1:04:54

Yeah, human psychology is complicated. That's another insight. But again, yukai, thank you so much for so much wisdom, information into human motivation and design, for human motivation and human focused design and how we can create a better world when we learn how to push our own buttons. I highly suggest listeners to check out your website, find all of your work there like Google, you, you're so easily findable and then, yes, apply all these principles to make what listeners want to do fun so they create epic life journey and better world while doing that. So, thank you, kai. So appreciate you and your work and your time.

Speaker 2 1:05:37

I appreciate your work and your time too.