Espen Haftorn Gonzalez

Gameplay

As our app is a gamification, it makes sense to look at it from a game-perspective from time to time. This raises a question: what types of actions do we make our users do? Using game language, what is the gameplay of our app?

As stated in earlier blog posts, our players will recieve tasks to complete. These tasks are given to them by other players. Therefore it is difficult to say anything specific about them. However, we know all the tasks will be something the players have to complete outside our app, that will hopefully have visible results in their environments. Examples include doing the dishes, cleaning the bedroom, mowing the lawn and doing homework. These types of tasks will form the core gameplay of our gamification.

Since the tasks are created by the players themselves, someone has to take responsibility of creating them. This will mean keeping track of what needs to be done, creating and distributing this into tasks in our app, and keeping up with wether they are completed. Our app will help with the last part, sending a notification whenever a task gets checked as completed by another player. The responsibility of keeping track of what needs to be done and creating tasks for this in our app should be split between the players old enough to handle it. We want to minimize the burden of this by making it easy to set up tasks that repeat either weekly or monthly. Setting up tasks can also be made into tasks in itself, so that the players that take this responsibility are rewarded for it. However the family decides to handle it, this management of tasks will form a secondary gameplay element in our app.

The final type of gameplay in our app will be formed from the reward system. As we hope this might work as a sort of mini-simulation of a market, someone will need to maintain it. This can mean creating new rewards and setting and adjusting prices. This is closely linked to the creation of tasks, as prices need to be set according to the player’s income. We hope that keeping prices balanced can be an interesting challenge to our older players.

To summarize, the core gameplay tasks of our gamification is to complete the tasks assigned to you in the app. Creating and assigning tasks, along with creating and adjusting rewards and their prices will form secondary gameplay elements for some of our players.

Game mechanics

Our app is a gamification made to help families structure their everyday lives. The word “gamification” implies that we have borrowed elements typical to games. What are these elements in our app?

Our entire app is set up almost like a quest system in an RPG, even if we don’t present it like that. You will be given tasks to complete, and earn currency when you do. In our app, this currency is simply called Points. These points can be exchanged in our app for different rewards in real life. As said in earlier blogposts, it is up to the family to create both tasks and rewards, and decide their worth. We hope the mechanics around this will give all the players a reason to engage with our app. Parents should be invested in keeping the prices as fair as possible, while children might want to look to exploit low prices if they show up. Our hope is that this will create an interesting back-and-forth between parents and children, raising engagement on both sides.

In addition to points and rewards, our app is customizable. This will be further elaborated on in blogposts about the app’s design, but a short summary will be included here. While setting up, players choose a color. The app will color itself after this, making the app feel personal. This color will also represent them to other players in the calendar and other places. Players can also set a profile picture that will appear in their profile page. A lot of game-players love customization in game, and we hope this will resonate with players of our app as well.

Using our App

It is important for us to understand how our users will interact with our app, and how it will change their behaviour. To do this, we think of our app and our users as a system, so we can try to understand how it works.

Below is a CLD (Causal Loop Diagram) showing how we hope this system will look.

From glancing over this CLD one notices quickly that there is a lot more reinforcing loops (R1 – R4) than balancing ones (B1 & B2). This is a good sign, as it points to an increase in engagement over time. All of the loops visit motivation directly, which is also good, as boosting motivation is the most important thing for us when it comes to gaining engagement. We see that completing a task increases motivation (R2), as completing something is rewarding in itself. Completing a task also leads to fewer incomplete tasks, which also is motivating (R3). Completing a task gives the user points, boosting motivation even further (R1). Enough points can be exchanged for other rewards, which also works to mothivate the user (R4).

One element of danger in this CLD is the incomplete tasks. Having a lot of tasks hanging over the user will work to demotivate. It is important that these tasks do not pile up. This illustrates the importance of scaffolding, as discussed in an earlier blog post.

This CLD shows well how we hope using our app will give our users more motivation to complete their tasks, giving their lives structure over time.

Satisfaction of the User

In order for users to keep engaging with our app, we need to make sure they find it useful and helpful. In order to do that, we have looked at the ARCS-model, a well known and tested model in instructional design. For this, the satisfaction part of the model is the most relevant. It lines out a few key thoughts to pay attention to:

Give users the opportunity to apply what they learn.

In our app, the users apply the knowledge they learn all the time, as all the tasks are practical by default. For instance, if the task is to do the dishes, the user immedeately sees the result of their actions. Over time, the results will be felt in the sense that the house is cleaner overall.

Try to tap into the intrinsic motivation of the learner.

We believe it is a fair assumption that most people want some level of structure in their life and their surroundings. Even children enjoy this. We therefore assume the user has a lot of intrinsic motivation already. All we are doing is setting up a framework for the user to achieve this goal they already want. Our app organizes what needs to be done, and gives reminders when necessary, it also provides extrinsic motivators (in the form of points) to give the user that extra push to get out of the couch and actually start working towards that goal.

Provide positive encouragement and reinforcement to motivate the learner throughout the learning process.

Whenever a user checks off a chore, another user must accept that it is complete. This other user gets the option to send a personal message at the same time. We hope this will be used to encourage the user that completed the task. Of course, the app itself provides encouragement, but we believe that personal messages from a loved one will be more meaningful to the users than messages from the app. Simultaneously, this makes it easy to give constructive feedback on how well the task was completed. It makes it easy for a parent to remind the child if they for example forgot to wash a glass. Our system can be contrasted to a more standard rating system – that of giving up to five stars – based on how well the task was completed. Such a system gives a good overview on how well the user is doing, but fails completely to give information on how to improve, something we find extremely important. This also leads into the last point of satisfaction from the ARCS model:

Maintain a sense of of equity with the learners by maintaining consistent standards and measures of success.

Ultimately this responsibility falls on the other users. The expectations parents have for their children usually rise as their age and skill in the specific tasks rises. Here a system like the one with the stars will fall apart, as what was once considered great will no longer be acceptable. We hope and trust that our users are reasonable when choosing wheter or not to approve the tasks of others.

To summarize: We believe our users have a lot of intrinsic motivation to keep structure in their lives, and we try to build on that. The users will always be applying the skills they learn through the app in the real world, and are immediately able to see the results, at least for some tasks. We trust that the users in a family or similar group will give each other positive messages to keep motivation up, but also be clear on when a task was completed poorly. In accordance to the ARCS model, this will keep our users engaged with our app.

Family Manager

Keeping a house tidy is hard work. For a family with children the challenge becomes even greater. Many families want their kids to help out with the chores of everyday living, but motivating kids to do this is difficult. What if there was a tool that made this process easier and even made it fun and rewarding for the whole family?

We are creating an app that helps families structure their everyday tasks, while teaching kids that rewards need to be earned through work. In it, family members can create assignments for each other, that they then have to complete. By completing these tasks the user gains points that later can be traded for rewards. Together, the family decides what these tasks and rewards will be. For a child a task may be to clean their room or do their homework, while a reward may be an ice cream or allowance. The family could also set a collective goal like family trip once they’ve earned enough points as a group.

We focus our user base on families with children, but it’s worth noting that this system can be used by other groups of people as well, like students living together in a dorm.