We’ve created some simple slideshows to walk you through the apps design and functions. The fist slideshow gives you an idea of how to use the app, while the second shows you how to set up and manage tasks and rewards.
You can also test out our prototype for yourself, but keep in mind that some functionality is missing as this is only a prototype that shows the consept. Click anywhere on a page in the app and the clickable items should be marked in blue.
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.
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.
The goal of this app is to create a structured lifestyle for families, teaching them that having a structured lifestyle is beneficial. Having a structured life creates a healthier psychological being (We’ve all heard clean house, clear mind).
One of the issues that may arise in our app is that it purely feeds on the extrinsic motivation of the family. This is an issue because extrinsic motivation can eliminate intrinsic motivation, and that undermines what we want to accomplish. Karl Kapp writes:
Extrinsic motivation is least likely to work and most likely to cause negative effects on intrinsic motivation when the external rewards are functionally superfluous (not needed to engage the learner) and not informative about the student’s level of ability or knowledge level regarding the task.
Karl Kapp, Page 96
We can use this information to make our app more suitable to our goal. Looking at the quote, we can see that these both are the opposite of what Self-Determination Theory builds on.
Self-Determination Theory has three main focus points that has been scientifically proven to build intrinsic motivation. We’re only looking at two, and they are:
A lot of children do feel that chores are boring, and unnecessary, because in the end, the clutter goes “magically” away. To fight this, parents need to be diligent and give the child lots of positive reinforcements, show the importance of the task being done and the result of it.
We’ve implemented a message system, so when a completed task has been done, the person reviewing the task can leave a message. We want the users to use this to express their satisfaction/dis-satisfaction with the result of the task, and we remind the parents to do so, either orally or through a message. This builds on the feeling of competence, showing the user that they’re either doing a good job or is improving.
As said the goal for our app is to create structure for the family, especially the children. To accomplish this, the child needs intrinsic motivation. Using the power of extrinsic motivation correctly, and using Self-Determination theory, This app can create that.
In the profile page, we have a list of statistics the player can see about themselves. I’m going to go into some of the specific statistic, and explain why we’ve added them, and potentially some theory behind it.
Highest Streak / Current Streak
This shows how many days the user has completed all their tasks in a row. The function for this is to show the player progression, and urge them to work hard towards either getting their streak as long as possible, or to beat an already lost streak.
Task Completed the last 7 days
Our goal for this is for the player to see the percentage of tasks done within 7 days. We originally thought that it could be based on the week as a whole (Monday-Sunday), but we considered the fact that there could be a demotivating factor, and could result to a person not wanting to do any more tasks in the rest of the week if they’ve already missed a task. We decided to fix this by not making it week-based, but rather day-based. If the player wants to get a 100% completion rate, they have to do all tasks 7 days in a row. This gives the player motivation to get back to the 100% completion rate by being extra cautious on finishing their tasks.
The reason we decided to make it a percentage is the fact that there could be an aspect of rivalry between players, as there often is between siblings. children may want to be the best and shove it into the other players’ face. The problem with this is that some can’t do as many tasks or have enough responsibility as their older sibling. It would be unfair for them to see on how many tasks completed as anything else than a percentage. We don’t want any player to feel bad about the amount of tasks they have, relative to other players. In short, we want it to be fair for all players.
Total points achieved
Showing how much the player has earned by their hard work is also motivating, and is something that the user can and should be proud of. One thing that people who control the tasks should be aware of, is to try to give the players around the same points. As stated above, rivalry can happen, and could in the end remove motivation from the younger player.
Family Manager 