Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (7 of 90): Applying Octalysis to Waze (b)

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The is the Second Half of the Waze Gamification analysis example. Click Here if you have not seen Episode 6 (the first half of this topic), and Click here to brush up on the Gamification Framework Octalysis.

Transcribed Notes Below on The Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (7 of 90): Applying Level 1 Octalysis to Waze(a)

  • Now is the time for scaffolding.
  • During Scaffolding, that’s when people start to care more about points, cool looking avatars, and leader boards. People also care more about socializing.
  • A sense of scarcity and impatience occupies the user: I want to have that avatar I can’t get!!
  • But more importantly, a sense of ownership and possession takes over.
  • The user eventually learns that Waze is constantly learning about her, her preferences, and her driving habits. You will start to see pop ups that ask, “do you want to drive to work now?” Because it knows you drive to work between 9:30-10am.
  • It also knows whether her favorite type of men are driving close by and exactly where they are.
  • Just kidding. Waze hasn’t gotten itself into the geolocation dating market yet. But it may be neat. Check it out, an 82% match willing to carpool with me to work! Awesome! This is great for busy professions that only have time to date when they are driving to work.
  • Plus, you actually can get the second date very easily…and usually on the same day….when you get off work.
  • Anyway, back to our Octalysis: as we find out that Waze is learning about ourselves, we start to feel that this is “MY WAZE.” The GPS that understands you and caters driving to you. By driving a lot with it, you have established yourself a place in the world of Waze that no one can replicate!
  • And at this point, you start to use Waze even more because you want it to learn more about you!
  • There’s another secret little core drive that takes a place here in why people want to use Waze: curiosity and unpredictability
  • When you see an alert about a cop or trash on the road, there’s a slight mindset in thinking, “I wonder if its going to be there when I get there.”
  • And if you drive for another 10 seconds and you see it, you get an endorphin shot. “It is here!”
  • Of course, when its not, it’s like “meh…maybe next time I find it!” Just like when you lose on a gambling round. There’s a certain type of Reward Loop system here that is similar to loot and drops from RPG Games.
  • Now keep in mind, all this stuff is NECESSARY for an app like Waze, because it is user generated. It’s not a good product on its own, and it continuously needs people to use it actually be a functional product, especially in new cities where there are not a lot of wazers around!
  • I have a good friend who told me, “I use Waze because its useful, not because it has game mechanics and stuff like that.” And my response is that Waze is not useful for those who contribute data. It’s only useful for those who take advantage of such data. And in that sense, GPS apps like Scout is more accurate and can do a lot more, because it doesn’t depend on “user motivation.”
  • If fact, there were 3 times where Waze took me to the entire wrong place and made me late for meeting for 10-40 minutes! If it was any other navigation app, a user’s first thought would be, “dude this is trash. I’m never going to use this again!”
  • But the power of what Waze had accomplished is that many of the users would say, “oh crap! There’s a map flaw! I need to help fix it so that others don’t go to the wrong place too!” How can you get people to do things like just because you are “useful” and not something that is designed to motivate and engage the human mind?
  • And finally. We approach the endgame.
  • The endgame is for power users that have done everything there is to do on Waze and have used it regularly for over a year
  • For these people, their sense of Humanity Hero is no longer with every driver on the street, but to help new wazers help others.
  • At that point, since they have collected a lot of points without caring too much about them, they now can see they are relatively close to something cool, and will try to reach for those hard-to-get virtual goods.
  • Instead of just reporting map errors. they now also help fix the maps so others won’t get confused.
  • They strike up more conversations with fellow wazers and try to build a community, and they also become evangelists to get all their friends to sign up.
  • And of course, with all that custom preference knowledge being built up by Waze, As well as those points, there is a HIGH degree of Loss & Avoidance because endgame users want to avoid the “sunk cost tragedy” where they feel all the time they “invested” into Waze would be wasted. As a result, Waze has a strong sense of user retention (until it takes you to the wrong place again)
  • So now that we have all 8 Core Drives analyzed, lets start to plot things out!
  • So Waze has an Octalysis Score of 244!
  • With this, you can also see what is it strong at and weak at, which part of the brain, and which code drives can improve.
  • Once you have this plotted out, you can often come up with actionable steps to add better game mechanics into the system that seemlessly motivates people to use it even more.
  • If you understood everything I talked about in this episode, congratulations, you now qualify as a Level 1 Octalysis Gamifier.
  • You can now perform simple Octalysis on anything in the market and better gamify your product and services.
  • There is a total of 5 Levels within Octalysis, where Level 5 is ridiculously complex but amazingly powerful to figure every little detail about a Gamification campaign.
  • Alright, that concludes our episode for the Beginner’s Guide to Gamification.

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10 thoughts on “Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (7 of 90): Applying Octalysis to Waze (b)”

  1. I love words and names. For the life of me, I did not get why the app was called “Waze”. Thank you.

  2. Seems to me that if customers start to identify with the product/service, their help in improving its results would have them feeling empowered.

  3. Maan, these LARGE EYES=)) Funny.
    Good example of application, after watching the “a” part this part just underline what Core Drives are working when, depending on the experience phase of the game.

  4. How do you develop Epic Meaning & Calling with your users? It can’t be simply stating that your Epic Mission is in line with your users? I’m guessing narrative contributes, but what other factors contribute?

  5. How do you evaluate user contribution to the product?
    I mean, a product like Waze should, first of all give a professional service like “actually bringing you there” or “serving you the best route” but, if the route is modified by people who don’t always know what they are doing, or don’t really pay attention or even worse, are just interested in the contribution points and the social engagement more than the actual “usefulness” of they contribution, doesn’t this user contribution influence the product in a bad way?
    If i can’t trust the product anymore because not every user is trustworthy or willing to update other’s outdated information, doesn’t this make the whole user contribution part actually a bad thing for the product itself?

    1. That’s where Epic Meaning & Calling comes in. People have no incentive to lie because they believe in the higher cause of a better GPS. Also, if they just tried to push on accuracy, they can’t compete with other large corps that have way more money, so they needed a unique angle – it paid off.

  6. Nice one Yukai, the staring of animals was really funny…….Need to see the video  couple of times to fully understand it…btw, there was a small typo you might want to rectify that! when you are finishing the video (see at 11:21 minutes, the script that appears below says  LEVEL 1 Octalysis Gamifer… it should be “gamifier” not “gamifer” 🙂

  7. AlfredoPrietoMa Haha, I’m glad you are on this journey! Too bad I’m only on Episode 12 (13 coming out soon!) I enjoy seeing your thoughts and comments upon finishing every episode 😉 
    I’ll soon write a post about how I designed my points system on the right 🙂
    Keep being awesome!

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