Rahul Vora: preference

Transcript context

…Got it. And we had Sean on the podcast and he describes this method in detail. So folks want to explore the Sean Ellis test. Listen to that podcast. We'll link to it. OK, next topic that I'm excited to get your take on is is game design versus gamification. This is one of the more unique ways you think about designing product. And when people hear you talk about this, they think it's like, oh, gamification, making things like games. Oh, Zynga, Farmville. I don't want to do that. We actually have a really different perspective on how to make why you need to think about game design as you design products. Talk about your insights there. Yeah, well, I strongly believe that we should make business software like we make games because when we make products like we make games, people find them fun. They tell their friends. They fall in love with them. It's another way, actually, of backing into where we opened this conversation, which is you're making a brand. You're giving reason for word of mouth. It's actually an altogether different kind of product development. So how do we do this? Well, as you said, it's not gamification. That doesn't work. Game design works, but game design is not gamification. It's not, for example, simply taking your product and adding points, levels, trophies, or badges. And to understand why gamification does not work, We actually have to start with human motivation. And there's a very interesting study from Stanford, I think, that demonstrates the difference perfectly. In the 1970s, these Stanford researchers recruited children who were aged three to four years old. And all of these kids were generally pre-interested in drawing. Some kids were told they would get a reward, a certificate with a gold seal and a ribbon. And some kids were not told about any reward and they did not even expect one or didn't know of one. Now, each child was then invited into a separate room to draw for six minutes, and afterwards they would either get the reward or not. And over the next few days, the children were observed to see how much they would continue to draw by themselves. So the children with no reward, they spent 17% of their time drawing. But the children who expected a reward, sadly, they only spent 8% of their time drawing. The very presence of a reward halved their motivation. So what's happening? What's happening here is researchers differentiate intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. With intrinsic motivation, we do things because they are inherently interesting and satisfying. And with extrinsic motivation, we do things to earn rewards and to achieve external goals. And that's the problem with rewards is they just massively undermine intrinsic motivation. And that's why gamification doesn't work. And when gamification does work, it's because the underlying experience was already designed like a game. What makes something, I guess, like a game? I know Superhuman is really good at this of just like your inbox zero quest that you're on. I guess just to make that a little more real, what is game design? What does that mean to you? Like what makes it feel like a game?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.