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Beyond Gamification. Designing up Maslow’s Pyramid.

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Paul Keith:

Not alot of content but interesting premise. The notable tidbits (entire text below is from the article):

http://www.nikkichau.com/2011/10/08/beyond-gamification-designing-up-maslow-pyramid/

The outpouring of love for Steve Jobs over the past couple days is summed up by Techcrunch writer John Biggs: “Apple and Jobs brought something to technology that it didn’t have before he began – irrationality.”
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But should we really characterize the intense consumer devotion to the iPhone as an addiction? A recent experiment that I carried out using neuroimaging technology suggests that drug-related terms like “addiction” and “fix” aren’t as scientifically accurate as a word we use to describe our most cherished personal relationships. That word is “love.” – Martin Lindstrom
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Apple has aggressively worked on accessibility for users who are blind or deaf or have other limitations, an effort that makes no “business sense” but surely makes human sense if you read that or any of the countless other articles about what a boon the iPhone has been to the blind.
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Here’s my take: people love their Apple products, so they love the person(s) making it possible. Beyond word processing and making spreadsheets, they have an emotional connection to their devices. But don’t take my words for it. It turned out through neuroimaging that You Love Your iPhone. Literally.

My questions: What are examples of products in each of Maslow’s level? What do they do? What are their characteristics? What works? What doesn’t work? Most importantly, how do we design to serve up the pyramid, all the way to the Self-Actualization level?

IainB:
Well, whilst this might sound like "a great idea", it might not be such a great idea in practice for two reasons at least.

In the first place: "gamification" is just another bullsh*t bingo buzzword. - i.e., it sounds great, but it means nothing except maybe what you want it to (per Tweedledum and Tweedledee), and so lacks definition and is ambiguous. Thus, when used in a rational argument it can contribute to invalidating the argument, so it is a probably a piece of BS best avoided if when attempting to make a rational argument or make some clear communication.

In the second place: even if you avoid the BS and thus risky word "gamification", in business terms there could be a great deal of risk involved for any business attempting to base a marketing strategy on "Maslow’s Pyramid" as a market model.

The latter would be because Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an imaginary thing. It is an artificial theoretical construct in the domain of psychology and apparently is still not necessarily substantiated by any scientific research/proof (since 1943). In fact, the reverse would seem to be the case - i.e., the validity of the theory has apparently been brought into question by some research.

It would therefore seem as though no rational basis exists for believing that Maslow's HON bears much of relevance to actual human buying behaviours.

However, one thing that is certain about buying behaviour is that it is irrational, which is why some of the most successful marketing works - it manipulates people at a deep subconcious level - e.g., you might buy an Apple iPhone or an iPad because (say) you just "like" it or believe it is "just great technology" or worship Steve Jobs/Apple, or all of these things, and then you might only later try to rationalise your decision to buy it.

This would seem to have more to do with people's apparent capacity for irrational belief  - e.g., religion: in an imaginary invisible supreme being - than it does with getting something that supports their imagined (QED) "hierarchy of needs", unless of course you consider that maybe we might all need to believe in imaginary things - e.g., such as fairies (hat tip to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

Having said this, there is nothing necessarily wrong in irrationally buying something - e.g., if for no other reason than because you like it. It is quite human! For example, I bought the car I have today because, of the various options I could afford at the time, I really liked this one a lot more than the others. The buying clincher was that I could negotiate a significant extra trade-in discount from the dealer (cost is always a major deciding factor for me).

40hz:
It's my understanding that motivational models may have relevance when it comes to encouraging category purchasing behaviors. Such as deciding whether to redecorate a home or go on an extended vacation. But they have not been all that effective in predicting or motivating a specific behavior within a category.

Basically that's saying you can lead a thirsty horse to the water - but you can't make him order a Dr. Pepper. :)

A lot of papers came out in the late 70s that got into that since it was a time when much of Mallow's work was being openly questioned. One representative example can be found here. The study that started the ball rolling was some research done by Mahmoud Ahmed Wahba and Lawrence Gail Bridwelland who authored a paper entitled Maslow reconsidered: a review of research on the need hierarchy theory. That's the one I read for my behavioral psych course. (I did a search, hoping to find a copy up on the web. Unfortunately, it will cost you about $42 to get a PDF since the paper's text is not available online.)

One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?
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Maybe Nikki Chau could better answer her own question if she did a tiny bit of scholarly research and perhaps a little bit less meditating on the subject?

Because right now it seems that question is equivalent to asking if it's crazy trying to use a paint brush to drive a screw.

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+1 w/IainB on "gamification." Ugly construct that word is. Especially when, in the context it's being used in, you could just as easily have said 'manipulation.'
 8)

IainB:
One more thing: Am I crazy for thinking about this in product design?
--- End quote ---

Maybe Nikki Chau could better answer her own question if she did a tiny bit of scholarly research and perhaps a little bit less meditating on the subject?

Because right now it seems that question is equivalent to asking if it's crazy trying to use a paint brush to drive a screw.
-40hz (October 18, 2011, 08:07 AM)
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It seems to me that Nikki Chau is not crazy, just normally irrational - and possibly a tad lazy as well, intellectually, for apparently not doing the (any?) necessary research.
I suspect that she might not in fact be able to better answer her own question - even if she had done some research and less meditating.

It is generally true that we think with what we know, and we use language (one of the things we know) to articulate that thinking and communicate it. If you don't know all that much (not done the research) and if you use use poorly-defined or ambiguous terminology both to think with and to communicate that thinking, then you are likely to end up with the sort of sloppy/muddled thinking that seems to be in evidence in Nikki Chau's article - i.e., it is half-baked.

The analogy of trying to use a paint brush to drive a screw conjours up an amusing image, but it's probably not precise enough. A paintbrush is at least a tangible, concrete thing, whereas the idea of using Maslow's hierarchy of needs to drive product design would akin to using an abstract (intangible figment) of our imagination as a screw driver - Telekinesis anyone?

In my book, the potential for critical thinking of anyone who would blog about yoga is arguably suspect anyway.
Excuse me whilst I go and practice my yogic flying.

Paul Keith:
Lol, you guys made so many great points it's hard to know where to begin.

I can't really speak for Nikki obviously but as I'm also one of those who refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs loosely in my own writing, I think what makes it so appealing to refer to that concept is not so much the existence of the hierarchy itself but the final step of self-actualization which depending on how you interpret it has elements of buzz and manipulation to it too.

In many ways both self-actualization and gamification has elements to it that make it both buzz words and yet "above buzz words compared to most buzz words".

Two examples of these types of words are Apple and social media.

Almost everyone has their opinion on Apple here already and I really don't want to touch this because I'm not really an Apple fan so let's go with social media.

If you look at social media, it almost started hand in hand with the buzz word of Web 2.0. One thing was different in the two words though. Web 2.0's legacy is what exactly? No one really knows. What is social media's legacy on the other hand? It boosted the discovery of news on the internet and made it easier to consume. You could say the latter didn't have any direct impact but while I do feel Digg was overrated, it's hard to deny Digg's presence in influencing Reddit and other voting services which in turn resulted in things like Twitter and Facebook "Like" buttons as stuff like social media sharing buttons spread around the concept is what then boosted the motivation to develop such concepts as social curation and cross-sharing further than what designers and coders would have intended.

In many ways, this I think was the heart of the blogger's post. Yes, she could have done her research but I think at the same time, if she had done her research, it would simply have led her to omit mentioning Maslow's hierarchy of needs at all.

It even applies to marketing. In my opinion there's two overlaying definition of marketing. One marketing is the attempt of making lesser products look, sound, feel better beyond the capabilities of aesthetic design. This is the manipulation part. Especially the math aspect which goes into lengths to profile people as habitual yet easily predictable by statistics species. The other marketing though is the attempt at making an overlooked product become more looked upon by connecting it with people's needs.

In my opinion the great companies corporations often mix these two and Apple is no exception. Even if there were some questions to Apple's marketing earlier on, the latter history of Apple cannot be denied for popularizing and revitalizing the portable music market and the tablet/ppc market.

Which goes back to the heart of what the blogger posted. Even if Maslow's theory is less of a theory and more of a hypothesis, what makes the writer's post notable is that she did not say let's design "around" Maslow's theory but rather let's design "up". Up again involving the wording of self-actualization which Wikipedia quotes as:

"the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."

Does this sound like a call to manipulate people? I feel so. Especially when she's calling for consumer products to be the equivalent of what fulfills the identity of a person in it's most upmost peak and equating it with feelings. The problem though is this: many people are already manipulated.

If the internet goes down, there are people like me who feel taken out of our realities. If our favorite software breaks, many people would emotionally feel something cast down upon them whether it's anger or frustration or depression regardless of how momentary. And it exists because even without marketing, what are the goals of a designer? What are the goals of a coder? Many of those elements overlap with the goals of marketing especially when it comes to user interface design. In fact, often times it's worse. The lack of marketing is what leads cultures like many Linux distroes to simply offer a Mac looking product if it's what's consider aesthetically appealing. Then if a netbook design comes out and becomes popular, there's a Linux based design optimized for netbooks. (Which is really just saying they have big and bulgy icons)

Which leads us back to the buzz words. Yes, gamification is bad. Especially the Zynga kind. At the same time, prior to gamification, few services even dabbled in gamification. The ones that do, people often delegate to such popular services that the future designers try to "copy" or "plagiarize" from those services the design rather than offer up a concept that applies to the heart of why those designs work. Take Gmail's star and "labelling" or take Twitter's "follow" button or take Facebook's "collect your friend" concept. These preluded gamification's popularity but at the same time these are the origins for what would make the buzz word more than a buzz word.

Finally, this is at the heart in my opinion of anything that tries to say "design up". Ignorant or not, this is akin to a customer saying "Please I don't know why I want this but there's something about this that I want. Please try to do something about it even though I don't know what it is." In a scenario such as this, the customer is the one asking to be manipulated. But maybe you don't want people like Nikki to be your customer. Especially as freeware and donationware doesn't have customers but rather have users. The problem with this statement though is that most of the freeware/donationware coders either then wonder why people use or know their products less which then makes them turn around and be happy that a manipulative media like a popular blog would then blog and advertise that their program exists. The culture then tries to eat their own cake and have it too and opts instead to try cheaper copies of already popular software and then it's the Apple that then gets people to pay attention and then if there's enough demand, the designers then tries to go around their perspectives by trying to design a software that may not copy Apple's look and feel but which they then would try to offer on the Iphone or the Android. Why? Because they either eventually hop over or they get accused of not taking their userbase' needs into consideration. Needs that by then have validly move towards less marketing or user interface models and into things like a coder simply making a software available on the most used operating system. This doesn't mean that the flaws of gamification and Maslow can't be a topic especially since a writer brought it into the forefront - but at the same time, why not go further? Why not criticize what the writer got wrong but also set things straight on how to help the topic maker reach their needs while pointing out how it doesn't even need Maslow or gamification or how it's already been done and how it can be done? Of course I'm not demanding anything. Nope. This isn't even a request. Just adding my own input to why this flawed article is still interesting and why the quotes have notable tidbits.

As far as the paint brush and the screw analogy goes, it falls apart because the writer is not talking about working or building on an object but building up to an object. It'd be more like a basic question on how we can improve both the design of the paint brush and the screw so that more people would understand the history and the needs and the origins of the different terminologies behind tasks surrounding those tools without having to hope to know a screw or paint brush expert. Especially people who simply want to get on with their lives and paint or screw something. If you then notice, the optimal solution to this problem ends up being far different from the premise of a problem. In both the screw and the paint brush dilemma, the web developers who built the technology behind a wiki and whoever was responsible for popularizing Wikipedia to people who then know about the details behind each screw and each paint brush ends up delivering the more optimized need rather than the carpenter who looks down upon a fool using a paint brush as a screw. Not that you need Wikipedia nor is Wikipedia the best source for information on the internet for screws and paintbrushes. It's application as an introduction to everything simply manipulates most user to use the pages in it as their priority much as many manipulate themselves into buying into the first few SEO'd pages on the subject less they know of a screw or paint brush expert.

Edit: Damn it! I just realize I could have shortened my reply by simply referencing back to how a "personal desktop computer" was once merely a buzz word too. So sorry about this.

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