1. Task 1: Gamification
Brief
Come up with a way to implement gamification that could drive engagement with your core product.
Follow the steps below:
I began rewatching the video on Gamification as I felt this was the part I hadn't focused on during my first watch. I'd been enamored by the game mechanics part at the start and not the part specifically relating to practical gamification applications in the context of UX. There was a lot to take in this week so I'm going to cut myself some slack on this. After reabsorbing the content I went back to my persona to answer the questions.
1.1 Know your Audience
My primary persona, Phil was a skills seeker and needed a convincing reason to volunteer. This persona definitely needed to see what was in it for him and would be using volunteering to further his own agenda. This is not to judge, people get into volunteering for all sorts of reasons. To boil this down to the essentials:
Phil
Phil has slight apathy, wants to gain new skills, wants ways to utilise his existing skill, and wants visibility and recognition of his achievements.
My second persona is Tom, who is more inclined to volunteer than Phil but is a victim of circumstance. He really doesn't know how he could possibly be involved as he's away so much from his local community in the week, commuting on public transport takes up a lot of his time, and this is dead time he feels unproductive and aimless. He also feels a disconnect with his local community but is also apprehensive to get stuck-in in any big way as clubs and societies intimidate him, he'd rather contribute in small ways at first.
Tom
Tom is time-poor, highly connected online but not offline, and feels a disconnect with his local community. He is also intimated by large groups and organisations and feels there is a barrier to entry. He'd rather contribute in small ways online at first and build up to offline involvement.
1.2 Determine what you're gamifying
To determine what elements I could potentially gamify, I initially used the Octalysis framework by Yu-kai Chou (What is gamification, 2020) (figure 2)
The takeaway here is that Phil seems to be more motivated by extrinsic rewards than Tom is. Tom appreciates the "Epic Meaning" of what it is to volunteer but doesn't have the time to put it into practice, he is also motivated by social influences, but this has more to do with integration into a social dynamic gradually, rather than Phils more competitive approach to social engagement and influence. As such Phil would benefit from leaderboards and visibility of others' engagement levels. Tom would also benefit from seeing the communities activity, but rather to inspire and motivate him to contribute. Finally, Phil may also be motivated by loss avoidance as he may feel that he would be missing out on opportunities to upskill if not fully engaged.
1.4 Pick the right rewards
I used the SAPS (Status, Access, Power, and Stuff) ( model as a way of analysing the potential motivators and rewards I could use for my two personas (figure 3).
Looking at all of these on the board, I could see that Phil had many more avenues for reward than Tom, and more of them were extrinsic than Tom's intrinsic, which matched the Octalysis analysis in step 2. The only exception to this is the opportunity for Tom to explore the local community when he does have some time in the form of vouchers and discounts he can redeem, as this will solidify his ties with the local community.
1.4.1 Takeaways
Phil
Phils rewards should include:
Skills earned in the form of visible badges and certificates others can see
Leaderboards of others in the area with the same skill and what they have been volunteering in.
Learning skills and the intrinsic achievement gained from that.
Recognition of milestones achieved and recommendations for volunteering opportunities and the next potential steps
Potentially status further along with his involvement, with time introducing incentives to be more active with decision making and potentially organising his own events for networking purposes once he has seen the benefit.
Tom
Tom's rewards should include:
Having a way to see their contributions grow, like a dashboard. This could be in the form of stages of involvement, from affiliate -> associate -> contributor -> member.
Feel like he is involved in the community giving him a sense of belonging.
The extrinsic reward of discounts or vouchers in the local community from the beneficiaries of the volunteer initiative or the local groups encourages Tom to experience the local community offline.
1.5 Analysis
At first, I was hesitant to jump feet first into gamification as this was a major aspect of my UXO740 project and I was keen to explore other ways of engagement. Both Gareth and Carlos were keen to point out that good UX means you shouldn't have to rely on these kinds of tactics. However, I can see some of the wisdom in using it, particularly if it is done with self-tracking and self-improvement. Badges and points that don't translate to something meaningful in the real world are not worth exploring, but a "track" that the Phil persona could join to upskill, adding visibility of his achievements along that track to all, would be a powerful motivator. Phil would get a sense of pride in earning skills and see value in it so would want a way to show these off. In this regards the volunteering artefact becomes similar to LinkedIn, in that others can endorse skills and upvote Phil for his involvement, it also has an element of LinkedIn learning, where you can show off skills learned.
Tom may be a simpler proposition, a track where he could set his own pace of involvement would mean he is less of a candidate for gamification tactics, but there are elements of self-tracking as he moved to more involvement that could benefit him. The only rewards that may align would be those that tie to the local community but this may be difficult to put into practice. Who would be doing the rewarding, and how would he achieve it?
Why am I taking the gamification aspect so seriously, I've spent hours and hours on this particular part. I feel that it's not gamification per se that I think will work well (especially for Phil) but the ability to track progress, which is so embroiled with gamification.
2. Task 2: Sketching Fundamentals
There were slides missing from this activity so this wasn't encouraged by LJ to do, and instead to focus on the other challenges.
3. Task 3: Design Studio
Brief
Conduct your first design studio for your project:
Look at your research so far and determine the problem to work on [5 minutes]
Sketch six solutions [1 min per solution] Reflect on your ideas in the context of your research and self-critique [20 minutes]
Iterate on your ideas [1 min per solution]
Reflect and decide on a way forward [10 minutes]
I tried so hard to be disciplined with the design studio, I even used my Pomodoro timer (which annoyed and distracted me with its ticking the second I set it off). Here are some of the initial sketches and the subsequent concepts they produced:
Epic Meaning
This concept was heavily inspired by the Octalysis stuff. The design with the call to arms is too literal, but how would this work in practice? Inspirational stories? Perhaps with an emphasis on the ones closest to the user's priorities or passions? So they prioritised results at the top? Stories about starting off small might resonate with “Tom” and how they increased their involvement over time. Maybe show timeframes and timelines?
Dashboard of the users volunteering efforts
A dashboard of involvement is a great idea, but what would it contain?
Volunteers hours attained? Weekly/monthly/yearly/of all time?
Types of skills earned
Progress on skills and opportunities to fill the skills gaps
Connections
Badges/points (and if so why)
Search Functionality
Results from the search for a volunteering opportunity could have a percentage match to the user's goals, more relevant ones are returned first and are higher on the list. There could also be a filter to match specific goals and users' passions or the types of volunteer opportunities (offline/online/manual labour etc)
There could also be an override search with new search criteria, with the option to set this as the new default when searching
Onboarding
The user could be presented with two options to sign up:
Are they looking to up-skill (Phil)
Are they looking to become more familiar with their local community (Tom) - Casual involvement? - Deeper investment?
From here the experiences could branch out in different directions. There would need to be a way to swap tracks halfway through the experience if the user decided they want to focus on a different priority and not be a victim of being locked into a specific track.
The experience should also reinforce that volunteering is a Nobel thing that they’re doing even if it's not their primary motivator, just in case they do switch tracks and find the tonal shift jarring.
Progress and a Job Well done
Users will need to see progress on the actual volunteering opportunities if they span more than a few days. They also should be congratulated for a job well done when completing a volunteer initiative. Finally, there could be a subsequent screen with a
"What next?" - with a list of those groups looking for the skills you’ve now earned.
Iteration
I then iterated on the concepts and fused a couple of the ideas together namely the dashboard and the "What Next" concepts to come up with something that I can only describe as LinkedIn for volunteers. The fusion of these two produced an idea where the user could be endorsed for skills earned by other volunteers or volunteer group leaders and could see the progress of the project/s they were currently working on. These probably wouldn't all be on the same screen in the final iteration as it's a lot to take in all at once, but it certainly helped flesh out the feature set. This design particularly speaks to the Phil Persona and I am finding developing concepts for him much easier than for Tom.
4. Task 4: Wireframing
Brief
Dig out your user flow from last week.
Using any ideas you may have come up with in your design studio (or not), start wireframing the screens needed to facilitate that flow.
They can be just paper sketches for now.
This felt like an odd change of pace compared to the other challenges and I get the distinct feeling someone (either me or whoever set the challenge) has messed up here. All the challenges this week have related to the concept we've been generating. In my case, it appears to be evolving into a skills builder/assigner for volunteers with elements similar to LinkedIn. But this challenge directly references the user flow from last week - which I based on my Llyods Banking App (Lloyds Banking Group, n.d.). The flow related to making a payment transfer had nothing to do with the concepts I had produced in the challenge before so I'm not sure how to incorporate point 2. I was left confused. Is this another case of simply practicing the techniques, because I guarantee I will have to go back and create wireframes and wire flows for my concept at some point? Will I need to create user flows for this as well? I feel like I'm bouncing back and forth. In some respect, this is a good thing, as I'm still not 100% clear on the layouts. But I am itching to get something concrete (and slightly more formal) on the page. For now, I used it as a practice exercise.
I went with the advice in point 3 of the brief and used paper and pen for the wireframes. I dug out my mobile wireframe sketchbook and used a ballpoint pen and a Pantone marker. One thing I did struggle with was communicating the flow via the pad. As I was restricted to 6 per page, I found it difficult to show the flow easily over a page turn. I think these layout pads are great for uniformity and getting things down quickly, but I will probably move on to a tool like Balsamic or Figma for future wireframes.
References
BROWN Clementine. 2021. ‘Week 4:Gamification.’ Canvas Falmouth
University [online] Available at: https://learn.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/283/pages/week-4-gamification [accessed 13/02/23].
Lloyds Banking Group. 2022. Lloyds Bank Mobile Banking (Version 513318313) [Mobile application software]. Retrieved from https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/lloyds-bank-mobile-banking/id469964520
What is gamification?. 2022 . The Interaction Design Foundation. Interaction Design Foundation. Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/gamification [accessed 13/02/23].
Figures
Figure 1: BROWN, Clementine. 2021. Game Thinking Mechanics From: https://learn.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/283/pages/week-4-gamification
Figure 2: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Octalysis Framework for Tom and Phil
Figure 3: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. SAPS Model for Persona's Tom and Phil
Figure 4: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Initial Design studio sketched related to volunteer location and a call to 'epic meaning'
Figure 5: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Initial Design studio sketched related to searching a search results
Figure 6: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Initial Design studio sketched related to searching a search results
Figure 7: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Initial Design studio sketched related to skills dashboard
Figure 8: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023.Wireframes of Llyods banking app's payment process
Figure 9: CLARKE, Daniel. 2023. Additional Wireframes of Llyods banking app's payment process
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