The new era of Gamification and Human-Focused Design optimizes for motivation and engagement over traditional Function-Focused Design. Within the industry, studies on game mechanics and behavioral psychology have become proliferate. However, few people understand how to merge the two fields into experience designs that reliably increases business metrics and generates a return on investment. Gamification Pioneer Yu-kai Chou takes reader on a journey to learn his twelve years of obsessive research in creating the Octalysis Framework, and how to apply the framework to create engaging and successful experiences in their product, workplace, marketing, and personal lives.

Effective gamification is a combination of game design, game dynamics, behavioral economics, motivational psychology, UX/UI (User Experience and User Interface), neurobiology, technology platforms, as well as ROI-driving business implementations. This book explores the interplay between these disciplines to capture the core principles that contribute to good gamification design.

The goal for this book is to become a strategy guide to help readers master the games that truly make a difference in their lives. Readers who absorb the contents of this book will have literally obtained what many companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to acquire. The ultimate aim is to enable the widespread adoption of good gamification and human-focused design in all types of industries.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: When the Surreal Blends into our World

Chapter 2: The PBL Fallacy

Chapter 3: The Octalysis Framework

Chapter 4: Putting Gamification in its Place

Chapter 5: The First Core Drive - Epic Meaning & Calling

Chapter 6: The Second Core Drive - Development & Accomplishment

Chapter 7: The Third Core Drive - Empowerment of Creativity & Feed back

Chapter 8: The Fourth Core Drive - Ownership & Possession

Chapter 9: The Fifth Core Drive - Social Influence & Relatedness

Chapter 10: The Sixth Core Drive: Scarcity & Impatience

Chapter 11: The Seventh Core Drive - Unpredictability & Curiosity

Chapter 12: The Eighth Core Drive - Loss & Avoidance

Chapter 13: Left Brain vs Right Brain Core Drives

Chapter 14: The Mysteries of White Hat and Black Hat Gamification

Chapter 15: Understanding Other Gamification and Behavioral Frameworks with Octalysis

Chapter 16: Level I Octalysis in Action

Chapter 17: Designing a project from scratch with Octalysis

Chapter 18: The Journey Goes On

About the Author

Yu-kai Chou is an Author and International Keynote Speaker on Gamification. He is the Original Creator of the gamification framework: Octalysis, and the author of Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. He is the Founder of The Octalysis Group and has been a regular speaker/lecturer on gamification worldwide, including at organizations like Google, Stanford University, LEGO, TEDx, SxSW, Gamified India, Huawei, the Innovation Center in Denmark, Kingdom of Bahrain, and many more. Yu-kai was one of the earliest pioneers in Gamification, starting his work in the industry in 2003. In 2015, Yu-kai was rated #1 among the Gamification Gurus Power 100 by RISE, and was also awarded Gamification Guru of the Year Award for both 2014 and 2015 by the World Gamification Congress based in Europe. He has helped a variety of companies, from seed stage startups to Fortune 500 companies such as LEGO, Accenture, eBay, Huawei, Fidelity, AIG Japan, Verizon, HP, Ericsson, Cisco, Wells Fargo, and more. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The World Journal, Business Insider, PBS, and many more. Yu-kai is a follower of Christ, and his other hobbies include playing/teaching chess, writing/playing string quartet pieces, writing Chinese novels, rating high quality movies, though he rarely has time for these hobbies.