CrapHammer

Passion and Content Creation (Red Nation)

 

I talk a lot about passion and "the most passionate."

I do so because I believe it is a critical component to building vibrant and healthy communities, brands and movements.

And by studying the most passionate, we can learn things about our products, our organizations and our communities that we never considered possible.

But it requires us to rethink how we define our audience.

It's no longer about demographics, no matter what the research company says or how many technographic reports we run.

Which is not to say demographics don't matter.

Demographics tell us not to be surprised that a bunch of middle aged guys love sports.

What it doesn't tell us is who is likely to become a passionate producer of unique content.

It doesn't give us any insight into who is developing authority or a growing audience of their own.

A couple of weekends back, I spent a few hours with 3 guys who spend their free time railing against the Toronto Football Club.  

It's hard to spend more than 5 minutes with them and not think they are anti-Toronto FC.

But I'd say that these guys are actually just really passionate about great soccer.  

And they are frustrated that their local team is not being setup to win.

So they started recording their drunken rants post game.

And something happened.

Other people shared their views and started subscribing.

They recently broke the 2,000 subscribers mark and have over 20,000 listens to date.

I was given a free seat for the game.  The seat they reserve for the writers they get to do the blog post writeup for each episode of their show (in trade for a seat to the game.)

These guys are no longer just a bunch of guys venting about the game - they are now trusted personalities on this subject.

I'd go so far as to say they have blurred the line between consumer and professional.

When I arrived at their "house of operations" post game for a beer and for the podcast recording, I could only gawk as they set into well-rehearsed motion.

A spare bedroom was quickly transformed into a full blown recording studio with giant folding baffles they made themselves, wall art that upon closer inspection is actually a set of hanging sound reducers and two Audio-technica mics hacked into Garage Band.

Here's a link to the podcast.  If you are into the content and stick around, you'll hear me around the 8 minute mark and then yelling in from time to time as I get drunk in the background.

Dark Clouds over Toronto

Stephe Perry, Ian Clark (Sparky), Tim Vickery (and on this episode, moi).

 

[Image credit: wvs (note that wvs is my FAVORITE Toronto photography.  Bar none.]

 

 

Design for Participation

Mike Arauz's slideshare presentation on "Design for Networks" is brilliant.

Design for Networks

His thinking in the above is only surpassed by his very own post on the same topic.

I'm honored to know Mr. Arauz and pray one day we have real drinks as he keeps tantalizing me with his drink mixing tweets.

Mike's framework brought me back to some earlier blog conversations he had initiated around systems of rewards. ¹

He was exploring game design and behavioral psychology to understand how to create rewards that incent ongoing engagement and even addictive behaviors.  Why we love to play some games for hours on end.

The answer was a very academic approach to "combine unexpected rewards together with reward mechanics that are clear and predictable" to best achieve sustained and steady engagement with our audiences.

What I love about what Mike has done in his latest presentation is he's managed to make a cohesive and powerful argument for relegating "engagement" to it's proper place in the digital landscape - the closet of less important measures. All hail the belittling of engagement!

So in a world where the real game is driving participation, what reward mechanics should we be putting in place?

In "Drive," Daniel Pink outlines the dilemma of external rewards in what he calls motivation 1.0/2.0. ²

"CARROTS AND STICKS: The Seven Deadly Flaws
1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation.
2. They can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behavior.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior.
6. They can become addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking."

Pink talks about the need to "instead emphasize the elements of deeper motivation - autonomy, mastery, and purpose."  He explores the disconnect between our rewards systems of old which were built around repetitive tasks and the present where people are being challenged to accomplish creative tasks.

Pink cites a study where two Swedish economists tested the effect of incenting people with a monetary reward to donate blood.  The book is full of study and examples galore that show how external rewards often backfire.  In the case above, it led to 20% less people donating than those who were offered no incentive other than doing their social duty. "It tainted an altruistic act and 'crowded out' the intrinsic desire to do something good."

How many contests are plagued by contest hounds who care nothing about the contest, brand or issues at hand?

Interestingly, when a reward is money for a charity, the negative impact to motivation can be avoided (if done properly.)

All of this made me once again question whether the campaigns we build truly reflect the proper motivational or reward structures.  And if we are building systems that drive participation, fueling the intrinsic motivators will be critical to creating systems that have higher levels of participation and more importantly that will self sustaining.

All of this caused me to pencil this slide together.  It's rough and likely anything but complete but it captured some of my thoughts.

   

I thought I would close with my favorite quote from Pink's Drive as it points to the opportunity at hand.

"Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another.  And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives."

Footnotes:

1. Dummies Guide to Behavioral Psychology and Engagement, Craphammer.ca
2. Daniel Pink, "Drive", Riverhead Books, 2009

Dummies Guide to Behavioral Psychology and Engagement

Mike Arauz had a great post on What Behavioral Psychology Can Teach Us About Engagement.

He refers to an article by John Hopson on Behavioral Game Design.

Hopson is attempting to open up the world of behavioral psychology to game designers.

Namely the idea of rewards and contingencies.

Rewards are pretty self explanatory.

And contingencies are simply the "rules governing when rewards are given out."

 

Now we add in the user and their actions.

"there are actions on the part of the participant which provide a reward under specific circumstances."

Hopson defines two types of reward rules (or contingencies): Ratios and Intervals

A ratio example would be a game where you gain XP for every monster you slay. [And after so many monsters you go up a level (reward)]

An interval example would be Space Invaders where power-ups appear based on what level you are on.

 

The biggest breakthrough in behavioral psychology came when B.F. Skinner was running low on rat pellets and began giving out rewards intermittently.

"Experimenting with different regimens of reward, he found that they produced markedly different patterns of response."

And I had to realize we've gotten lazy.

Too many of our experiences tie a reward to every desired action.

A coupon for every friend you delete.

A free VIP gift for becoming a fan.

Points for every tweet!

Or worse, our rewards are completely "random" in nature.

Win a camera!  Win a car!  Thousands of prizes!

Hopson points out that ratios alone lead to long pauses between flurries of activity which can be a challenge if we want to keep people consistently engaged in something.

As such, Arauz is recommending we explore using Variable Ratio Schedules in experience design.

This is a fancy way of saying we combine unexpected rewards together with reward mechanics that are clear and predictable.

"If you want to see sustained steady engagement, then the best approach is a Variable Ratio Schedule. In this approach the number of activities required to trigger a reward changes randomly, so the first time the player may have to kill 10 monsters to get an extra life, but the next time they only have to kill 5. The promise of the next reward is always on the horizon."

I like the idea a lot.  But is it realistic?  Is it actionable?  How would we apply it to an experience we create? 

Lemme know your thoughts.

Seductive Interactions

I recently stumbled across this wonderful presentation from Stephen Anderson titled "Seductive Interactions".  Hat tip to Michael

Seductive Interactions (Idea 09 Version)

View more documents from Stephen Anderson.

Slide 81 is a simple yet powerful statement for why design matters in a world of focus groups, usability testing and efficiency over all things human.

This presentation reminds me of the Yahoo Pattern Libraries for Communities.  There was a great presentation on game theory some time back and how it applies to building products/communities online but I can't seem to dig it up again.