Gaming for behavior change. Analysis three apps aiming for behavior… | by Jeffrey Chou | Medium

ANALYSIS THREE APPS AIMING FOR BEHAVIOR CHANGE FROM FOURDESIRE WHO IS FOURDESIRE Fourdesire is a game studio in Taiwan. Their goal is to use gamification in order to turn boring, routine

activities into new ways of having fun. It had already released three apps on mobile platform including PLANT NANNY, WALKR, FORTUNE CITY. Pant Nanny focuses on cultivating water-drinking

behavior. Walkr encourages people to walk more. Fortune City turns expense tracking into city building game. PLANT NANNY Plant Nanny is a app that tries to cultivate your water drinking

habits. The scenario is simple. Player grows a plant in the app. The plan will get thirsty over time and notify player to water the plant (at the same time player “would” probably drink the

water). The concept is good but as you could imagine, there are some many potential break points for this app to really make people drink water. What if player water the plan and do not

drink water? What if player forget to record their drinking? (The app only allow to put record in current time) Player could pre-select several different size of cups but he could only drink

full size not partially. The most important thing is that even the plant is designed to be attractive and grow to be different over time. But, still, players will eventually get bored. I

would argue that this game is a good attempt but it does not consider human behavior thoroughly. WALKR Walkr is a app that tries to encourage you to walk. Player is taking a space shuttle to

explore the universe and the more player walks the more enegery player will get for his space shuttle. Player could spend the energy to explore planets. I was first attracted by those

interestingly illustrated planets and play it for a while. The apps also have team up mechanics so you could give and take energy from your friends . Those cute planets were so attractive

that even people sell cheating tool kit on the Internet. This is Fourdesire’s second attempt and I really like visual style of the app. But it still fails to provide incentive. Imagine a

scenario that after whole day of work, you go home and open the app. You spend some energy to discover planet and do some extra setting. That’s it! Walking provides energy does not mean

players are willing to walk to get energy. FORTUNE CITY Fortune City is a app that encourage your to track your expense. Input an expense into the app and player will get a buidling to put

into your city. It is actually a fun idea to encourage people tracking their expense, though there are some minor problem with the design. For example, different types of budiling require

different type of expense. So what if you have two types of spending in one receipt? The number of building depends on number of expense that day so I usually seperate my bill into multiple

input. Finally, while it does encourage people to track their expense, it still lacks of tool to analyze expense in order to achieve better financial habit. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? As I went

through these three apps, I pointed out there were multiple minor parts that could be further improved. How about the overarching goal: motivating people to do certain behavior? The first

two is a failure and the third one is a bit more successful. How to explain it in a systematic approach? There are so many models trying to explain human’s behavior. I would argue that none

of them is totally correct, since you will always find some exceptions, but they are still useful. Here I would like to introduce B.J. Fogg’s behavior model in his book, Persuasive

Technolgy. In this model, he argues that ability, motivation and triggers must be fulfilled in order to affect people’s behavior. In the Plant Nanny example, people have motivation to drink

more water (want to be healthier). There will be trigger from phone’s notification to ask people to drink. However, THE USABILITY PROBLEM OF THE APP AFFECTS PEOPLE’S ABILITY TO OPERATE THE

APP. For Walkr, players do not have problem of motivation (want to be healthier) and ability (automatically record walking distance) but the trigger is tricky. Since it records you daily

activity, IT DOES NOT HAVE A PROPER TIME TO PROMPT YOU TO WALK MORE. Player gets back home at night and see the result. If the app notifies you to walk out at 9PM, player probably won’t

follow the suggestions. For Fortune city, I would argue that it at least achieves its minimum goal: making people track their expense. But how to make the data relevant and useful to the

user, that will be a problem. Think about Mint, a famous money management app. Rather than only tracking expense, it tries to help you control you budget. It tells you how much left you

could spend in specific category this month. If you have abnormal spending, it will also tell you about it. Human behavior are complicated. As a result, while diving into the field of

changing human behavior, designer should always remember the overall goal of the design.