Gamification Design Framework: The SMA Model
Gamification is a design experience to happiness, fun and motivation. Designing a system is the hardest, funniest and most important part of the process, but... how do we start? This is a new design framework based on stories, mechanics and aesthetics.
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Gamification Design Framework: The SMA Model
Gamification: A design experience to fun, happiness and motivation
Gamification is a design experience to happiness and motivation. We should never forget that Design is Gamification´s biggest challenge and where all its power lies, like a double-edged sword.
So design matters, and it is the difference between another PBL system and a great gamified experience. There are many books, articles and case studies about why design is one of the most important things to take into account and for sure we could be hours talking about it.
But getting back to Gamification, how do we start?
First of all, we should start thinking as a game designer and as a game designer; our main goal is to deliver an awesome experience. OK, I know I know, Gamification is not a game, but since we are going to use stuff like mechanics, aesthetics or storytelling, let’s all pretend we are Blizzard’s number one designer for now!
But what do you mean with delivering an experience? How can I do it?
Well, that is a kind of long and complex question to answer because it involves so many things, (and there are whole books about it!) but to keep it simple, let’s start from the beginning. And our starting point is the Gamification basics so…
Whether you just arrived to gamification, or you already are an expert, it’s always good to refresh some Gamification basics. Why not having a look at some key points?
- When not to use Gamification
Now we are ready to go! Let’s get into the thrilling world of Gamification design!
Gamification design framework by Prof. Werbach: An introduction
Even before starting with a new (actually, extended is more accurate) Gamification design framework, we should have a look at what I consider one of the best and most complete tools for designing, Professor Werbach´s Gamification design framework, also called “The 6 Ds”.
For those who still don’t know Kevin (@kwerb), this is a hangout we did some days ago, with great content and a superb explanation of his 6 Ds model.
Basically, and as you may know, his model is based on 6 steps that are:
- Define business objectives
- Delineate target behaviours
- Describe your players
- Devise activity loops
- Don’t forget the fun
- Deploy the appropriate tools
If you want to know more about this extremely useful framework, I recommend reading his book “For the Win”. You can find his book and many others here.
Gamification design steps by @victormanriquey: The 4 Qs
So you made it down here! Great! I hope I could convince you to do two things: consider yourself the number one game designer of the whole industry (OK, just Blizzard or Rovio are great too) and start considering design as the most important part of Gamification! Now we are ready to get into the 4 main design questions!
So what is that 4 Qs or SMA model?
The 4 Qs - SMA model is an iterative process to design great gamified experiences to fun, happiness and motivation and it can be used for both internal and external Gamification, with an individual or community focus, and in overall, within any Gamification context.
So this is how it looks like:
Basically, and to put it simple (we’ll explain it later in two upcoming posts) a gamified experience relies on 4 variables, four questions with a clear answer:
- WHY? Goal
- WHAT? Actions
- WHO? Players
- HOW? System
STEP 1 - Understand WHY
Imagine for a second that you are the CEO of one of the leading companies in gamification. One day, you receive and email from the CMO of a huge enterprise telling you that they might be interested in gamification, but since it's all kind of new, they want you to meet them at their HQ in order to explain it in further detail.
After some minutes jumping around and opening Champagne bottles "Formula One" Style to celebrate it, you might want to think for a second where is your pitch going to start. And you may want to begin causing a big WOW explaining the WHY of gamification, or in business executive words, what i get from it in numbers.
So, why do we apply gamification? Because we want to achieve a goal through happiness and people's motivation. In overall, Gamification can be used to achieve any of the following goals:
- Getting better results
- Going viral
- Increasing time spent & engagement
Better results: Ever wondered why Nike became all of a sudden one of the top brands for runners? It wasn't like that some years ago, when Asics, K-swiss or Reebok were more popular among the running crowd. However, since Nike+ and related strategies were launched, the company has become one of the standards worldwide, increasing its market share. Talking about results, what about the gamified learning experiences? In a world where kids are surrounded by interactivity and rich virtual environments that provide great amounts of stimuli, what is more likely to be successful? Duolingo or a boring english academy? And what would happen when those children begin to work?
Going viral: Gamification is not only a way to improve your results, but also a path to viral experiences and growth hacking. One of the best examples of growth hacking, was Dropbox, that offered small rewards and achievements in order to get more users. It was a very basic approach but it worked quite well.
The next level of going viral is Foursquare and its finer gamification experience that has turn the platform into the leading startup for social geolocation. Other platforms that have implemented a gamified growth hacking experience have been Fitocracy, Karmacracy or the new Read Social App supported by Gabe Zichermann.
So what it's clear, is that gamification is a very powerful tool for attracting more players to your system.
Increasing Time spent & Engagement: How many hours did you spend playing Final Fantasy, Wow, Angry Birds, Pacman, Monkey Island, Super Mario or any other great games? I guess a lot, as i also did, just because "you couldn't stop playing".
That's why, it is of no surprise that one of the most powerful effects of gamification is the engagement that it produces. We've all seen kids playing countless hours on their video consoles, or adults playing on their smartphones non-stop.
What is it about video games that are so engaging? Well, we could be hours discussing that but mostly it is due to the fun they create. There are games for every type of person and many different types of fun. I have my own category of fun types but there are many others done by Leblanc, Lazzaro, Radoff, etc. Anyway, the most important thing here is that gamified experiences really engage people to spend more time on your system if well designed, and they do so, because they are a source of happiness, fun and motivation.
Last but not least, always remember that gamification is not the panacea!! If the Value Proposition is terrible there's not that much it can do!! To gain some knowledge in modeling value propositions read the books of Alexander Osterwalder!!
STEP 2 - Establish WHAT
We have gone through the main benefits of using gamification and it's time to move on! Now we know our goal, let's say we are gamifying to increase our user engagement. So how are we going to achieve this?
Well, even before knowing the type of players that we are going to have or foster in our system