We often get asked what the science is behind the Octalysis Framework and what exactly makes it so powerful. Our answer normally relates to human-focused design, and how designing for the 8 Core Drives leads to more motivation of users and employees. And this is true: Octalysis-designed products (apps, websites, policies) are much more effective and have impressive ROIs. Octalysis employee gamification leads to very significant increases in employee engagement and retention. As importantly though, we want to create fun and happiness through our gamification efforts.
Happiness?
Is creating happiness not a luxury problem? Is that important for my investors? Creating engagement, OK. Motivation, sure. But surely some things like paying your bills, checking your bank account or filing your expenses cannot make you happy? And why do they need to be made fun?
That makes sense, right? Can some things just be left boring or serious? Yes, some things should be left serious and should not be made fun. Funerals are a case in point. However, the large majority of our activities should be engaging: the way we buy things online, the way we learn, the way we cooperate, the way we discover. The list is endless.
So why happiness? Because having more fun and happy moments leads to more creativity and better results. It leads to happier customers as well. Happy customers are much more likely to return to your website or app and are much more likely to recommend your product to their friends. All of this on the basis of their happiness with the experience, even when their interest in the product they are buying was not that great at the start. Did you know that people judge the work of happy people in a more positive light, and therefore are more likely to try out their recommendations?
Employee Happiness and Positive Emotions
With around 70% of the current workforce not engaged and around 20% actively disgruntled, most people now agree that something has to change on the work floor. But not that many people look at ways to create employee happiness by designing for positive emotions.
This is a missed opportunity, as supervisors evaluate happy individuals more positively, happy employees show superior performance and productivity, and handle managerial jobs better. They are also less likely to show counterproductive workplace behavior and job burnout. In several studies, the mean corrected correlation between having positive experiences and job satisfaction was .49 (where 1 is a 100% correlation). Why is this?
The Power of Positivity
Positive emotions make people approach new situations rather than avoid them and help them analyze situations better. Because happy people experience frequent positive moods, they more actively work towards new goals while experiencing those moods. Second, happy people are more thorough as they have already built up an array of positive skills and resources over time. One short-term example: physicians who received a small present before they were asked to analyze a medical problem were much more creative in their solutions and obtained significantly better results.
Finally, work performance is more strongly related to happiness and well-being on the job than by whether your job objectively is more fun or not (Wright and Cropanzano, 2000). In turn, a positive organizational climate was correlated with productivity (r = .31) and profitability (r = .36; Foster, Hebl, West, and Dawson, 2004).
Octalysis Brings It All Together: Scientifically
Scientists know that there are 5 things that bring about happiness if you experience them regularly. The Octalysis Framework was developed in close relation to these findings:
1. Positive emotion: feelings of pleasure, glee, satisfaction, amazement. Positive emotions are correlated with Core Drive 3 (Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback) when you feel satisfied that your way of solving a challenge was the right one, which leads to Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment). Similarly, Core Drive 7 (Curiosity and Unpredictability) leads to dopamine spikes when we experience something unexpected.
2. Engagement: Flow, or being fully immersed in what we are doing. In our Octalysis Designs we install a learning curve and a path to achieve mastery during the experience, using our Core Drives as a tool to keep users in flow (building on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory).
3. Accomplishment: Mastery and success. Core Drive 2 (Development and Accomplishment) gives you proof of progressing by achieving XP, badges, level ups, and this often leads to Core Drive 4 (Ownership and Possession) when users build up their trophy halls, armouries, and other collection sets.
4. Relationships: Regular and supportive social interaction and influence is a hallmark of the Octalysis Framework (Core Drive 5: Social Influence and Relatedness). In our designs we make sure that relationships in and outside the experience are strengthened and expanded. Great for happiness, great for engagement, great for motivation, great for sales.
5. Meaning: Belonging to and serving something bigger than the self. This is Octalysis Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning and Calling). The link between happiness and meaning in scientific literature is quite strong. Short to medium term happiness can exist without meaning, but having a meaningful life often leads to happier people.
Octalysis: The Path to Happiness and Success
We have discussed Core Drives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and how they relate to the science of happiness (Core Drive 7 connects through creating positive emotions). Core Drives 6 (Scarcity and Impatience) and 8 (Loss and Avoidance) are less directly related to happiness. These Black Hat Core Drives often do not produce a happy feeling on their own. However, we use them strategically to help start people on their engagement journey and keep them locked into their path to fun-fuelled engagement. Paradoxically, even when we use negative motivators, the users of our designs end up happier.
And happiness leads to what? Better productivity, more sales, more referrals, more creativity, more ideas, more cooperation, and more engagement. We believe it leads to a new and better world, where in a decade or so the difference between fun and work will have disappeared. Experiencing happiness will be the norm, not the exception.
Want to explore how behavioral design can create happiness-driven engagement in your organization? Contact us to start the conversation.