How To Make Your Website As Addictive As World Of Warcraft, with Noah Schaffer

Noah Schaffer is a PhD in User Experience applied to Game Design and is an instructor at Human Factors Internationl. He co-authored "Game Usability: Advancing The User Experience" (Morgan Kaufman, 2008).

This event was hosted by NYC design agency LBi on June 14, 2011.

I am Noah Schaffer, and I'm here today to talk with you about how to

make your websites more fun. We're going to do that by looking at games,

to learn some lessons that we can take to your websites.

But first I want to say a few words about myself, by way of introduction.

Those of you coming in, please, welcome, have a, have a seat.

You guys get to sit up front. (laughter)

You didn't miss anything yet. Well...you missed a lot of good announcements.

So you may know, ah, my father, Eric Schaffer, ah, so, yeah, I-I guess I, I kinda have that in the blood,

and you may also know that he looks exactly like the King of Spades

these days, now that he has a curly mustache.

what you probably don't know about me is that great grandfather started Playland arcades,

here in New York City

on Times Square. So I'm 2nd generation usability, but I'm also 4th generation games.

And I LOVE games. And I love usability.

And so I spent much of my life looking at places where those things intersect.

My graduate work was mostly looking at applying usability to games.

That's not what we're talking about today, but I want to mention a few things about that.

That might sound insane.

So, a game is an interface that's built

for user experience from the ground up.

Why would I do anything separate and special for user experience?

Let's look at an example in a second.

By the way, sorry, I forgot to mention this while I was talking about

my graduate work, as I said

usability and games

I put out this book, I co-edited it

This is the first book that's available about applying usability to games.

So as I said, let's look at applying

usability to games. Here's an example

of a game. This is for a mobile phone.

I get to do usability testing on this.

This was put out by a company in India called Mobile to Win.

And so when in an internship during my graduate work,

I got to do some usability testing on this game

Now I want to explain this game a little bit

It's a top down soccer game.

Imagine that you press the left part

of the little joy stick that you have here

what would you expect to have happen?

You would expect to go left.

But this game actually rotates

Would you expect it to rotate you clockwise?

Or counter-clockwise?

So most people would expect it to

rotate them counter-clockwise.

Because I go left, and then I turn this way.

In this game, it rotates you the other way around.

It rotates you clockwise.

Now, it gets worse.

So I'm the player here, now I want to go down

I'm heading downwards, I want to go left

so I press left and now I actually start going left because

I'm rotating that way.

So I'm going left. What happens when I keep pressing left?

Now I start going up.

And if I keep pressing left now

I start going right.

So actually usability in games is kind of important.

Not what I'm talking about today but

interesting stuff.

Today, well, that was all about two years ago I stopped doing that.

I finished my graduate work, and I moved into the world of

working on e-commerce

the world of working on insurance applications

a lot of financial institutions

because I joined Human Factors International.

And my focus as I'm doing that is

all we call PET, Persuasion Emotion and Trust.

And so as Gloria mentioned, I teach

the class on the subject.

Most of what we do is actually

consulting. About 80% is consulting.

Only about 20% is this kind of teaching aspect.

So this is a lot of what I do day in and day out.

What's interesting is while I'm teaching a class about PET

I get about 5 minutes, maybe 10

to talk about what I'm going to talk about today

where I get to say "hey games, and this aspect"

and I get very excited.

I'm excited the whole time.

But I get to talk about games.

Today I get to talk about it for a long time.

Actually, we have a new course

coming out that's called the PET Architect course

It's about taking those same things

and making them go further

and we're actually bringing in a bunch of things

that we're talking about today

into that course.

Although that's just a little snippet of what's happening

for that course.

And we've got the first one that's available

- one of the first one's available -

here in New York City in about 2 weeks.

So if you're interested, you can talk to one

of one of the HFI folks we've got here.

Forgive the quick plug.

But the point is that

we've got this aspect that's about user experience

where we want to take things beyond just

web usability to looking fun, among other things

and that's what I'm going to talk with you about today.

So this framework,

there are four types of fun.

This is called the four fun keys.

And the woman you see up here is Nicole Lazzaro.

She came up with this,

and she does a lot of great work her

company is called ZEODesign

and this is from her website

she's got some great things she

says about this, she mostly focuses on games.

But we can look at your website, we can look

at other kinds of websites through the same lens

about these four types of fun.

So, this diagram shows some of the other actions

and experiences, and things along those lines

it's very pretty

but the point is that you've got Hard Fun

you've got challenge

Easy Fun, is fun without challenge

Serious Fun, which is what you take away from

the experience and People Fun

which is fun you have with other people.

If you missed that, it's okay

I'm going through each of these one at a time

so don't worry

and I'm going to explain each one a little bit before

I go into applying them.

I also want to mention

that we're going to spend the most time on hard fun

so don't get nervous if that seems to go long

it's because that's one of the most interesting things

and I have the most to say about it.

So we'll start with hard fun now.

As I said, Hard Fun is about challenge.

So you have your user,

just how games have a player

Take the player and you give the player challenges

the enemies

Your user has similar kinds of obstacles

Not in that they have spikes and look like mushrooms

but in that your user is trying to get

insurance taken out, they're trying to get a loan

they're trying to get a product

whatever they're trying to get

they have a challenge

so this is your user's challenge.

And once they overcome that challenge

there's the experience of victory.

Now this is the two aspects I want to talk about

while we're talking about Hard Fun.

One aspect which is that challenge piece

and the other aspect which is feedback

after you've grappled with that challenge.

So let's start by talking about why

that aspect - that challenge aspect -

is so important for us.

It takes a way to evolve them out in the jungle

they need to hunt, they need to gather, they need to get things done.

what they're going to get

is a deep seated need to feel like they're being effective.

So that's this need for efficacy

we have this very deeply built into us as human beings.

This is why this challenge aspect, this hard fun aspect

is so important. Because we need it

we need to feel effective.

Now, how do you get there, that's another question.

Now, this is kind of a funny thought.

What would be the most usable

game?

It would be like a screen that says

"press the big red button"

and then a big red button that says "press here"

and then you press the big red button, and the screen changes

the screen says, "game over, you win."

Is that fun?

Why isn't that fun?

What if I have a game, where I take a room

about this size

and I fill it your all alone in the room except

that the room is full of about 2000 zombies

they move very fast

and all the zombies,

once they touch you, you die.

But I also give you weaponry,

became in games, we have to give you weapons,

I give you a toothpick.

Not a special toothpick, just a regular toothpick.

Is that fun? Probably not.

So, when we're dealing with challenge

it's very important to optimize challenge

This is a good moment for me to mention, by the way

this does not mean that we want to optimize

a lot of challenge, or enough challenge, for your interface

this is challenge in content.

So, do not go back to work tomorrow and say

"hey, I heard challenge is good

so we're going to make the interface hard to navigate."

They don't want to hear about that.

But the content can be challenging.

So, when you get to the right amount of challenge

for the amount of skill the user has,

you get a special thing that happens

We talked about the room with the zombies

what happens then, you're just in anxiety

right, that's this part up here, the top left

If you're playing, and it's the one button, you're bored

down here, where you've got lots of skill

and nowhere to use it.

What's interesting is if you a low amount of skill

and a low amount of challenge, you're just bored as well

Apathetic.

That's what television is like.

People report that experience with television.

But if you get a level of skill that matches your level of challenge

something very special happens.

This is well studied by someone named Csikszentmihalyi

that is actually a person's name, I know it's hard

to see, but we'll have the slides up online

so you'll be able to go back and find it.

He calls it flow theory.

Because the experience, when you're in that matched level of skill

matched level of challenge for your skill

that experience is also described by the people in it as flow.

If I'm way too hard skiing, I'm an intermediate skier

I get on the diamond slope

I'm terrified.

If I'm on the bunny slope, I'm bored

but once I get into that space, once I get to flow

something magic happens

you get a loss of self-consciousness

you get an immersion

you get this engagement thing

remember, you might have read this

talk is going to do with engagement

this is the science of engagement

when you have marketing folks going "oh yeah, engagement, engagement."

and they have no idea what that means

this is what that means

it's the right level of challenge.

Have you been to reddit?

So, reddit.com, when you're sitting there

there's a challenge

that happens with each article

everyone of these articles

challenges your idea

of what happened in the world

it challenges your idea

of what can be news and what can't be news

what's interesting

there's something that's going on there

that's dissonant with your

picture of things

and with that level of dissonance

you hit just right

it's fascinating

Right, this engagement

the loss of self-consciousness

you get a loss of time

you've ever sat down, you read a book

you get up 3 hours later?

and you go, "I thought I was here for 15 minutes"

we talk about that as a "page turner"

one of two things is usually happening,

and they're both

about challenge

Either it's giving you knowledge

that you didn't have

but is in proportion with your level of

skill and understanding of that area.

Or, you're following along with the story

and you're putting yourself in

someone's place, and they're facing challenges.

So, any of those cases

what's happening is that you're getting

this flow space

very special thing.

So this is all about optimizing

challenge

So how are you going to get the right level of challenge?

Games get to cheat

So games, you show up and they go

what mode do you want to play?

Do you want to play beginner, intermediate?

Nightmare mode, if I'm a really good player

I'll play nightmare mode

I'm not actually a good enough gamer

at many games where I can play that level.

You select that level

and then you get that proper experience

you get that flow

do you get to do this on your website?

Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe if I'm dealing with investors,

maybe I can say

"what level investor are you?"

and if they're an advanced investor,

I can use jargon words,

I can use abbreviations,

I can get away with more

and that will make it more so it's like their experience

but there's another

way we can do this too

So, have you ever played Tetris?

Some of you know this game.

I want to explain it for

any of you who don't.

Blocks come down

and you get to line them up

and you get points for lining up the blocks.

The important part of this,

is that as the blocks come down,

they start to come down faster

and faster, and faster

the reason that's important

is if I'm a beginning level player

if I'm a novice player

then I instantly get to that level of challenge

that's meeting my skill

If I'm intermediate level,

then I play a little longer

because actually you can hit a button

to make the blocks fall a little faster

each individual block

so you can make that happen faster

but that way at the intermediate level,

the exact same thing

no different settings,

I get to hit that level where I hit flow

Again, very quickly

Same deal with advanced.

I have to wait longer, I have to get further,

but the blocks come faster

once I get to having played for a while.

So the fact is, no matter what level I'm at

I get to hit that flow experience, and it's automatic

Can you automatically optimize

that challenge aspect

in your website?

You can, and Amazon does.

So if I'm trying to purchase an MP3 player

I show up, and I see I'm a novice level person right away

I know very little about MP3 players

I know it needs to be kind of pretty

and below a certain price level

maybe I know the capacity,

all that information is right here

I'm done, I can click checkout

and I'm done.

If I'm intermediate level,

I scroll down.

And I scroll down, and see

all the information that's broken up into pieces

it's not one big chunk

we do this, we do usability

to make things readable,

to make this scannable

and now I can read through this

I can scroll down

I can see all the information

that I need.

If I'm advanced level,

then I'll be able to click on technical details.

Right, I can go in and find out

more of those details.

So here, I can get information

about the size of it,

it's more specific,

I can get information about

the watts the battery has,

whatever types of things I want to find out.

It's that advanced level.

So that's challenge.

But what I want to talk about

in addition to challenge

is feedback.

What if you're playing a fighting game,

and you've got your enemy

and there's no life bar

and you do your punch

and the enemy doesn't react

he just stands there

is that fun?

Even if I have a life bar,

and I see the life bar go down,

and the enemy doesn't really

physically react

is that fun?

There's something different happening

when I do "HARRUGHA"

a punch move

and the guy bursts into flames

there's something different there

that happens.

So, this is that feedback aspect.

Now, you are going to have to tune this

if you have things bursting into flames

on your website... [laughter]

...I don't have to explain this,

you guys all get it.

Right, you have to think of people's

schema for what's appropriate.

But it's very important to give people

this little feedback thing.

People really respond to this in a

very powerful way.

So, you might have noticed

one of the subjects today is addiction

Why do people get addicted to World of Warcraft?

There are 13 million people

playing World of Warcraft right now

signed up. Each one of those people

has paid 50 or 100 dollars

to get the game in the first place.

Each one of those people

spends 15 dollars every month

to continue playing this game.

13 million people

The average World of Warcraft player

plays for 20 hours a week

part time job - and that's the average

Some people play for longer [laughter]

If you've seen South Park

and if you have delicate sensibilities

do not see this,

but if you've seen South Park,

then you know this is

the man with no life

who does nothing but play World of Warcraft.

Why is World of Warcraft so addictive?

Well, there are different reasons,

but one of the biggest reasons,

is that as you're playing

when I get a level

a glowing pillar of light

comes through my character

and everyone around me

sees it.

And it makes a noise,

it goes 'DING" - or whatever the noise is

it's been a while since I've played it.

That experience is very powerful.

So you might have heard of -

some of you in this room have

a psychological background

forgive me while I explain this -

this is what we can Operant Conditioning

it's just about rewarding

someone, some creature

and so B.F. Skinner is really the father

of Operant Conditioning.

And B.F. Skinner has what's called

a "Skinner box"

where you have a hungry rodent in a box

and you have a lever,

and somewhere to give it food.

When the rodent presses the lever,

I can give it food

to reward the behavior of pressing the lever.

And then the rodent will learn

to keep pressing the lever.

Here's the really interesting part

Here's the really interesting part

I can change how often I reward

the rodent

with the food.

So I can do it,

and there's a reason I might do this,

let me make that clear.

If I stop feeding the rodent,

I feed it every time,

I stop feeding the rodent,

it very quickly learns

"oh, I'm not getting a reward anymore,"

and it stops pressing the lever.

So a lot like you guys at work

you get paid every day,

one day you go in,

and you don't get paid

"I'm not coming in now."

Same deal.

Well, what if I make it so

you only reward the rodent

every third time

this is an intermittent schedule.

So, this is like, how you

only get paid once a month

If you got paid every single day

you'd figure out very quickly

when they stopped paying you

but if you got paid once a month,

then you don't figure it out

quite as fast.

So now, it dies off faster.

They call that "extinction"

it's the extinction of the behavior.

If I do what is that intermittent reward

but on an unpredictable schedule

so I make it intermittent but

random.

So I do it once,

and then, the 5th time after that

and then the 2nd time after that

and then the 3rd time after that

so I change it up.

If I do it that way,

it dies off even slower.

And the way to make it die off

really slow

this is where we get really evil,

we put them on the intermittent

random schedule like that

and then we reduce the frequency

more and more and more

until we stop feeding them.

And if you do that, that rodent

will continue to press the lever

until it dies.

You might be wondering if anyone has thought

"oh, I'll exploit that!"

and yes,

there's an entire industry [laughter]

devoted to exploiting that.

This is a giant Skinner box.

Let's try not to be quite that evil.

At Human Factors International,

we actually have our own policy

that's about not exploiting people

not for things like that

But we have this thing

where we can reward people

and we can use that.

So, we did some work

on the California Lottery website.

This is how it was beforehand.

You go in, and you have

your lottery number.

And you figure out

how many numbers match.

So, this is the one you got,

this is the one that you had,

how many match,

and then you figure out

how many you have

and then you figure out

how much money

you get off.

We redesigned this.

Now you enter in the numbers,

and it tells you which ones matched.

And this is important

with a little sparkle

it's not (?) bling (?)

but a little sparkle

and that is a different experience

then just entering it in

and it just saying

"this one, this one, this one."

So that feedback mechanism is very important.

While we're talking about feedback

so, you ever see someone playing

like a, first person shooter,

and their cussing like crazy

their swearing it, and they're like "argh"

why are people so drawn into games in this way?

You ever play Mario Brothers?

This is from Mario Brothers

When you lose in Mario Brothers,

your character looks like that,

he falls down the screen

if you didn't recognize it already

and every time you see this

you go "arghhhhhh!!!"

Why is that so powerful?

Part of the answer is avatars.

So if you can have an avatar

that represents your user

so that the user

can project themselves into that avatar

it will draw the user in

in a more powerful way

It may not make sense in your context

that's okay, right

you want to fit people's schema

if you have some character

that's going to represent your user

- it may not make sense at all -

but if you can,

it's very powerful.

And notice it doesn't have to be

a picture of them

most of the people who play

Mario Brothers

don't look like Mario.

But an icon that represents you,

an avatar,

is very powerful.

So that was Hard Fun.

This is Mario Kart,

another example of Hard Fun

you're racing

Hard Fun is about challenge

feedback is important

next I want to talk about Easy Fun.

So, Easy Fun is fun without challenge.

It's not to say a low amount of challenge,

it's to say NO challenge.

Here is probably one of the very few games

that only has Easy Fun.

This is called Electroplankton.

It's on the Nintendo DS,

so you have a touch screen,

and you have a microphone.

And in this game,

you draw on the touch screen

and tap it and things like that

and you can talk into it

in some of the different modes

and it makes beautiful sounds

and wonderful colors

and flashing light

and you never ever win any points.

You cannot beat this game.

There is no way to achieve anything in this game.

It is purely Easy Fun.

It's a very different kind of fun experience.

But you see Easy Fun in other places as well.

Often you see multiples of these types of fun

we'll talk about that too

but you'll see that

So let's show some other examples.

This is a game, this is Sim City.

Sim City has an aspect of Hard Fun

a little bit.

Because you do get money

and you get approval ratings

and things like that.

But most of what Sim City is about

is expanding your city.

And you never really win the game.

You just expand and expand

and make a big city.

So it's an exploration

of that space, of that experience.

And, as you're doing that -

so, you're expanding and expanding

and exploring that

all you're doing is getting

an exploration experience

the creator of this game says it's not a game.

He says it's a toy.

Games like this are often called "sandbox games."

It's a different kind of experience.

Now, let's show another game.

This is a game that's known for Hard Fun.

It's actually really known for violence.

This is Grand Theft Auto.

Now, Grand Theft Auto,

I've heard from a number of people

who get into this game,

and just explore.

They go and find the

interesting, beautiful sunsets.

This kind of thing.

And have an Easy Fun experience

within a game that's designed

for Hard Fun.

So, you see Easy Fun in some surprising places.

Sometimes people will play this game,

it's not just "oh, I'm seeing something beautiful"

sometimes, people will play this game,

and they come in, and just crash cars

in interesting ways.

You never get points for that.

What do you get for that?

But you get this experience that's about,

"oh, what can I do, how can I do this?"

So, that's that Easy Fun experience.

The reason I'm saying

it's not just about finding something beautiful

Easy Fun is not is not the beautications of screens.

It's not making things pretty,

it's not graphic design.

It's an experience that's about exploration.

We see this in Halo as well.

Beautiful scene,

people blowing up the vehicle

with grenades.

Let's look at a website.

This is Cracked.com.

Cracked.com has lots of interesting articles.

You come into Cracked.com,

and you find out "oh wow, that's cool

that's interesting"

Just like with Reddit, you have things

that are surprising.

So, there is a Hard Fun aspect,

that's part of why this is so engaging.

But something interesting happens.

So if I go to look at the article

it's about how the internet is killing us all.

As I'm going through the article,

I see links to other articles

at Cracked.com

At the end of the article,

it recommends similar articles to me.

And even more similar articles.

So what happens, is you finish one article,

and then you click to another one.

And then you finish that one,

and then you click to another one.

And you end up going on an exploration.

On a journey, throughout this experience.

And you can spend days here, easily.

If you do try to plan to have someone

watching the kids

and take bathroom breaks and things,

it's very engaging.

And part of it is the Easy Fun aspect.

Probably the reason why it makes you have that

time lapse effect so much as the Hard Fun piece.

But that Easy Fun is a big piece of that as well.

Now, how do you get people going on to the next thing?

It's this idea, that's called the Seducible Moment.

Imagine you walked into a burger joint.

And someone runs up to you

in a uniform

and says, "Hey! You want some fries?"

"No, that's okay, thanks anyway."

You walk over to the counter, and you look at the menu

"I'd like a uh... uh..."

"Hey you want fries? Fries?! You want some fries?"

"No, chill, jeez.

Um, cheeseburger, I'd like a cheeseburger."

"You want fries with that?"

"Oh yeah, sure."

What's the difference between those?

It's the moment that you're doing it at.

When you're going into a grocery store

and you're walking around with your shopping cart

you don't see next to the produce

individually wrapped candy bars.

Because the moment when you see those,

and go "oh yeah, I could use one of those,"

is at the checkout.

When you're going "oh I could have that on the way home."

That's the Seducible Moment.

Your website's maybe having...

you show up on the home page

and you run up to people and you go

"hey you wanna take out a loan???"

We have these kinds of fights

with marketing people all the time.

It's not the Seducible Moment.

People are banner blind.

You do eye tracking,

you see people don't see banners

when they look at them.

But there's a cool thing we can do

using Seducible Moments.

This is some work we did for AAA.

And, this work we did what's called a PET sort.

Where we find out - it's not like a card sort,

we find out the associations people have.

So, I find out, membership benefits

is associated by people

with car maintenance tools and tips.

And if I find the right Seducible Moment,

I show them car maintenance tools and tips,

and they go from one thing to another,

and that's wonderful because AAA

gets to sell more lines of business.

But here's the really cool part.

I also found out from the PET sort

that car maintenance tools and tips

is associated by people

with researching a car.

The reason this is cool,

is if I started with membership benefits

I had no interest - anywhere in that process -

with car maintenance tools and tips.

But you've still taken me to researching a car.

And then I'll also find that researching

a car is associated with something else,

is associated with something else...

and I can lead people down

the guided path of discovery

through the site.

So this is one of the ways we have some

intersection between Easy Fun

and the work that we do in Human Factors

although, probably all of us do this (?).

You want to lead people

down that path of discovery.

It's a powerful experience.

This is what it looks like on the site.

So, I show up here, I'm at banking.

If you're interested in banking,

you might also be interested in a bunch of loans.

Oh, so I go to the loans page,

and here I am under loans.

If you're interested in loans,

you might be interested in

a bunch of different insurance options.

so this is what it looks like in practice.

That was Easy Fun.

So Easy Fun - fun without challenge.

Next, we're going to talk about Serious Fun.

Serious Fun is kind of a jargon term in games.

And it's easy to confuse because of the name

with Hard Fun.

But it's very different.

Serious Fun is what you take away from the game.

It's not the challenge you have in the game,

it's what you take away from the game.

So, Serious Fun only means one of two things

in games. Either education and learning,

or exercise.

So, Big Brain Academy

is an example of Serious Fun

I go in and I do problem solving

and I feel like I've gotten smarter

and I feel like I've taken that away from the game

and that's going to persist for me.

Exercise.

So, Dance Dance Revolution

I've had friends who would go

to the arcade a couple of times each week

to get their exercise

and that's how they got their exercise

But what you're actually seeing

this is a game where you

control the game by pressing on

different parts of the dance pad.

What you're seeing that across the country

some PE classes

are also using Dance Dance Revolution

and that's what you're seeing

in this picture, it's a PE class

And what you're going to take away from it

is exercise.

In both cases, it's about

what you take away from it.

But you can also see taking

something away from the game

in other ways.

So this is a traditional,

but when you play one of these crane games

and you take away a stuffed animal

it's also Serious Fun

When you go to a carnival,

if you can win any of those games,

a stuffed animal you take home

also Serious Fun

and you in this room

probably get to cheat

because if I go to Amazon.com

and I buy a product

the product that I get

once it's shipped

is the Serious Fun.

I get to take something home

and that's the point.

So you, almost all of you,

I'm imagining, get to cheat in this way

If it's insurance, if it's an insurance program

then I get to take out

an insurance plan

I get the safety and security

of that.

If it's a loan, I get a bunch of money

although be careful about framing that

as "oh, you won money!"

that's not the idea.

So, what you take away from it.

But you don't have to do this

as the thing you got out of it

you can also do it as learning.

This is also Serious Fun.

This is Citibank

They have a whole section

that gives you information

It really isn't about taking out loans

or having savings

it's information that's related to those things.

And they've given you something for that.

It's a powerful thing to give someone that experience

when they have a need for that.

That was Serious Fun

Serious Fun - what people take away.

People Fun

is all the different kinds of fun

that happens with other people.

And there's lots of different ways

that you can see People Fun in games.

This game is IMVU

again we have an example here

of a game that is almost purely this type of fun.

IMVU is a game where you

basically have a chat room with avatars

that's all the game is.

And you have lots of different interactions

but it's just a chat room with avatars

it's People Fun.

And so one type of People Fun

is flirtation, which you see here.

Another type of People Fun

is competition.

So if I'm playing a death match game

and trying to kill the other...

that's a different kind of People Fun.

But it's the same aspect that's about

interacting with other people

You can also have cooperation.

If you've played the new Mario Brothers game,

you can boost the other players.

You all play on the same screen

you can boost the other players up

and jump off of them and help each other up

and your cooperatively trying to

get to the end of the level

all together.

So cooperation - another type of People Fun.

There's a whole range of these.

Shadenfreude, where you're feeling good

for other people's expense

Envy, and all those different

interpersonal emotions

and the ways that we generate them.

This is part of why -

this People Fun aspect -

is part of why social media is so powerful.

Because people have a need

for an interpersonal interaction

I think Facebook - send a video to someone

and that video says

"hahaha - look what I did"

or I can say "hey, check out this cool thing,"

and I feel socially connected.

All of these deep social needs that people have.

I could also - this is part of why

live chat is good.

Yes, part of why live chat is good,

is because I get to fulfill my needs.

But another part, is I can have

a social interaction.

Here, I've gone and said,

"hey, recommend a fun shirt for me!"

and they recommended this pink shirt

- which I didn't buy -

but it's a good example.

Why are customer reviews so good?

A lot of it is because we trust them.

A lot of it is also that

I can walk up to you and say "hey,

I was thinking about getting those shoes,

are they good?"

I can also have a social experience with this

and I can say - "oh that girl, she's just mad

about this other thing, clearly from that review,

she doesn't know what she's talking about.

She's not like me."

I have a whole social experience with that a lot of the time.

So we have these social experiences

built in, in a lot of ways.

Part of why the Genius Bar is so genius

is that when I come in and

in interaction with a person, that's something that I need.

Usability tests, in our persuasion interviews and things like that

we're hearing from users,

saying, "oh yeah, why would you try to drive me out of your store

you're always trying to do that

but I need to talk to someone."

And they'll often give excuses like

"oh, I trust them more"

but what's really going on

is that they have a need to interact

with other people.

So sometimes it's not a good idea

to drive people from your local branch.

Or your store.

Sometimes it's a good idea

to have some of those people who come in

because they have a need for this interaction.

So these 4 types of fun

are good predictors.

My dissertation verified this,

we had 160 participants

and we looked at this and found

that they're a good predictor

of overall enjoyment.

And we looked at other things in that too

but that was one of the main findings.

So, enjoyment is largely comprised

of these four things.

I want to show you 2 examples of

all four of these things.

This is pretty quick.

One from games, one not from games.

So, first - World of Warcraft.

So, I certainly have Hard Fun in World of Warcraft

where I go in and fight enemies.

I go in, I can go in all by myself

and see enemies

I shoot them and fight them

and battle them with my swords

and then I get something out of that

I get a victory out of that.

We have challenge and feedback.

We have Easy Fun

with all kinds of exploration we can do

huge vast world

you can get lost also

and that's not so good

but we can explore

and you get beautiful vistas

these kinds of things.

Serious Fun is harder.

World of Warcraft - basically the only Serious Fun you have

the only thing you can take away from World of Warcraft

is like, knowledge about World of Warcraft.

What would it look like to have

Serious Fun in World of Warcraft?

Let me give you an example from

Grand Theft Auto - real quick.

Grand Theft Auto

the easiest way - I'm not sure

which version it is

which version of the game it is

but in Grant Theft Auto,

the easiest way to get health -

the fastest cheapest way to get health -

is by eating fast food.

When you do that in the game -

you eat fast food a lot -

your character starts to get fat.

And when your character gets fat

you can't fight as well.

So there's an embedded

positive social message

an embedded learning experience

in Grand Theft Auto.

Could you have something like that in World of Warcraft?

Yeah, maybe.

They have an auction system,

you could maybe learn something about

how economies work.

There's a little of that there.

Now, the People Fun aspect in World of Warcraft -

there's lots of examples of this

real quick - I'll give you a few.

There are Guilds -

the Guild is basically like a club that I join.

And I join the club - and most of what

I do when I get on is

I say "hey guys, how was your day?"

And people go - "oh, I'm good

I, you know, dropped the kids off

at the pool, and we

went to this other thing, and..."

A lot of the time, that's what's happening

with the Guild.

You also have other things you do

with the Guild.

You have cooperative experience.

This is probably a Guild doing this

but you can do it with anyone

this is a Raid.

And I'm playing - well, not me -

but someone's playing here

with 40 people.

This is a 40 person Raid.

Each of these life bars is one of the other players.

So there's cooperative experiences.

And certainly you also have

competitive experiences

because you have Player vs. Player.

These are all different kinds of

People Fun that you have in World of Warcraft.

So, that's one example -

World of Warcraft -

where you see most of the 4 types of fun.

Let's look at another example.

This is the Nike+ GPS app

that we were talking about before

just one big reward

and this actually has 4 types of fun also.

What this does is tracks your running.

So, I go and do my run

I have a challenge with getting to a certain level

a certain distance that I cover with my run.

So, it tracks that.

And as I'm running, it gives me feedback.

I can tell it which voice I want.

I can have Lance Armstrong

or I can have Tracy Morgan

I can have any of these voices

say "yeah, good job - keep running - yeah!"

as I'm going. Not the whole time, but a little bit

as you're playing.

So there's Hard Fun,

there's feedback with Hard Fun.

You also have a little bit of Easy Fun.

This is maybe the weakest of the 4 here

there may be more of it than I know about

but as I'm running, I can run anywhere I want

because it has a GPS

so, I can have an exploration experience

as I'm running.

And because it tracks it -

I don't have to stay to a certain track.

So that's how we get Easy Fun

with the Nike+ GPS app.

You also have Serious Fun,

because - and this should be obvious - Exercise.

I get a whole bunch of exercise out of this

and it tracks it and tells me how much

distance I've covered

and I get an exercise experience.

People Fun - they've done something really clever.

They have a game of Tag,

where I compete with other people

playing this game of Tag.

They also actually have a thing

where it will automatically -

if you set it up to -

it will automatically post updates on Facebook

saying, "so and so is running, and he's run

such and such a distance."

And when people comment on that post on Facebook

it gives a little cheer to tell you that

so you get encouragement

in that People Fun aspect from people.

So we get People Fun in a couple of ways

with this app.

It's a very successful app.

All right.

Just to wrap this up,

I want to talk about how we deal with these four -

which of these do you pick?

There are four types of fun.

Which are you going to go into

the office tomorrow and do?

Well, Nicole Lazzaro says - all of them.

She says that the most successful games

all have at least 3 of the 4 types of fun

in some way, shape, or form.

And that's probably good advice.

What we at Human Factors do

when we're talking about these emotional experiences

is we start by understanding

the user's needs.

And we do that with an interview

that's a lot like psychoanalysis.

We bring in a set of users,

one at a time,

and sit down with them

and probe them deeply

into their emotional needs.

Find out what they're afraid of,

what they're excited about,

all those deep emotional things.

And then we can tune and target

we can make an experience

that's much more direct.

Because there are 4 types of fun

but there are other emotional needs that

people can have as well

that you may have to worry about

that are beyond just fun.

So that's what we do.

So those are two different approaches

to figure out how you're

going to deal with these

different emotions.

All right. Quick recap.

Tune your challenge.

Get that challenge right.

Give people feedback.

Use avatars - if you can.

Let people mess around.

Let people explore -

remember, it's not just graphic beautification.

Lead people on a guided journey

and exploration.

Give people something to take away.

Let people interact with other people

within the interface

and don't always drive people

away from the stores or the branches.

I'll take any questions.

(clapping)