USING

GAMIFICATION
AND TECHNOLOGY
TO CHANGE HABITS:
HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR TARGET
AUDIENCE WITH GAME DYNAMICS
AND TECHNOLOGIC SOLUTIONS.
SUMMARY

3 INTRODUCTION

5 THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGING HABITS

5 Extrinsic motivation
6 Intrinsic motivation
6 Gamification facilitates intrinsic motivation

7 WHAT IS GAMIFICATION?

8 WHAT ARE THE GAME DYNAMICS THAT MAKE UP GAMIFICATION

- AND THAT HELP CHANGE HABITS?
8 Immediate responses to actions
8 Transparency and ranking of all participants
8 Goals to be achieved in the short and long term
8 Evidence of achievements
8 Status within the community
9 Attractive and compelling way to learn
9 Healthy competition
9 Collaborative work
9 Sense of belonging to a community
9 Score: materializing and measuring evidence and achievements
10 SUCCESS CASE: MOTIVATING DRIVERS TO
ADOPT MORE RESPONSIBLE DRIVING HABITS
10 The method and the technological resource
10 The challenge
11 Gamification allied to Design Thinking
11 Applied game dynamics
12 The use of technology: The Internet of Things

14 CONCLUSION

15 ABOUT MJV
 INTRODUCTION

When your organization undertakes projects or initiatives to

improve performance, seize opportunities, or address key
issues, it is often dealing with change. Changes in processes,
work functions, organizational structures and types and uses
of technology.

However, the employees of your organization are the ones who

actually have to change the way they do their jobs. If the people
who make up the teams are not successful in their personal
transitions, if they do not embrace and learn a new way of working,
initiatives tend to fail. The opposite is also true: if your employees
engage in change, they will produce the expected results.
USING GAMIFICATION AND TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE HABITS | MJV TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Similarly, by modifying a product or service offer or

repositioning the brand, you must ensure that customers and
business partners have no negative impacts. The goal is to make
the modifications have previously established effects and result
in success for the business.

This is where the concept of Change Management arises.

Basically, change management is the discipline that guides how we
prepare, equip, and support individuals to successfully adopt the
modifications needed to drive organizational success and results.

While all changes and individuals are unique, decades of

research show that there are actions we can take to influence
people in their individual transitions. Managing change
strategically and with methods facilitates a structured approach
to support the target audience (whatever it is) by moving them
from their current states to future states.

In this e-book, we will discuss how it is possible to make

changes with the least negative impact on people's moods
through Gamification. More than that: let's think about how
technology can be used in this context.

3
 In the chapters that follow you will learn more about
Gamification and how to use tools and technology to implement
change of habits and engage the audience with game dynamics.

Enjoy!
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4
 THE CHALLENGE OF
CHANGING HABITS

Maxwell Maltz, One of the most important scientists in the field

of psychology that the United States has ever had (creator of the
so-called "psycho-cybernetics"), once said:

“THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS CHANGING A

HABIT IS BEING AWARE OF THE NEED TO CHANGE”.

In general, we are all aware that changing habits is a great

challenge. When we bring this paradigm into the business
context, it becomes even more puzzling; after all, changes in
habits are made in a group, requiring profound changes in the
USING GAMIFICATION AND TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE HABITS | MJV TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

values and culture of the organization.

So how do you change habits when you need to change

processes, business models, brand-consumer interaction, and
even products and services that are already established and no
longer deliver the optimum return?

Broadly speaking, several experts say there are two kinds of

motivation to change one’s habits. They are:

Extrinsic motivation
Basically, an extrinsic motivation is driven by punishments
and rewards. In general, they feed on short-term behaviors
and are closely linked to routine tasks but do not take into
account the natural impulses of autonomy, purpose and
excellence.

Usually, the extrinsic motivations are not enough to change

deeply ingrained habits, which have been fed for years.
That is, they often do not work in organizations, since
organizational culture is constantly being shaping and
solidified over time.

5
 Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivations, in turn, stimulate impulses of autonomy,
purpose and excellence, as it offers rewards linked to the "now".
They are usually unexpected and offered after completion of
certain actions or tasks.

This is the kind of motivation that is most concerned with the

satisfaction and personal fulfillment of individuals during activities.

Therefore, we can say without a doubt that intrinsic motivations

are more effective and have potential for long-term effects.

It is very easy to identify when a person is intrinsically

motivated, since there is a much deeper connection with the
action or task being performed.

Have you ever been so involved in a certain task that you did not
even see time go by? This is very different from those activities
that we cannot wait to get over with. By being intrinsically
motivated, you reach a state that neuroscientists call "flow",
which occurs when you are so submerged in concentration and
are so overcome with pleasure from what you are doing.
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Gamification facilitates intrinsic motivation

That's when we get to the heart of this e-book. With
Gamification, you can help your business audience feel
intrinsically motivated to change a habit, whatever it may be.

By using game dynamics, you are acting directly in the satisfaction

that we all have to compete with ourselves and others.

In the next chapter, you will leran or recall what Gamification

is so that you can begin to understand how to apply it as a
motivating method to change habits. Keep reading!

6
 WHAT IS GAMIFICATION

Gamification is nothing more than the use of game mechanics

to influence performance, solve problems, and/or incite
engagement. It is not just a game, it is the use of gaming
techniques to evade traditional approaches when it comes
to shaping or encouraging specific behaviors in people
(familiarizing with new technologies, streamlining learning
processes, training, engaging in tedious activities, Change
management, etc.).

The term itself was coined for the first time by Nick Pelling, a
computer programmer and British researcher. And it gained
worldwide popularity by being used by Jane McGonigal, an
USING GAMIFICATION AND TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE HABITS | MJV TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

American game designer, in a TED Talk.

You can summarize the Gamification concept with the following

definition:

“THE USE OF GAME MECHANICS IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS, WITH

THE PURPOSE OF INCREASING PARTICIPATION AND GENERATING
ENGAGEMENT BY POTENTIAL USERS”.

— Download our free book: Gamification, INC.: how to reinvent

companies through games

7
 WHAT ARE THE GAME
DYNAMICS THAT MAKE UP
GAMIFICATION - AND THAT
HELP CHANGE HABITS?
Gamification is built on a few basic game mechanics that
awaken the intrinsic motivations needed to change habits and
act with more pleasure and less resistance:

Immediate response to actions

Encourage users to continue or adjust their activities with on-
screen notifications, text messages or emails. Congratulate a
user for achieving a goal; Encourage the next step towards a
milestone or promote a new reward.

Transparency and ranking of all participants

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Show users exactly where the metrics are, those that are
important to you and your audience; Show real time and historic
progress. Dashboards show who are the users (players) who
lead the rankings of results, who is winning the competition.

Goals to be achieved in the short and long term

Missions or challenges give users a purpose for interaction, and
to educate themselves on what is valued and what can be done
within the experience.

Evidence of achievements
An achievement indicator or mastery of a skill is especially
significant within a community that understands its value. Often
used to identify skills and knowledge within the group.

Status within the community

Create levels that indicate accomplishments. Create status
within a community from unlocking new missions, badges,
activities, and rewards.

8
 An attractive and compelling way to learn
Providing missions help users to immediately engage with tasks
and learn faster.

READ IN OUR BLOG: GAMIFICATION:

HOW GAME METHODOLOGIES CAN STIMULATE LEARNING

Healthy competition
Raise the stakes to reach a goal by showing users how they
compare to other people, as individuals or teams. Encourage
time-based competition, team and individual leaderboards.
Where do I stand? How can I overtake my nearest competitor?

Collaborative work
Connect users as a team to accomplish larger tasks, to boost
competition and encourage knowledge sharing. Show team
members how they are contributing to the success of the group.

Sense of belonging to a community

Create a sense of community to give meaning to goals, symbols,
competitions; Make people aware of what others are doing and
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how their chores influence the whole.

READ IN OUR BLOG: LEARN HOW TO

ENGAGE EMPLOYEES THROUGH GAMIFICATION

Score: materializing and measuring

evidence and achievements
Use and maintain scores to establish status, award
points to measure results, and make individual or group
accomplishments tangible.

Keep reading. In the following chapter, you will see how to use
Gamification as a method for changing habits!

9
 SUCCESS CASE:
MOTIVATING DRIVERS TO
ADOPT MORE RESPONSIBLE
DRIVING HABITS
Now that you have understood that habits are modified through
intrinsic motivations and you have seen how Gamification can
help in this challenge, let's move on to a practical case that we
have worked on at MJV.

Next, you will see how we use game dynamics alongside

Thinking Design and the Internet of Things to get the results
expected by our client!

The method and the technologic resource

Rapidamente, relembre o que é Design Thinking e o que é
USING GAMIFICATION AND TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE HABITS | MJV TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Internet das Coisas:

__Design Thinking: A structured approach to innovation

that has the human being as a focus and seeks to generate
solutions that align the desire and needs of the consumer/
user with the generation of value for the business — to learn
more, download our book: Design Thinking – Innovation
in business!
__Internet of Things: Hyperconnection phenomenon in
which any object can be connected to the web, either
through applications or sensors — in order to familiarize
yourself with this concept, read: Internet of Things, a new
industrial revolution?
The challenge
Our client is one of the largest and most important companies
in the segment of consumer goods in Brazil. It sought the MJV
team to investigate how to encourage drivers to develop or
adopt safer driving habits in a structured manner.

As the company studied the creation of a new product, it wanted

the motivations to be positive, opposed to the punishment that
people already face with the traffic laws, for example.

10
 Gamification allied to Design Thinking
Gamification proved to be a promising route in this project, because,
as we showed in the previous chapter, the greatest value of this
approach is to take advantage of the capacity of attraction and
dedication that games stir, to solve problems of difficult solution.

Just pay attention to the huge amount of time people spend on

electronic games like Angry Birds, for instance. According to the
game’s designers, an average person spends, on average, about
three weeks a year interacting with the application!

In the case of drivers, who have extremely varied profiles, but who
are often reactive to changes in behavior, games are very welcome.

But before adopting Gamification as a method in this

investigation, we wanted to answer the following questions:

__Why would the game benefit service users?

__What are the business objectives behind the game?
__How will game dynamics help users achieve the business
objectives of the of the company behind the project?
In order to help answer these questions adequately, we used
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Design Thinking, especially the ethnography approach, which is,

in short, a way of immersing in the reality of the target audience.

Applied game dynamics

By linking Design Thinking to Gamification, we obtained the
following results:

__Acceleration of the performance evaluation cycle:

the possibility of the driver knowing his/her mistakes
and correctness in each trip and his progress over time.
For example, drivers who improved their braking
averages during the week were rewarded in the game;
__Clarity about the goals and rules of the game:
making traffic laws and good habits clearer for the driver.
When establishing, for example, that the driver must have
his hands on the steering wheel 95% of the time, and we
provided a concrete parameter of behavior;
__Division of large tasks into smaller parts that can be
quantified and measured: the driver has attainable goals
in the short term and with a level of challenge that is in
accordance with his/her ability;

11
 __Ensure that there is intrinsic and extrinsic motivation:
awards, scores, daily rewards, along with feedback,
give autonomy, purpose and perspective for achieving
excellence;
The use of technology: The Internet of Things
Do not forget that in this project we are talking about capturing,
quantifying and treating real-life data and presenting them to
people in a relevant manner. This is where the Internet of Things
comes in!

Our team sought to understand the upcoming trends and the

evolution of automotive interfaces, thinking about the next
natural evolution of the automotive industry (especially in
future interactions between people and vehicles).

Starting from the assumption that we will not have autonomous

cars for some time, but taking advantage of the evolution of
technology in components such as sensors and processors,
we were able to understand that there are interesting
opportunities to be imagined and idealized in the medium
and long term.

The continuous evolution and availability of reliable and cheap

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technology gives rise to new possibilities to enable more complex

forms of Gamification. The more sensors, more data collected,
and information evaluated, the more interesting and relevant the
feedback given to the driver.

Results: understanding the motivation of

changing drivers' habits
In this project, it was very clear that the current automotive
interfaces do not take into account the different drive profiles.
They are all the same for everyone, despite the need for them
to be very different. An older person with slow reflexes or little
knowledge about a vehicle requires different solutions than
those needed for a younger person who knows about cars and
who already possesses total control over his or her car.

The ability to adapt and customize a system was the key to

engage drivers. This means that everyone has a motivation of
their own to change their driving habits.

Consider the following example: the case of someone who talks

on the phone often and takes risks while driving. Would a reward
for a change of habit or the simple fact of tracking your progress

12
 in modifying that habit really help you take a safer stance? Is it
possible that by comparing your performance with that of other
drivers and knowing your share of contribution to the collective
through an application to engage you in the change?

It is important to note that a number of other challenges have

begun to emerge as we delve deeper into research. For example,
we needed to ensure that drivers would not be distracted by
the interface, the system attached to your car's dashboard. We
understand, for example, that the driver should only be able to
interact with the game after completing the trip (see results).
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13
 CONCLUSION

As we have seen throughout this e-book, Gamification,

allied to Design Thinking (as a method of investigation and
understanding of human behavior) and the Internet of Things
(creation of practical ways of capturing, analyzing and using
data) can change the level of engagement and inspire people
to change their habits.

According to the Gartner Group, by the end of 2016,

more than US$ 2.8 billion has been traded in Gamification
strategies around the world, and there is a reason for this.
More and more organizations are using this approach to
solve problems, with Change Management being one of the
strategies that can best rely on it.
USING GAMIFICATION AND TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE HABITS | MJV TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

You saw in the case presented here, that when the

accomplishment of the activities is more fun, that is,
when they provoke intrinsic motivations, the results are
much better. On the other hand, when a process of habit
change is painful (extrinsic and driven by punishments
and vertical orders), the tendency is for the change to be
viewed in a negative way, which results in resistance and
little engagement. If the rewards are real, emotional, and
even imagined, they tend to inspire people and implicitly
demonstrate that it is worth to take up new ways of acting.

What about you? Have you ever thought about using

Gamification to change habits in your target audience?

14
ABOUT MJV

TRANSFORMING BUSINESS WITH DESIGN

THINKING AND DIGITAL STRATEGIES

Since 1997, MJV Technology & Innovation has worked with some of
the biggest companies in the world in their business challenges. With
offices in Europe, United States and Latin America, the consultancy
firm today relies on a multidisciplinary team of over 300 professionals.

MJV is composed of three pillars, structured in total synergy:

INNOVATION IN BUSINESS: development and implementation of

innovative solutions to reduce costs, increase profits and create new
business models.

TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANCY: development and implementation of

personalized business intelligence services (B.I.), IT and Internet of
Things.

DIGITAL STRATEGY: Development and implementation of corporate

strategy and user experience so that the ”digital self” and ”digital
thinking” become intrinsic to the business model.

We believe that innovation comes from the combination of design

and technology principles. For us, empathy, creativity, and processes
centered on the user lead to relevant and impactful solutions that
generate real value for the business.

Distinct challenges demand distinct approaches. That is why we

combine different expertise – Design Thinking, Service Design,
Gamification, User Experience, Big Data, Lean Methodology, Internet
of Things, amongst others – with the aim of transforming complex
MAURÍCIO VIANNA
challenges in to innovative solutions.
Global CEO
mvianna@mjvinnovation.com

YSMAR VIANNA
Chairman
yvianna@mjvinnovation.com
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