What should you do a minute before your users unsubscribe? Sharing my own thoughts

I always mention User motivation and Gamification as two important components in the digital experience - let's get to know the terms in details:

I'll take you to a short journey to some psychological aspects.

When we speak about "User Motivation" we address the inner drivers which users have and how these drivers turn into their habits. We should remember, of course, that in a digital environment, these habits will become a crucial point from a developer's perspective, thus we will find answers to questions such as "what actions do I want my users to take?" or "how will I guide them to complete specific task?" or "will they get to the finish point?" We, as applications or web developers would like to make sure our users know how they use our product, how they can benefit from it, what experience they will have and how it will affect their lives. In computer games we call it "addiction" – isn't it the best dream when our users use our product again and again? This leads me to the other term: Gamification. According to one of the most popular definitions of this term created by Prof. Kevin Werbach from Pennsylvania University, Wharton School of Management, "Gamification is the application of game elements and digital game design techniques to non-game problems, such as business and social impact challenges". This means that gamification might be a good technique to enhance user motivation. Why? Because people like to play: game is a great way to learn habits and enjoy at the same time.

Let's take Waze app as an example: this popular application helps us to get from point A to point B. But instead of being just another GPS system, it relies on crowd sourced community power, and motivates it by using game-like approach. For example, by contributing information, users feel they're meaningful not only to themselves but to other drivers: they receive "thanks" from them and are being awarded points: this combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, combined with a human-based approach makes a difference.

What core aspects can be pointed out in relation to human motivation, and how it correlates with game-like approach?

Let's examine several game elements that I'm sure we all recognize in so many games: challenge, sense of achievement, competition, social interaction, exploration. All these elements have strong roots in human behavior. What happens when a company like eBay creates bids? Don't you feel you actually are competing with other players and the prize is winning the product? Or in case of recruitment process as part of HR main functions: you can incorporate challenges for candidates in the recruitment process, but you can also use it in order to engage them with the company and its' organizational culture. Another good implementation is in the field of learning and development: gamification is a proved way to drive participation, knowledge sharing and implementation of learning materials. Motivation achieved by rewarding and recognition is a powerful tool to deal with performance management goals. Taking it to a digital environment provides another exciting level of exploring human behavior and core drivers of engagement. Yu-Kai Chu, a world-leading expert and influencer in the field of Gamification talks about "Human-Focused Design" and prefers to use it more than the term "Gamification". He claims that Human Focused Design is examining people's feelings, ambitions, fears and reasons why they want or don't want to perform certain tasks. A good application takes these assumptions into consideration and produces an end-to-end solution, including the right functions.

When using the term "human focused design" – how can this affect product developers in the HR Tech world?

This is not different from any other technological solutions, but there are quite a lot of things to consider:

First – think about the area your product is located in: is it for recruiting, employee engagement, learning and development, knowledge management, wellness, benefits program, organizational culture or other?

Second – can you profile your users: Who are they? If these are employees – what do you know about them? Or maybe we talk about candidates? Where do they come from? Age, gender, profession, social-economic status? What are they looking for? What digital preferences do they have? If you already have people using your solution, can you say what works and what doesn't work? Are they stuck? Do they leave before completing the process? Do they review your product? What do they complain for? What do they like the most?

Third – don't be tempted to follow trends or think just about the "cool and fun" effect of your project. This can be nice for one-time interaction with the users. Don't you want your users to use your application over and over again? If so – there should be a profound process done and with no shortcuts.

Firth – try considering the business effect. What I mean by that is that every decision you make regarding your user motivation should be aligned with clear business goals and metrics. In this context let's examine the following case study in the field of recruitment:

Siemens UK joined Arctic Shores to create game-based assessment Cosmic Cadet, which measures 13 job-relevant behaviors and aspects of cognition, and awards players stars as they move through the process. Both candidates and employees participated, and the data created was a successful basis to predict various aspects, such as successful high performance in a set of roles at Siemens. This experiment provided a rare opportunity to redefine measures for recruitment and candidates sorting. As reported, this move increased assessment centre pass rates from 24% to 40%, and doubled the number of female candidates progressing beyond the final stage. This is a good example that demonstrates a combination of business metrics, human focused design and gamified approach. I can also mention that such solutions help businesses go out of the box and put HR needs at the forefront of company's innovation strategy.

What outcomes should an HR Tech entrepreneur expect from such a process?

The outcomes are quite simple and understandable: an HR Tech innovator should receive a concept document followed by a design document; both of them describe practical recommendations on UX-UI and development modules. This is a major part of the consulting process done by experts in this field.

But even more important, this step is crucial for the product's future success. Understanding your users' motivators might be a question of success or non success: can you think of any other important issue of usability? What good justification might be for an application to exist if people don't want to use it? HR Tech innovators should consider this process as a "must-do"- when they write their first concept doc or when they experience some challenges with their users. 

What makes my approach different?

I use structured method which includes thorough analysis of the goals and modules of the products and its target audience and fit the gamification elements based on this. I also integrate control tools for frequent measurement of gamification outcomes. It enables me to update the product and ensure meeting the goals for long term.

Another important need is to assist customers with the implementation. For example, customizing existing features, adding external modules interfacing the product as a “gamification overlay” and providing software modules to integrate into the code.

I have a strong personal connection to the HR world, since I've been providing creative solutions for HR for more than 15 years, and in the last decade I meet these needs also as a large HR community manager. I've created innovative solutions for employee professional development, performance improvement, onboarding and more. My passion was always bridging between artistic worlds of cinema and computer games to real-life scenarios in organizational daily challenges.  

I would humbly point out that from my personal experience my specific approach influences the product's success and prevents future mistakes. These mistakes might be painful from a point of view of spending precious time, high budgets and energy. So we're talking here about risk management and managerial strategic decisions.

Another point is that this process is connected in a very harmonic and natural way to product development processes that are done anyway by innovators. The only thing is that user motivation shouldn't be forgotten here.

What advice would I give to HR Tech innovators?

Most of developers are "in love" with their product. That's great! All I'm saying is that you should be careful and prevent future mistakes: listen to your user, investigate, get as much knowledge as you can, learn from personal experience of your potential users, examine your competition. For example, if your product is a B2C, B2B or B2B2C oriented – this might create different challenges in terms of usability. Remember, from being a part of an HR world, you naturally deal with humans not machines. Be sensitive to habits, preferences, motivation.