Gamification and Mobility Solutions [2] | Ability
Recap: There are 3 things that need to occur concurrently for behaviour to occur – Motivation, Ability and Trigger.

We need to make the target behaviour easier to do. Therefore, we must make it simple. We can do this by either training your target audience to give them higher ability to perform a certain task – as frequently seen in forced labour/athletics. Or we could increase simplicity by reducing the degree and amount of resources required to perform a task.

Here is a commercial from a brand that centers their entire brand strength on increasing simplicity for their users: http://youtu.be/9YkR4Xg9Ubw

“Simplicity is a function of your scarcest resources at that moment” - BJ

There are 6 resources that affect the simplicity of performing a specific behaviour. These are, in no certain order:
Time
Money
Physical effort
Brain cycles
Social deviance
Non-routine

Try to think of these 6 as finite resources for your target audience. Take for example, time. If you require your audience to sit leisurely and stare into space for half-an-hour, time (as a resource) is abundant for someone has nothing on their schedule on a lazy Sunday morning (i.e. me) thus making the task easy. However, for a doctor working in an ER on the night of a tragic widespread man-eating puppy attack, time is a scarce resource and the task becomes very difficult to perform.

It was a confusingly cuddly and horrific day for humanity

As such:
-	If the task requires more money than you can afford, it is difficult
-	If the task requires more physical effort than you can muscle, it is difficult
-	If the task requires more thinking (brain cycles) than you are accustomed to, it is difficult
-	If the task requires you to do something that makes you stand out from society (deviate from the social norm) either in a good or bad light, it is difficult
-	If the task requires you to break from routine, it is difficult

This all seems like common sense, however it is a good checklist to use when designing an efficient user experience. We often assume things to be easier to do than they actually are so it is good to take the task apart and view it from the angle of resources required.

Now, it is pretty obvious that every individual’s wealth of these 6 resources is different. Therefore, it is rather impossible to tailor our solutions to suit every user’s true ability. What we can do however is manipulate our user’s perceived simplicity based on assumed norms.

For example, if I am trying to get people to donate money to a charitable cause, there are several methods I can use to increase simplicity for the donors. I could use a clear transparent collection box that is half full to decrease social deviance so you will donate because ‘lots of people do it anyway’. I could also ask for a mere $1 every day for a month instead of $30 immediately to reduce your perceived monetary commitment. I could arrange to deduct a donation when you tap your ezlink card at the MRT so it becomes part of your routine.

In this article, I do not allow the paragraphs to go longer than 7 lines. By visually breaking up the text, you would perceive the article easier to consume. Additionally, by adding silly pictures and examples, you perceive the content to be less serious and therefore requiring less brain cycles.

Now, it is time for a visual model.

For me, I estimate the simplicity of a task by using the diagram below:

This particular model is based on this whole Gamification 101 exercise and your perceived ability. For you, as a target audience, you would perceive an educational exercise to require these resources in decreasing order; Time, Brain Cycles, Non-routine, Money, Social Deviance, and Physical Effort. As a designer of this experience, I would need to reduce the perceived consumption of time and brain cycles primarily (still working on this).

All that being said, a high degree of simplicity is not always a good thing to have.

Depending on your target group, the consumption of certain resources is more enjoyable the more difficult it becomes. For example, a professional body builder would better appreciate a challenging workout programme that pushes him beyond the physical effort he is used to instead of one that is at a level he is comfortably capable of. If this series was about how to differentiate between a desk and a lamppost, it will not be enjoyable for you because you appreciate a higher cognitive simulation than that.

In application, it is useful to break up the task you want your target audience to perform into behaviour chains. This was mentioned briefly in last week’s Facebook triggers example. By breaking a task into a chain of smaller tasks, you will be able to pinpoint where difficulty arises and place triggers at each point to propel your user along.

Next week, MOTIVATION!