Gamification and behavior change
I go to the gym 3 mornings a week. Like many middle-aged folks, I knew I need to stay healthy somehow even though I have a desk job, a work commute, and two kids. The behavior change to get my reluctant body to the gym at 5:30 am came about years ago, but that’s not what this post is about.
The cardio portion of my workout has always been a bore. Let’s face it, an elliptical machine sitting in the middle of a typical gym is pretty much the least interesting place in the world.
Then my gym got an X-Dream bike on trial.1 Once I tried it I was hooked. It combines my need to exercise, my inability to find time for actual mountain biking, and my enjoyment of video games into one experience. Suddenly, the cardio portion of my workout became a goal rather than a chore.
The game elements of progressive, increasing challenges, progress display, and badges for achievements all drove me back to the bike every gym morning.
The addition of game elements to a traditionally non-game task is called “gamification.” These gamification techniques can be used to good effect to help individuals change their behavior more easily in nearly any context, including adherence programs for pharmaceuticals.
Increasing challenge
As the participant continues, the game becomes tougher. Examples include: reducing the number of cigarettes smoked, reducing meal sizes, or increasing intensity and duration of an exercise program.
Progress display
Progression through the “levels” of the system needs to be displayed to the user. This progress is what gives the incentive to continue the behavior change and reach the next goal.
Badges
Each milestone for a participant is a chance to celebrate success, such as “you have lost 50% of your excess weight”. These celebrations can be known to the participant and planned for, or they can be surprising and unplanned for. Both models have a place in persuasion and behavior change.
Competition
My gym has only one bike, but if there are more, they can be networked to provide a platform for competition between riders. With the right scheduling and the right group of people that competition could be a big motivation for continued use, assuming that individuals with compatible abilities could be matched. If the company enables online competition the benefit could be extended to social media channels (think leaderboards on Facebook) and even enable head-to-head racing.
The bike includes another competitive feature called “ghost racing”. In this mode the rider is racing against his or her best time on any given track. By racing against the best time, healthy competition is ensured and the rider is motivated to continually improve.
Not every pharma promotion can benefit from gamification, but it is a useful and important tool to consider when developing programs.
Have you ever used these principles when developing a pharma program?
- Neither Klick nor I have any affiliation with X-Dream, we did contact X-Dream when writing this post just to get permission to use images from their website.
