The Japanese inspire me with their drive to continually improve – everything.  Even packets of catsup open better  in Japan than in America.  Might it be time for the Great Heavenly Father to rethink a couple things about how we increase our number?  I think so, and while I am supposed to be working on the user experience issues with a social media sharing tool that I am designing, I wonder if I might offer God a few thoughts.  Mind you, these are not prayers, nor are they what I would wish upon my own reproductive “user experience,” but since it occurs to me that the deal is rather flawed, here are my ideas:

Gamify the deal a lot better in favor of the women

If the female is going to bring the child to term, and suffer the pains of pregnancy and childbirth, why not demand more from the male?  Again, in my lifetime, there’s no need to implement the human reproductive UX ideas I have for you – and what’s more, I think many would agree that you might do well to start an entirely new type of “us,” Human 2.0, say, on a different planet.

Give the functional mammaries to the men

Getting ready for baby-feeding, this guy isn't about to go looking for action while his wife is preggin' it, is he?

and make them start filling with milk, gradually, immediately after successful mating.  This would prompt the guy to stick around after the fun’s over, and make him appear what the Human 2.0 female regard as “taken”: a guy walking around with noticably expanding boobs.  Further, it would motivate the male to:

• take care of what he puts in his body, while the female is doing likewise, while pregnant

• do all of the feeding, pretty much, while the baby is being breastfed

• suffer a healthy dose of the indignity, inconvenience and discomfort of breastfeeding, which would encourage him to think twice before remarking on how the female’s ass might have changed in shape for the worse.

I would actually just do this one major change before implementing my next suggestion, so as to evaluate the reactions, changes on population growth, male reluctance to engage in intercourse, etc.  You really want to make such major changes in stages, I believe.  And try them on the beings on a planet other than earth, first (please).

If you find males far less willing to engage in intercourse with the female to male mammary reassignment, I would further encourage males with the following trade-off: when the males “unlock” the milk-producing mammaries feature, let them also unlock the ability to control the dimensions of their penises at will, and perhaps, upon producing a second child, also control turgidity and staying power.  Naturally, I am assuming that the major religions have read you right – with their teaching that you, Lord, do actually wish us to be (more) fruitful and multiplying.

Gender change at will

Just as some fish, insects, and other animals (plants too, I believe) have the ability to change gender when they sense a major imbalance, you might next try this with adult humans.  Let us be who we want to be.  Let us choose the role that feel right, regardless of the junk you started us out with.  I think of this one having known a number of homosexual humans, through my life, who truly never felt right being forced to either abstain from sex or use what seems to be the wrong stuff to them.  I also recall the Semester at Sea program (do check the linked page; no joke – around the globe in one semester, its for real; they simply do not believe in paying for advertising) I did in the Fall semester of 1988, and while it was a blast for us hetero guys, with about 420 female college students on a cruise ship, nightclub, volleyball, swimming pool… and less than of us (hunted!) males: in the mating game, the table was clearly turned, suffice it to say.  I will finish with a musical tribute to the opposite situation: this is what happens when a nightclub is taken over by geeks.  Hint: it can be even more awkward for us guys, when we greatly outnumber the females…

God has yet to comment on my blog

(Please do not comment as “God,” unless you are reasonably comfortable in your belief that you are God.  In that case, by all means!) I can always hope, right?

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Last article of a five part guest posts series,“Unleashing Crowd Power”, by Michal Hudecek.

Working with the Motivation Wheel

Although the Motivation Wheel can be used as a tool for measuring the motivation of the crowd retrospectively on each crowdsourcing project, its core benefit lies within the concept design phase. Defining which motives you are trying to maximize can help you prioritize what to focus on during the development.

What should people think and feel when participating at your crowdsourcing project? What can you offer? For each factor you decide to use, take into account following suggestions.

1) Pride

Help the best contributors become famous. Make sure their contributions are visible and easily sharable via social networks. Regularly announce the most active participants in as many channels as possible. Create a profile page where they can promote themselves or their projects. Make them compete against each other.

2) Fun

Visualization is fun. Use progress bars or any other visual elements where possible. Replace boring writing with drag and drop or simple clicking. Give the crowd a single number to strive for, whether it is amount of articles or number of ideas shared. Create interesting graphs or publish infographics showing admirable figures. To do so, hire a talented graphic designer or use some good looking pre-build solutions such as Crowdgene.
Game elements are fun. Talk to your children about why they like playing computer games (especially massively multiplayer online role-playing games, so called MMORPGs). Incorporate leveling and award systems.  Study works of Jane McGonigal, Tom Chatfield or others (you can find even more inspirational books at my LinkedIn profile) .

3) Impact

If you want to focus on the impact factor, make sure your vision is strong enough and easy to communicate. Get inspired by Fold It. Just discovering how proteins could fold might not be a powerful message but helping to cure HIV is. Create a short professionally-looking video to get your message through

4) Relationships

The feeling of a connection can be the reason why people spend a lot of time supporting the local film director on social networks without any reward in exchange. Similarly, the relationship the customers have with your organization might be a good enough reason to participate in your crowdsourcing project. However, it needs to be said that corporations usually overestimate this factor. Try to be realistic about how big fans your customers are.
Another type of bond can be developed among the users themselves. Provide them with enough space to meet, talk and work together.

5) Money

Think twice about using money as a motivation factor. Not only cuts it a slice from your crowdsourcing budget, even a little financial incentive might shift the users’ behavior significantly as it might draw attention from all the other factors.

Conclusions

When developing any kind of web site, think first about desired feelings and thoughts of your visitors. The same goes for crowdsourcing projects. If you are still deciding about running one, make sure the work can be divided into small individual tasks, the cost of integrating them back together is low, enough people are able to participate and you can provide enough motivation to attract them.
The reason why people participate on crowdsourcing projects is because they lack one or more motivation factors in their day to day job – Pride, Fun, Impact, Relationships or Money. Use Motivation wheel and make sure you can provide them with proper substitute. You can check Motivation wheels of famous crowdsourcing projects to get inspired. Help the best contributors become famous, use gamification and visualization to make it fun, learn to communicate your vision, provide enough space for contributors to network or, if really needed, provide financial incentives.

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Part four of a five part guest posts series,“Unleashing Crowd Power”, by Michal Hudecek.

Visualization on the Motivation Factors

Motivation wheel concept as a framework for attracting contributors to your crowdsourcing projects has been described in the previous article. We will use it to show you how famous crowdsourcing projects gained their contributors.

A proper scientific measurement of the crowd motives in existing crowdsourcing projects has not been performed yet. However, here are some expert estimates of how the Motivation Wheel probably looks like for famous web sites.

1) Wikipedia

Wikipedia attracts contributors mainly thanks to two factors – pride and impact. By writing an article and posting it on Wikipedia you can show you understand the topic and you are an expert in this field. Secondly, Wikipedia vision of free knowledge is something many people find attractive to follow.

2) Prizes.org

A recent Google acquisition, Prizes.org, is a platform for crowdsourcing small tasks (such a logo design or a quick piece of advice) via financially rewarded contests. Apart from earning money, the participants can show their talent via customized profile page.

3) Fold It

Fold It is a computer game enabling players to contribute to important scientific research via solving 3D puzzles. They are motivating contributors to help discover cures for HIV/AIDS or cancer by providing them with a fun way to participate on a project with a big positive impact.

4) IdeasWatch

IdeasWatch is a platform for sharing startup ideas and forming teams around them in order to start a business. The main reason why young entrepreneurs share their ideas and discuss with others is to find like-minded people they would love to start a business with. The motivation factors are therefore pride and relationships.

The last article in the series will teach you how to use Motivation wheel during concept design phase of your crowdsourcing project.

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Part three of a five part guest posts series, “Unleashing Crowd Power”, by Michal Hudecek.

The Motivation Wheel

In the series, we have already covered general web directing principles and specifics for crowdsourcing projects. In this part, you will find out more about motivation forces that drive people in crowdsourcing projects.

The Motivation Wheel concept is based on web directing philosophy that puts the feelings and thoughts of visitors above everything else. The question is therefore, what should users think and feel in order to contribute to a crowdsourcing project? Why do people spend their free time working on something?

Image of an ideal job

Motivation Wheel concept works on an assumption that people share a common ideal of a perfect job that would fulfill all five following factors. It treats a crowdsourcing project as any other job position.

1) Pride

People want to be proud of themselves. They want to know they are doing a great job, that they are experts in their fields whatever that might be. Although the external appreciation is an important part of it, inner satisfaction must not be neglected.

2) Fun

Being good at something might not be enough. I might be really good at creating PowerPoint presentations but if it is not fun for me I do not want to be a professional PowerPoint designer.

3) Impact

Even the most boring tasks can become exciting if you are a part of a project with a strong positive impact. Even if creating presentations is boring for you, what if you were designing one that could save a lot of lives or change the way people communicate?

4) Relationships

Two types of relationships can be distinguished in a crowdsourcing project as well as in a work place.
The first one is with the authority that assigns tasks, boss or more generally organization itself. The manager employees admire may be why they do the most boring job without any complaints. Similarly, if users already have a good relationship with your organization they might be willing to participate in a crowdsourcing project just to help you out of the “friendship”.

The second bond can be established with the co-workers. The colleagues can be the reason why employees stay at a job they do not like. Analogically, lack of like-minded people in their daily job might encourage them to join online communities in their free time.

5) Money

Financial incentive is an obvious motivational factor. Used wisely, it can be a very strong tool. Who would not want to earn some extra cash? However, it can easily withdraw attention from other ones and alter users behavior in favor of the quickest possible way to earn money.

Visualizing the motivation factors

Because some of these factors are usually not fulfilled at a day to day occupation of many people, they tend to look for a substitute. And crowdsourcing is one of the alternatives.
Motivation Wheel visualizes these factors and shows their representation in a particular crowdsourcing project using a polar area diagram. Each sector represents one motivation factor. The more colored it is, the higher the motivation. The figure below depicts an ideal job/crowdsourcing project where all the motivation factors are fully met.

The next article in the series will show Motivation wheels for various famous crowdsourcing project.

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Part two of a five part guest posts series,“Unleashing Crowd Power”, by Michal Hudecek.

Crowdsourcing

General web directing principles described in the previous article apply to crowdsourcing projects without any exception. However, in case of crowdsourcing, thought process of a contributor has a specific pattern, which can be further analyzed. Web screenplays for crowdsourcing projects look similar as the basic thought process of contributors is also similar. The order might vary in different projects though.

When to use crowdsourcing

Not all the services can be delegated to the crowd. In fact, four specific conditions must be met in order to run a successful crowdsourcing project. They correspond with a typical though processes of a contributor. It basically means you must be able to provide satisfying and simple answers to following questions. The better the answers, the more successful your project will be:

1) What am I asked to do?

Firstly, it must be possible to divide the work load into very tiny tasks. The crowd does not work in real time as a team but rather subsequently as a group of individuals. Although the difference might seem subtle it plays a significant role. The output of each individual stacks up, which means at one particular moment only one person is usually working on his/her tiny task. Others are just deriving from the predecessor. Imagine, how Wikipedia is edited. One person writes an article, after that another adds pictures, after that another inserts more links etc. The crowd is not collaborating at the same time. Although it is technically possible, it would be much harder to gather people together at one particular moment. It is better to let them choose to work at their best convenience.

Example of a good answer: “Write an article or edit an existing one.”

2) How is the final output being assembled?

The system for integrating the outputs must be easy to understand and cheap to maintain. Usage of pre-build crowdsourcing platforms, such as Wiki or Crowdgene, is strongly recommended.
However, if you decide for any reason to develop your own crowdsourcing platform, bear in mind a few rules that should be followed:

• Everything that can be automated should be automated. In case your crowdsourcing project becomes popular, you will not be able to handle thousands of contributions otherwise.
• Create a system for deleting poor contributions via the crowd itself or assigned administrators. Quick removal of spam or low-quality entries is crucial to prevent further decrease in quality and demotivation of other participants. The crowd should see that inspirational contributions are really being appreciated.
• If you are able to remove poor contributions quickly as described above, allow both anonymous and non-anonymous entries. Any kind of login might cut the number of contributions significantly. However, for the ones that want to take credit for their work, allow them to sign in and show off.

Example of a good answer: “Articles are connected via hyperlinks by the authors themselves. Anyone can edit an article and remove the mistakes or spam.”

3) What do I need to overcome to start working?

In other words, what are the transaction costs for the contributors? When designing a crowdsourcing project, try to remove as many barriers as possible. Make your site multi-lingual, simplify the user interface and create a transparent collaboration mechanism that is easy to understand.
For example, there might be a lot of gardening hobbyists in the world from which you would like to get ideas, but they might not speak the language you need, there might be geographical deviations in their knowledge (same plants might require different treatments in different climates) or they might not have the computer skills to participate.

Example of a good answer: “Learn simple Wiki syntax to format the article. Otherwise, use any language you want.”

4) Why should I participate?

Naturally, there must be efficient incentives for participation in place. Motivation factors are by far the most crucial to the success of any crowdsourcing endeavor. By analyzing dozens of crowdsourcing projects, web directing developed its own concept called Motivation Wheel. It provides range of motivation factors that can be used to attract the participants.

Example of a good answer: “I will show my expertise and be a part of an initiative striving for free knowledge.“

Stay tuned for the next installment, tomorrow.

Related OsakaBentures Must-Reads

Part one of a five part guest posts series,”Unleashing Crowd Power”, by Michal Hudecek.

The Power of Metaphor

User experience is being given a lot of attention recently, especially in consumer product industry. Saul has covered a lot of similar topics on this blog including gamification or community building. Being able to successfully interact with the crowd via technology has become a Holy Grail of designers world-wide. The whole scientific field of user experience design has evolved. However, its real adoption in online world is very low. Most of the web sites are still confusing and unaesthetic. Why is that? Why is it that web designers do not work with the crowd systematically?

The reason is the complexity of the science behind it. Ironically enough, simplicity is what user experience design strives for. As Robert Stetson Shaw said, “You don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.” And a metaphor is what user experience design lacks. A metaphor that is able to explain the logic to all participating parties including web designers, coders and clients while following the scientific methods. Web directing, as an analogy to film directing, might fill this gap. Static websites are just first phase of engaging with the audience. Thinking like a web director will become even more important when building a crowdsourcing project where the level of interaction is much higher. But first things first.

From Film Directing to Web Directing

Film industry has developed its own methodology of communicating and engaging with the audience over the last hundred years. Film directors know exactly when and what should people think and feel at any given time. They study universities to learn how to do it using screenplays, storyboards or beats.

Define first what the audience should think and feel

Imagine you would be making a film instead of a web site. You would be thinking about when should people laugh or be scared. You would know what genre the movie is and what people expect from it. You would plan what should they tell to their friends afterwards. And you should do the same when creating a web site. Web directing framework provides a standardized set of tools for doing so. It prevents the developers from skipping into graphic details too early before thinking about the visitors properly.

Web screenplay

The first step is writing a web screenplay, which describes a thought process of an average visitor. It is basically a flow chart of questions a user has since the very beginning of the experience with the site. These questions are the reason why the visitor stays curious and does not leave. You should make sure they are interesting enough. Professional web director can help you to evaluate that. Above everything, he is a master storyteller. In case of various user groups visiting the site, more web screenplays might be needed.

Reactions chart

Having set attention drawing questions, the next step is defining appealing answers to each of them. Via these answers you are actually telling your story and calling your visitors to an action. The tool for going through this particular stage is called reactions chart. It connects each question with a desired reaction and on-page trigger, which is a visual mean of communication causing the requested reactions. When thinking about an on-page triggers, try to avoid text as much as possible. Anything that can be visualized should be visualized. For example, is your site about home-appliances? Make sure there are actually photos of them on the homepage. It will be the first thing people will look at while trying to figure out what your site is about. Please note that no graphic design has been made at this stage yet. It is still abstract brainstorming which allows you to think out of the box and combine on-page-triggers together to keep the site as simple as possible.

Visual Concept

The last phase is finally the one with a graphic output. The role of the graphic designer is now narrowed to a creative expression of on-page triggers defined in the Reactions chart before. Each object on the page should be associated with the question and the desired reaction to make future user testing easier to evaluate. This ensures there are no meaningless or illogical elements on the page which results in clutter-less and straight-forward design that is simple to use for the visitors. If performed professionally, it drives the eye-balls of the visitor as the web director planned. However, visual concept might be subject to change during user testing in contrast to web screenplay, which should be stable. In other words, the form of communication might change as you learn more about your visitors’ behavior, but the content of your message should stay the same. Anytime you find out your visitors do not understand you or do not react as desired, take a look at the Reactions chart, find the specific on-page trigger-connected to that reaction and try to improve upon this.

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 in this series on “Unleashing Crowd Power.”

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Santa Claus will review your blog posts. Leave it to him.

Keep your faith in him, put out milk and cookies, and don’t review your own blog posts. They need a review on them to get liked and shared, and seen by Stumblers – the majority of which are people who don’t already know you (which is a darn exciting prospect, as I see it)! I often hear the StumbleUpon’s TOS mentioned when people suggest that you do not review your own blog posts. Please peruse the TOS yourself, and pay special attention to sections 3.3 and 4.1. Looks okay as for my read of it (and the rest of the TOS). However, I have heard that some SU users find their accounts “limited” if they are sharing only their own content. Having spoken with several long-time users of SU, I’m told that only the worst offenders find their accounts limited (sharing, following, etc.).

If you use one or more blog rings, content-sharing promotion systems or clubs, such as a blog circle or Triberr, etc., where perhaps you have your blogger connections’ new content, and maybe even an easy means of Stumble-liking or reviewing fellow bloggers’ posts right in front of you, see what happens when you do so. Stumble-review your own post, and also go through your blog circle, etc. and SU-like your supporting bloggers’ latest posts. Now, open StumbleUpon, Profile > Shares and note how your one review of your post is in with a slew of all those other bloggers’ posts that you liked. You are golden. In my case, as of this writing, because I aim to be supportive to the many bloggers who do so for me, I see that I have “liked” (includes SU-reviews) over 1,200 pages. Roughly fifty of those are my own content (from my blog), LinkedIn Group, etc. I am not worried about getting “dinged” by StumbleUpon as a rampant self-promoter.

StumbleUpon Discovery Reviews: they take time, but they direct your page’s SU SEO.

As such, the Discovery (first) Review should really be done by the article’s author.

StumbleUpon allows you to add as many tags as you like, but actually uses the first five you provide. These, multiplied by the number of likes you have on the page, once reviewed, increase the likelihood that your page will appear “randomly” before Stumblers who are Stumbling their followed topics. As such, do you want to leave your post unreviewed, and thus, waiting for what is termed the Discovery Review for Santa Claus, me, or someone else who might just condemn your piece to the uncategorized tag-less wasteland and thus, nearly invisible to Stumblers (until a second review is, if it ever is, added (as often as pigs fly) – with a category) – or do you want to categorize the post yourself and select widely-followed SU topics to tag the post with?  Google search “hot SU tags,” after looking at the “Explore Box,” which suggests acceptable StumbleUpon topics from words and phrases that you input:

The Explore Box in StumbleUpon: it leads you to acceptable tags based on words/phrases you provide.

Discover Yourself

(why you’d want the author to write the SU discovery-review)

A SU-review takes time to complete, whether poorly or well, and if you use a blog-sharing system that makes it a breeze to SU-like already SU-reviewed posts, you will find less people skipping you post entirely and SU-liking – if it already has that review on it. Triberr members should know what I mean – from what they see in their “Tri bal Stream.” “Submit” next to the SU icon presents us with a dilemma: do I do that Discovery Review for you and “take a shot” at defining your post’s category and tags or do I skip it. When there is a number, even ’1′ next to the SU icon, I know that it is just three clicks to like and move on.

StumbleUpon Shares: it isn’t a UX goof that you have many boxes to tick

Ross Quintana’s I Innovate Blog, “Hug a Blogger” post shared in StumbleUpon recently changed their appearance and some functions.  With the new interface, by default if you follow someone who also follows you, you can share to each other.  You can send SU-reviewed pages, your own or others’, to these Stumblers.

<- That’s me, Sharing @Ross_Quintana‘s latest “How to Hug a Blogger

I suggest adding a message that might ply people to actually go to the page – since we tend to get a good number of them in our “Received Shares” (a pull-down choice, when you are in “Shares”: Profile > Shares > Received Shares.)

Also, you need to manually tick a box next to each of your connections’ names, which is time-consuming.  This is meant to reduce “blasts” of self-promotion to all possible contacts by those *rare* users who would be prone to doing so.

Share with care

“Most Shared” seems fairly worthless as a tab on your share box.  I choose who to share to (roughly 1-2 times/week, no more) from “All Contacts.”  Once you have the comment written and boxes ticked, considering what you are sending to which connection (for relevancy, please), click that “Send” button just once.  Nothing seems to happen, but if you open a separate browser and go to StumbleUpon > Profile > Shares you should find that you have, indeed, sent your page to the intended.  Please don’t repeat my mistake of finding nothing happening and clicking the Send button a couple more times.  (Yes, I got calls… and learned that I have quite patient and forgiving friends.)

For Part 1 of my StumbleUpon Primer for Bloggers, Click Here

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1. Let thyself be known

(We’ll likely follow you and accept your shares, like your stuff too)

Complete your profile, include links, see mine for an example.  Click the blue “more” under my profile picture, upper left side of http://osakasaul.stumbleupon.com Note that you can include html code and include links to your blog and network profiles where you would like people to connect with you.  Check that now and then, and see that there are no dead links or profiles on networks where your activity has tapered off greatly.  As an example, there was once a wonderful profile and content aggregator called “Retagrr” that was light years beyond Xeeme for ease-of-use, connectability (with those who visited), and visual image.  Retagrr went the way of the dodo, alas.  I have been scrambling to remove the link to my Retaggr from SU and other sites.  You don’t want to be sending people to dead links.

Set your Topics so that when you Stumble, relevant stuff comes your way.  Hint: make the topics as specific as SU will allow, though you are constrained to existing word strings.

StumbleUpon topics that could serve my needs:

Bad: “Japanese woman” (far too vague; where I live, in their natural habitat, its as if they’re breeding them over here)

Better: “bored horny married Osaka woman” (but this might be too specific, and actually, “bored” is not a must.  Also, moving to a topic I should probably be focusing on more, even “community manager sakai city” is not available from the explore box)

Yet Better: “community manager seeking”

StumbleUpon "Explore" search: to Stumble from and for SU-reviews and SU-comments (for tags)

Best: “seeking online community manager japan” (but this winds up being too specific and leads me to “online community manager,” so perhaps StumbleUpon is not a great place to look for job leads.  Or eager women leads.  Live and learn…? “Online community manager” is the closest StumbleUpon topic I could find).  I’ll Stumble that.  And I might use Online community manager as a tag in StumbleUpon reviews; we need to use StumbleUpon topics, rather than self-determined terminology for SU Reviews and Comments – since they connect with what Stumblers have set as their followed interests.

2. Power-follow, and unfollow, too

StumbleUpon allows you to only follow 500 Stumblers (people).  Make them count, and refine who you follow from time to time.  Follow people you know, to start, but understand that it will take some time to understand how they are going to use StumbleUpon.  I get better and better at looking at a Stumbler’s number of likes, the recency of likes and what they like – and decide if the Stumbler is going to appreciate what I share to them, perhaps “SU-like” on occasion, and maybe not share tons of odd stuff to me.  From Profile > Connections > Followers (or Following or Visitors, from the pull-down menu) > click on someone.  When I see that someone’s latest likes and shares are very different from the topics I blog about and take guest posts for, I tend to unfollow them or do not follow back, though I see they are following me.

Example below: I can’t guess why this person followed me, but can pretty much be assured that they wont like my blog being shared to them and I don’t need their stuff either (and thus, I’ll unfollow someone who SU-likes/shares nothing but stuff that’s all off-brand for me):

This Stumbler's recent "Likes": Arts, Video Games, Bizarre/Oddities, Heavy Metal (not so great for me)

Follow those who generally support you, say, in LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., and then send them a message through StumbleUpon to let them know you followed them, welcome their shares, and appreciate their reviews, likes, and shares of your content – especially of your blog articles.

3. Can you hear me knockin’?

Don’t let your “visitors” get away without a look-see. You have visitors!  Don’t let them escape without at least a look-see.

Every couple days, from Profile > Connections > Visitors, from the pull-down menu, see who you don’t already know (they could be people you are already connected to who simply looked at your likes most recently), and see what their stats tell you.  What do they like? How often, and when was the last time they shared content?  If they shared content similar to what you blog on, there’s a high liklihood that they will like and/or share your stuff, and appreciate what you might – on occassion only – share with them.

I look at these factors before following them.  If I do so, I typically send them a message; this let’s them know that I probably actually use StumbleUpon.  You’ll find, in time, that people jump on and sometimes fall off the SU frequent-user train.

Next week: StumbleUpon Reviewing and Sharing, in StumbleUpon Primer for Bloggers, Part 2

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I went looking for my mom in Google – by searching “funny regifting stories.”  You can imagine my dismay in discovering not one of you has nominated my mother for the regifting buffoon of the year (dis)honor, despite her years of giving clearly the wrong thing to the wrong person.  (I’ll look for your mom – and my mom, assuming she’s roughly hand-wrapped a Ronco Slicer-Dicer “As Seen on TV” and did you in with it – and other regifting stories in the comments below, and we’ll see if I can’t beat your best regifting story.)  What I did find was from a Cosmo article with a collection of funny regifting stories, I found these stats:

Top 5 Excuses Why People Regift

1. It was a perfectly good gift that I simply didn’t want or couldn’t use: 90.8%
2. It was something I knew the recipient would genuinely like: 45.3%
3. I didn’t have money to buy a new gift: 36.9%
4. I didn’t have time to buy something new: 27.7%
5. I didn’t like the gift recipient, so I didn’t care what I gave him or her: 12.5%

1. It was perfectly good material that the author simply didn’t want to share or couldn’t figure out how to share where it would get seen much.
2. It was something I knew my readers would genuinely like.
3. I didn’t have money to pay authors for my blog – but wanted contributors anyway.
4. I didn’t have time to write something new.
5. I don’t get business from my blog, so I don’t care what I publish.

Dishonorable mentions:

6. “What’s never been said before anyway?”
7. “The guy’s going to appreciate getting seen more; I did credit him, after all.”
8. “Publish or perish, I can’t simply go mute can I?”
9. “Its just a blog post – not like I printed it in a book or included it in a screenplay.”
10. “I spent all this time building a my crack team of content sharers; we share each others’ blog posts here and there, and so, I must take advantage of that, open the fire hose, and spew as much ‘content’ as the system can handle…”

Douchebaggery

little patience/big car (is a not totally unlike) little patience to write/big CMS

Because we all need CMS. (And I didn’t have the time to locate a parking spot that I would have had the time to back my fuel hog into.)

Content Repurposing

So, where do you stand on bloggers lifting the work of others and using it to lure social media consumers to their sites?  Is it fair play when a blogger credits an author – who he has not garnered permission from – and grabs the entire article…?

Your blog is like your house

I wont tell you how to act.
I may, however, silently judge you and then rethink my sharing of your blog to my social media streams.  And if you’re a particularly offensive host, I probably wont stay long – or return for more.

While we have this special opportunity, while I am not calling out anyone in particularly, least of all you, the situation is perfect for me to ask you to consider my stance on the blogs of others:
1. You put your name on it, you tie your professional profiles to it, and thus, every thing you slap up to your blog represents you.  Professionally.
2. Maybe you are profoundly respected and also known to use very foul language when speaking with nearly everyone.  It might not work for me, but you might be the type of character who makes that work – and so, on your blog, as well, that aspect of your persona might not be a thing to hide.
3. Stanley Kubrick directed films less and less frequently from the beginning to the end of his career; there are great bloggers who leave us work which resonates, though they do not publish daily.  Maybe you’ll be okay if you don’t publish daily as well.

Rules on reblogging / repurposing the material of others: strikingly similar to those for regifting

1. If just one rule-of-thumb is best for you: don’t do it ever.  You’ll never be able to play it off well if you get caught.
2. You actually get caught far more often than you think you do, but people often settle to remember you for it – rather than calling you out for it.  (Unless the original gifter/author is them.)
3. What you leave under your blog header for us is like what you leave under the Christmas tree for us; rock-solid take-away value and a dearth of thievery/pawning off your “lifts” from others’ writings will be something we will remember you for – every bit as much as it was clear you put much thought into what you gave us for Christmas.

It all matters, at least that’s my stance.

 
{EAV:ef598a9fbd90d932}

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What’s Game Good For?

Before we can talk about applying game mechanics to anything, we need to understand what a game actually us.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines a game as “a form or spell of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength or luck.”

That’s pretty hard to digest as a something you can say to a decision maker! However, if we break it down further we can start to get at some core ideas that should help.  Play and sport are all activities or tasks.  Played is not a strong word in the corporate world.  It conjures images of nerds playing quake after hours on the corporate network.  So instead, how about we use completed.

Rules Can Be Starting Points

Next,  rules.  We all have rules, but it is not something you hear people talking about in businesses.  Instead, we could say parameters or guidelines.  All projects have parameters or guidelines.  That leaves us with a new definition, that really does mean the same as before, but one that is easier to apply to day-to-day activities. “A task that is completed according to a set of parameters or guidelines.”

Give Us Tasks / Call to Action

Sounds familiar, but doesn’t sound much fun now, does it?  You have to look deeper into what games are, beyond the words on a page.  Games are fun, but why?

Throw Me Something

Rewards.  Every game you play, from childhood and onwards is based around a simple principal. Complete a task, get some kind of reward, enjoy the process and repeat. The last bit of the definition gives us more; “decided by skill, strength or luck”.  To complete these tasks and to get the rewards, you need to demonstrate some kind of skill.

How do you make a task fun?

The task can be anything from jumping over barrels in Donkey Kong to learning the basics.  In the case of Donkey Kong, there are two rewards for the task.  The first is the fun of the challenge.  It is fun to jump those barrels, you enjoy perfecting the skills needed to achieve the task.  The second is the satisfaction of completing a level and being rewarded with a virtual kiss from the damsel.  Task and reward.

Learning your ABC’s is not intrinsically fun if it is just done through repetition.  There is very little joy to be had from the task its self.  However, add some word association to it, add a reward or two – such as merit marks or extra playtime – and suddenly we have a game.  The task has been made more enjoyable with the addition of a reward for completing it.

This means we need to add back two important ideas  to the new definition: competition and skill:  “A task that is completed according to a set of parameters or guidelines in a fun, competitive and skilful way.”

Where is gamification in the real world?

It is at this point that you should start to see what we mean by gamification and how it can work.  Let’s look at a couple of examples of how these simple ideas have been used in the real world.

First, a very simple concept that has been used a lot in the last few years are Badges or Awards.  I have personally used them on my Games Review Site recently, to quite a bit of success.  The idea is that for tasks that have been achieved on the website, badges and experience points are awarded.  So on the site; if a user has a review published, they get some points.  If it is their first, then they will also get a badge on their profile.  If they have 10 published, they get another badge and so on.  Editors get points and badges for adding news, publishing articles and editing reviews.  League tables are then available to show how well each team member is doing each month. A little bit of competition builds between the editors and suddenly we are getting more news, reviews and articles published than ever before.

Another great example of this task and reward system being used in the real world is with a GPS system called Waze.  You install an app on your mobile device and start to use it in just the same way as GPS.  However, the game is in helping other drivers become more aware of what is happening on the roads around them.  If you are stuck in traffic, you can get your passenger (safety first) to report the jam to other users.  This then appears on all the other drivers’ maps and alerts them to the problem.  It also earns you some points and badges.  Again, the simple task of reporting traffic or road issues becomes a game.

Just recently, I read about these game mechanics being applied to Accounts Payable!.  The company in question had a system in place that awarded points to individuals and teams for every line of data that was entered.  At the end of each month, the team with the most points chooses a charity that the company then would donate money to.  This is a great example of how adding a little bit of game theory to a very, very mundane task can make it a whole lot more interesting and rewarding.

Motivation, Engagement and Game Mechanics

At the end of the day this all boils down to one thing.  Motivation.  If a person is motivated, they will be more productive.  Most motivation is negative.  You are motivated to do your job because you need the money and don’t want to get fired.  Gamification gives you the opportunity to motivate people in a much more positive way.  Imagine a group of workers who are competing to be the best at even the most mundane of tasks, just because at the end of the month they may get to put a trophy on their desk.  Happy workers leads to increased productivity and retention.

This nicely leads us into one of the key benefits for you, the person who first wanted to delve into gamification, engagement. Imagine people coming back to your site, over and over again, because they want to get enough visits, or actions on your site, to get the title of Chief News Monkey. This kind of engagement would be much less likely to happen if there was not something in it for the user.  Humans will invariably look at all tasks with a little bit of “What’s in it for me?”.  Once the user is engaged in the task, you will get more from them.  On a website this would be seen in the length of time they stay on the site.  Rather than just looking at the page they came for, an engaged user will maybe look at two or three extra pages, especially if they were getting rewarded for doing so. Within a company, engaged workers will be more productive.  Name me one company that is seeking to reduce productivity! Employing simple game mechanics can help achieve all of this and more, if done properly.

Video games have been using this trick to achieve high retention for years now.  Do you think people would continue to play Call of Duty or World of Warcraft for all this time if there was not some kind of reward for playing for longer?  Of course not.  Many play so that they can unlock the best weapons, or get to level 70 or unlock a particular badge they want to display on their profile.  These awards motivate them to play more and more and buy new addons when they are released.  Again, motivated and engaged by simple rewards.

You may not yet understand how this can help you.  That’s fine.  It is a hard concept to apply to work.  It is even harder to sell the concept to the holders of the purse strings.

However, if motivation, engagement or productivity are things that interest you – Gamification is definitely something you will want to probe into further.

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