hello am i audible yeah now you are anything yes yes i can hear you loud and clear am i crisp enough yeah you are oh thanks great hey shout out how are you buddy i'm good how are you good good sir good sir how's it going hey what are you doing crazy ass phd man [Laughter] even i don't know how i'll end it up here fantastic and fantastic that's wonderful you're doing a great job as well i've seen like instagram i keep following you so uh i i i kind of knew that you know about gamification because because i saw some post where you shared the book that you read uh that's a very famous book that came out of game education as well yeah yeah yeah yes uh actionable gamification right yeah yeah exactly i think it's best korean guy i i attended one of his conferences as well pretty cool yes yeah he's a fantastic guy i don't know like he hasn't got crazy recognition but i think he's a very practical guy who's like deep dived into a lot of gamification techniques and everything yeah i think what he decoded was what practitioners can actually apply gamification as a research uh abhijanjara is more about psychology but he kind of that book is quite good in terms of practitioners like how to just implement it yeah yeah in fact you know while i was reading that nether notes to be very honest and how i can implement a lot of that stuff for my products and somehow i tried to do a few things and it really increased our engagement though it works like but of course open the product you have to twist it for yourself that is something you can customize it for yourself yeah yeah yeah we will get into that also because i need to uh i am sorry i haven't gone through your questionnaire uh it has been the really busy last two days but i am happy to answer any questions whatever however we actually perfect so i mean let's just start with uh you uh by the way this uh this is getting recorded if that's fine yeah because i need the transcript um so uh first of all like can you just give a brief uh overview about your role uh in the application or the organization that we're going to talk about which uses gamification sure so so i've used uh i mean presently i'm using gamification in a product that i'm building called sarthi it is uh it's under the leaf umbrella itself but the product is uh essentially a platform which enables you to learn what whatever makes you earn so it is a very money driven platform it is essentially taking a person from a 5 000 rupee net worth to 50 000 rupee net worth step by step and showing him the right journey uh engaging him on the way and then making him achieve milestones to increase its value and network essentially so that is something we call it learn to earn okay so that is what i'm building and in that itself since it's a gamified learning platform i'm using all the gamification techniques so then not not only the basic ones like leaderboard point system blah blah blah but in more in depth which lead to inherent virality so one is that the other part is i've used a lot of gamification while i was building this application for leaf itself uh it was mainly a application which allowed you to take various which allowed various people to take some sound tests so you can create your own earprint just like you have your thumbprint right which makes you listen to specific kind of tones and sounds and enhances the audio experience for you so in the that the whole process of taking the sound test gamified in such a way that people would be interested to complete it and so that we can get the data okay um and this is different from sarthi right so this was different yeah this is this belief okay uh and this was uh like a product of leave where you just wanted people sound and for that you gamified it just too yes it was a product of leave so we had a lot of customers buying your headphones earphones and all of that right so this essentially was to give an enhanced audio experience to the same customer okay and did you see that gamification actually enhanced the uh people's uh completion rate yes yes we did so so if you see there are various forms of sound tests right manually click click calculator or you manually set the equalizer 10 decibel points up five decibel points slow depending on different frequency bands we did not uh rely on all of that manual intervention and we created a gamified automatic system which would make you listen to different sounds and just record an input based on the sound you were hearing between abc and based on that you would create that hearing graph okay so in all of that then once it is created we would give them a score which would uh enable them to understand what is the amount of hearing loss that has occurred already in their age in life or potentially most of them then comparing them with your friends and all of that comparison analysis starts so this is what we realized it really increased engagement with our customers um so it was more of the interactivity between not just the people and the technology but also between people like comparing their uh overall yes okay yes essentially gamification what i realized was not only limited to what was not only limited to a one person experience where technology was just interacting with the person it was much more about a multiplayer experience like a mass like mmorpg right where people have taken roles and they are comparing things with other people that becomes very nuanced and engaging so this is uh something that i've been reading about especially in terms of sharing data like where people uh can see others progress and then see their own progress there have been some people criticizing about data privacy saying that you know if i if something becomes critical like you know like decibel system like i uh know that i have hearing loss but i don't want others to know it uh and then you're making it like a social platform where others can also see it uh do you think that that is something that gamification is kind of overlooking or is that all when you show i think i lost you for five seconds uh yeah so i said that uh when you make this more social uh you know if you know if i have something that i am inherently conscious about and suddenly everyone sees it um do you think that is an oversight of gamification or do you think that can also be controlled through gamification see it's a very geography dependent question like for example if this research you're doing is for bharat right people don't give a lot of and you know that right uh the secondary part is if you're doing for europe usa there are ways like if people consent to taking the test on the first incident we're consenting to consenting to for the company which has made all their terms and conditions open on their website and anyone can go and read it that this data will be used for comparative analysis only then you would realize the value if i just show you a 50 score and i didn't give you other people to compare it with you would be like what does 50 mean 50 has significance in value only when it is compared to people who either are above you or below you okay um yeah i think yeah that makes perfect sense as well and uh i mean again that the reason i was asking this was because i see the answers coming mostly from outside of gamification realm which is more of ethics based uh but yeah so uh regarding sarthi uh can you explain more about what that is and how is that gamified exactly oh yes so the goal of sharpie is just to take you step by step to increase your net value right and that and we we believe that it can only happen by concrete deep learning uh focusing on certain skills uh throughout which can and basically continuously consistently working on those skills from level 1 to level 10 now the whole challenge is how do you make people go from level 1 to level 10 and still stick with you what are those incentives how do we make people engaged in a sort of a system so that their net value not even for themselves but also their lifetime value for the product increases we've built a lot of mechanisms for example if you download the app right now right it's a very basic apple we haven't done too much phd on that but like people can come in they can form cross connections uh so um so basically it becomes a lot of connected network effects uh where the nodal value of each network is equivalent to do this per and the number of node nodal connection so that inherently enhances the uh connection value uh so we have a social section where people can connect and follow each other once they go to there go to each other's profile they can see okay what is the existing rank of that person inside this whole ecosystem of saari and then he comes back and compares his rank them so a lot of insights are based on competition and comparison um so that's one the second is of course we have a basic leaderboard in which we show two types of ranking uh now i believe global leaderboards are not very cool because there is no context to the people i am seeing in global leaders the only context arises when i see people in my local leaderboard that is my friends if you and i are a friend and if you are making let's say 30 000 rupees a month how can i make 31 000 what do i do i want to win from you that's the kind of competitions people have in their social life that's the point so so the point is key so we built local leaderboards where once you get um connected with a lot of people you see the value that they are deriving on this platform and then you compete so that's that's the part of the video then we of course give nudges to people do this more in the product so your value becomes much more and you are able to win from your friends so for example we have a currency in in built currency called the sarti coins now those are not just not just ordinary coins we plan to put these coins in circulation so right now they are in the cold wallets of people um approximately we have 95 million cold wallet coins in the ecosystem now those points will essentially be used for commerce or trading p2p between people to gain an advantage inside the platform which makes them grow their value much quickly so so so so the idea is how do you use these coins for uh for providing value to the people which is equivalent to the coins that they have already earned by engagement so connection of that rule so that's the coin part and so so then then how do you incentivize every single activity in the app which makes people do more of that activity in comparison with their friends and earn more so so combining all these things we we figured out that we can build a gamification engine and uh continuously improve that engine as more people get added as we get more data as we see more workflows how people are navigating through the app what are the actions they are taking and everything can do improvements as people in their journey to increase their value so um some few interesting things that i took from it one is which i see in a lot of different applications something like um a core set also does is that they build a community within itself uh to kind of legitimize their activity so for example um hello the network is a little poor on your side i see a red mark on your wi-fi can you hear me now i can hear you yeah i can hear you i think um okay so yeah so what i was saying was like you said that the coins that you have made is more of an internal ecosystem that you have created so um that is one so keeping that at one side and then there's something known as uh like coursera does something they give a certificate but that certificate would only have a value when the network outside values that certificate so uh does sarthi also do something like that so for example if i come into sarthi and uh you know i want to leave it with increasing my money uh the income i earn then others have to accept my incentive yes yes so we don't give out official certificates right now but we plan to become [Music] a proof of your digital net worth okay a digital proof of your net worth like where cvs are not the measure of how much package you should get like how is your package determined right it is determined by your past package that's one parameter to it the second is your ball store demand express and money the third is how much you have spent already gaining that amount of basically the headings on your cv and then try to compute and backtrack your this how much i should at least get so so these people right does not have that concept where they can do all of this analysis and come to a point so so we we plan to become a short way for them okay certified by santi that you are minimum 30 000 rupee guy for this skill so you can show that in demand as a proof so it becomes a form of authentication and if sarti becomes more valuable and more recognized so does the value of the authentication that we provide to you so this service which is gamified needs to have an outside ecosystem as well to be able to give its users a sense of authenticity would you say that uh it depends if people want to get employed with other people yes uh where the employer must accept that saathi certified means something if the if the person wants to self-employ himself then what matters is his business relations with other people inside sati who value that rating then i don't need an external ecosystem and how important do you think is the internal ecosystem that you create through your own coins uh through your own like localized leaderboard uh does it just help in um creating a community or does it also lead to some sort of authenticity or some sort of uh wanting to be you know valuable within the community like what is the reason of having a currency that is only localized to the application it's essentially a sense of belonging with any community or currency right so if you look at crypto right bitcoin holders proudly say they are bitcoin holders because they believe in bitcoin and like if you're a bit connor i suddenly have something common to connect with you on so that sense of belonging is much more as compared to someone who's an ethereum holder or a dodge coin holder so a currency unifies people under a same umbrella and gives them a sense of belonging and that is specially required for people who are strangers in the vast ocean called the internet there needs to be one common node and that node cannot only be usage of a certain application um okay and uh you said that like this is again an assumption people who would be entering your application would be intrinsically motivated to uh would you say that or do you think there are extrinsic motivated people as well yes making money is a very big intrinsic motivation for everyone and increasing how much money they can make so that's fun so extensive motivation would be for skills that and that that depends on a lot of family values as well as people they know for example we have seen uh people who have someone in their family with uh nothing or a government job they're very very much motivated to crack a government exam and so so the skill is expensive eccentric but increasing your value in that skill is intrinsic um so once you say this people enter your application you said that there is you have inbuilt uh incentivized process processes that keeps them engaged for a longer time or you know computing them with their peers you think that comes in because over a period of time you start seeing the intrinsic motivation die down or like it seems like a motor right something is dropping and then you again restart it by incentivizing people so is that the sole reason of incentivization or is it something else is it to make them complete it quicker uh or like what are those reasons behind using these interests so in my head incentivization very related to interest and engagement uh and incentivization essentially changes people's behavior so what you incentivize is what you get so if i incentivize a certain action then i want data on that particular action um it works i incentivize it even more as compared to the other action so people have a comparative analysis that they would do that action much more as compared to the other action and then i can see my data flow so one it is an a to b a b tool for me to test my features uh internally inside the app the second is for people to continue to be in that system of engagement with their other peers the third is for acquisition of new people as a trigger so trigger action reward variable variable reward investment so hook loop right so so trigger it actually incentive you can you can plug in centralization on all the four channels whether that's a trigger whether that's engagement whether that's investment to the platform by these people who can also depending on what is your goal for the platform at that at this present stage okay and uh where do you see user experience come into all of this in every stage every stage essentially at all these four stages at trigger action variable reward and these are experiences the basic underline over which all these trees are planted right it's like the ground so if that is not if that is broken as much amount of incentive you can give people will start to complain and they'll come back to you that hey i want this incentive but this is not working so you better fix it so also incentive can only work to a certain extent where the user doesn't lose interest in that incentive where it becomes extremely hard for him to take that particular action so we show it's like a balancing scale is it hard enough is it easy to do how much incentivized am i so if you if you take a incentive to ease scale it would be a linear line um and like if you look at all these activities like gamification is an added tool to make something more gameful to make something more play like a game like but if you remove those elements as well the activity still holds like you know there's a core activity that your application has to provide now the core activity has to give some sort of experience to the user and then those game elements that you add provides a different kind of experience so do you think those experiences can be segregated and be seen separately or do you think it kind of just merges together and becomes one huge user experience so there are two schools of thought there one is that i have my core activity for example learning or making payments or traveling right and then gamification is just an auxiliary inputs on top like makeup or decoration which i can bundle it in and then serve to the user where he comes to the core activity but stays for the engagement right but i am not a believer of that i am a believer there gamification and core value are very equivalent and it is not like an egg which is bundled but these are essentially [Music] uh soluble fluids which can which can be very cohesive and become a big bundle so so i do not view uh especially this is the kind of thinking which is being evolved in the next generation of products where i believe that gamification is equally important to the core value and nothing can exist without each other so when we go learning banana then it has like gamification in the holds like 50 of it and 50 is the content that i teach that so so that then i don't have to continuously force people to take actions because no one told you to play a game you play the game by yourself that's the whole point but you have you're forced to study there could be some responses of the second school of thought um and do you think that during the consumer journey uh as you said the first stages acquisition now are there certain elements in your application that are more uh crucial at that point and then over the consumer journey it's like a fluid thing like the elements kind of the elements that should be perceived as crucial keep changing and you know that is where the experience kind of then moves towards first uh so i would say first parting seconds uh are the most crucial uh where the onboarding is the boarding needs to be extremely friction free on so so onward can happen in 15 seconds but the next 30 seconds where you just have that attention span and you can take the person through the whole journey of the product quickly make him realize value and show him the gamification incentives uh which keeps him hooked and coming for the second time well up to second meeting but they said that's the point right first meeting me you just tell enough and give him enough so that he comes back for the second the first 45 seconds i would say is the main part um and so this is what i want to look at where you uh kind of get the person back for the second time is that where gamification really comes into the picture like without it it wouldn't have worked uh or do you say that i think uh one first first first couple of days is only about gratification where people are just being surprised or wowed that they're getting free value chemist belief of that this is a game and realization of the value of game comes in as people start to engage more that he goes to the leaderboard now he goes add some few friends now suddenly he sees oh my local leaderboard oh asia is uh suddenly today morning i get a notification keshav has like made three excess compared three x more sarti coins just compared to me and uh he's killing it he's ranked number three on my whole local leaderboard and i'm 16. now i need to buck up so it was without time left there a couple of sessions but the first couple of sessions is literally just giving free value to people for entering in coming back again for that hit or double date of that thing and uh how do you know what exactly to send as a notification and when to send us a notification to actually nudge them to come back again all the things that you just said were linked to gamification like leaderboard the amount the progress the other person has done so what is like is it something like uh saying that a person has really hit off and you are now really behind is what nudges them or is it like someone just overtook you and that nudges them is that something that you experiment with while going through or um so so they're essentially notification workflows where you analyze your past actions then uh we see which actions have motivated you to click for the first couple of times and the time what time have you clicked them if you give us a location access you understand that nearby people who use sarti are they performing in a similar way as compared to you so based on all of that analysis unique individual workflows are created for smart notifications which which are contextually the most relevant to you for example if you follow 10 teachers right then those teachers put the quiz we send you a couple notifications now which teacher do you click the notification off how much time do you spend on their profile how how much browsing do you do on their profile do you see their profile picture or not that also is a very crazy factor people who see other people's profile picture have 30 percent more retention as compared to people who don't see their profile pictures so how do you incentivize people seeing each other's profile picture if you want to increase that retention metric it's all it's crazy so yes uh yeah essentially individual workflows are created for every every person based on their past action that's where our ml model kicks in which essentially tells and something based on what you said uh if let's say intrinsically there is a behavior of people to go and click on profile pictures for example as you said the moment you incentivize it and the application kind of tells you to go to that action have you seen that the behavior drops because now it's a machine telling you to do it compared to you yourself doing things autonomously oh no no no it doesn't it's just a nudge okay so uh people uh so you would realize that majority of the people do dumb scrolling what is that exactly uh so they come on an application now they are completely lost until they see some similar elements like a search button or bottom nav bar where they click click click they have no id no one has the time or the attention to read what is it right so the application should be so idiot proof that when a human is engaged in the process of dumb scrolling it is still able to provide value via a simple walkthrough so so so a nudge uh is the guiding light in a dark forest essentially for people who is who has no motivation to read on the screen and uh for extremely experienced people who have been on the app for a much longer time do you see similar nudges still working or is it only for the early adopter like early users or users early users majority for the people who stick around till day 30 uh post day 30 i we don't uh we don't find the need to send people a lot of notifications uh for internal features we leave we basically give small nudges but not too much uh and we leave it to them as a surprise to discover new elements in the app so suddenly now for example you are using an app and tomorrow new feature comes in and you're surprised oh man oh this is very cool suddenly the utility of the app has increased much more just like instagram story filters came in over those ar filters blah blah right so many of the people discovered themselves uh instagram did specifically nudge you that hey we have filters now so so we realized that for pro users we leave it as a thrill for them to discover and does the gamification aspect of it the way people engage with it because of gamification does it change between heavy users or long users or yes yes it does uh so so so every company chooses their best people their most idle user persona and tries to build around that user persona and every single action inside the app is to get the initial acquisition flow to be like that user persona so that is the whole goal and i know these people spend eight hours per day on my app post a 30 day period i want everyone to do that because that is what kicks my metrics up now i want every single user who's being acquired to be like them how did they become like them what do i match them i haven't touched them or how what is the kind of experience that i create so that very comparable or similar personal noise being derived at the end of date repeat by certain percentage of the incoming users so poor experience around creators and uh would you say that that is where gamification is used to persuade or change behaviors towards molding it towards that item person okay yeah yeah um again the last few questions so one is uh like what is the ultimate goal of your organization and how does gamification uh help achieve it or make it make you achieve it quicker or things like that so sadly the goal is very simple uh this is a place where future millionaires come together that is inspired so so anyone who is looking to really learn this skill in the art of making money via a specialization is who comes to sati so that's that's the core vision and we want to impact a billion people by 2025 um so so that's the core and gamification essentially i won't say it is an element on top of a product it is the product so i think people who view gamification as add-on features don't will not build great products because in the in the coming years because attention span is massively decreasing but unless there is an inherent need slash want for people to come back to your product and just people won't all right so in fact we're seeing a lot of startups who pay for attention so this this startup called this this coin called basic attention token b80 um which is i don't know have you heard about that no no so there's a browser called the brave browser right brave now they are competing with chrome and they're kicking ass like they have 10 million users it is built on chromium itself but whenever you browse using brave they give you a token a coin okay which is the coin or the incentive for your attention of using the browser which the other browsers would essentially who would um would take by showing you free ads and yeah they would sell their attention to the advertisers now brave said i'm going to give this token to you if you want to see ads the advertiser will have to purchase these tokens from you so they would pay you not me and i would just take back so your attention is being monetized so so yeah tension span is decreasing i think products need to be not need to be gamified product needs to be like a game and that basically relies on the core assumption that people are intrinsically motivated to play games and time just flows for them when they play games yes they enter the state of flow so okay and lastly like you said that gamification is like inherent and it's part of your product uh are there uh is there a point where the gamified part of your product uh leads to demotivation or negative feelings amongst oh yeah so that's a very uh thin line uh that products work on uh yeah so no one likes to lose that's the that's a human thing so how do you make sure that majority of the people win so they keep coming back and i can't announce three winners right top three out of ten like people yeah on my app this week so so so you need so first of all we need to realize the demotivating factors and then limit them by putting a max threshold which is just enough which keeps you excited yet coming back so so this is there's a thing called the torture gap as well and i'm sure you've read this in the action of the identification that i give you a torture time where i don't like to take certain actions which are very which you really want to take but uh so you spend three years come back after three hours and unlock this reward blah blah blah so so so that that also works so if i if i make it 24 hours suddenly i see a massive drop if i make it six hours okay still good enough i'm gonna make it three yards oh that's the perfect sweet spot for the torture gap which increases the number of sessions and everything so yeah yeah yeah very thin linked to that so then it basically so when you're looking at what uh duration to keep this uh you know torture gap for and things like that is it purely uh like quantitative research of seeing that you know 51 people came back so that's a good amount for us like or is that something quantifiable that you keep majority yeah majority like uh quantitative but uh then we verify it uh qualitatively as well okay um data speaks the truth so mainly we see the data and then we uh then then we try to make sense of the data and then try to verify that sense by conversations and uh for people who are dropping out of the application or like stopping the engagement for let's say a week or so suddenly they're off um have you figured out why that happens is it related to user experience and how do you actually get them back yeah so so usually what happens is we realize that people drop off when it stops becoming challenging enough okay to develop levels and challenges in an application where uh different skill level people can simultaneously engage is a mammoth of a task i as a builder i build for a certain level of people and then i build it's like a building level one level two level three to the tenth floor right so so so so some so measure so many people say that okay hey my application is built till d30 retention because post that people become advanced to cross that level and then i haven't built that level i need to raise funds i need to get a better tech team blah blah blah to build for the level two level three so uh so so we realized that uh people don't find it challenging enough then they drop off and for that we start to build a level two level three based on the difficulty of content the usage pattern the number of sessions the engagement time and everything so uh so i think i think it's a very similar scenario to uh other learning apps thank you so much this was extremely helpful um if i do have a follow-up interview i might have to reach back to you if that's fine this is going to drop me questions that can answer you on whatsapp as well yes as you see not a problem where is this research going to come out what are you planning uh so this is basically uh my dissertation i'm making it like a three study so i'm doing a systematic review of i think it's about 1400 papers on gamification and then the second one is i've realized that people haven't really interviewed developers and uh users together so that is what i've been doing now collecting the data and specifically looking at user experience so you know figure out how gamification actually enhances or actually where does it enhance and where does it actually deteriorate user experience things like that so how many founders have you uh um i have to talk to 13 of them it's insane man did you find did you find interesting things the others it's pretty interesting so again what i call it what i've termed it till now i call it the uh hedonic the knee treadmill just like the hedonic treadmill uh what i've realized is developers kind of keep getting back needs to you when you think that you have fulfilled your needs and you want to drop out suddenly a new need emerges and that is not an intrinsic need because psychology says that needs are something that are intrinsic like i feel i have a need and then i'll go and i want it and then i engage in something what gamification primarily is doing is actually creating needs for you while you think that you are getting you fulfilling them more needs keep coming in so that is something that i'm seeing in that interaction like when i'm talking to users it's fascinating they don't even realize it they're like oh i i got that message and i was like i need to be better than that person and i was like if that thing wouldn't have come would you care they were like no we don't i was like so that was like created by the developers yeah yeah so so people create needs huh yeah especially who spend some time in a community exactly and that's why i was asking about community base because the moment you become part of a community then you the developer doesn't have to care about creating needs then it becomes like as a user i start creating my own needs after looking at some other person in my community you know no one has to intrinsically motivate me to talk to a friend i'll do it but you as a developer have to create that friend for me first yes yes yes absolutely you know makes makes a lot of sense so uh yeah yeah we also realized this uh so so if we allow people to cross connect then they do a lot of monkey see monkey do right and then i realized that this is very similar to social status in the society if i get a mercedes suddenly you want it so this need arise because you saw me so yeah it happens in our digital product as well yeah yeah i hope i was able to give you some data which may be useful for your research it was perfect and that's why i said follow-up interview might be coming your way because again what i realized is instead of just interviewing all developers what i did was i interviewed three four people from the uh developing side and then started talking to consumers and now it's been like like a badminton game i'm just asking one and then asking the other and then it's the new yeah i think that's the best way to research man like getting getting a taste of both the size yeah perfect also could you send me this recording uh i would love to put it on my youtube channel and share it so uh i'll share the link with you zoom link i think you can download it yes yes good luck to my good luck so i'll help her please perfect thank you so much also that's yeah if you have uh like it's just a snowballing technique if you know other developers that might be able to uh let me let me think about other people who may be into gamification and if i come across someone all the best for this and uh let me know as soon as this comes out i would love to read yeah definitely when are you planning this for this to be out um i mean technically it's part of my dissertation so next year by the end of next year is when it should by the end of next year it's a long way then yeah so but uh i am working on other gamification projects which uh like two of them are already uh in the review process it's more about mobile game gamification in mobile games so if that comes out i'll let you know so that's that's again based on uh what are the behaviors within the app along with their uh psychological behavior while engaging with er that leads to paying behaviors so paying worse okay that's that's very cool man would love to read that as well yeah just let me know whenever it comes up perfect bye [Music]