The Octalysis Framework — Motivation, Decoded
What It Is
The Octalysis Framework from my friend Yu-kai Chou is nominally about "gamification", the design of non-game experiences to be more like games. What I find is that Octalysis is a model of human motivation that happens to have come from studying how games keep us engaged.
Like so many of the models I use and love, Octalysis is simple to learn but has enough depth to keep making more connections after years of using it.
The Two Dimensions
Getting benefits from applying Octalysis starts with understanding two dimensions of motivation and the eight Core Drives they form.
Black Hat / White Hat
"Black hat" is about the things we want to avoid. It has some urgency, but doesn't feel particularly good when you're experiencing it.
At the other end of the spectrum is "White hat" which is about the good and compelling things in life. We want more of this in our lives, but there isn't any urgency to it.
Extrinsic / Intrinsic
The other dimension has extrinsic motivation at one end. This is about the things we typically associate with success: rewards, accomplishments, and stuff we own.
This is in contrast to the aspects that are internally rewarding. The activities we enjoy for their own sake, not what they get us.
The Eight Core Drives
When we combine these two dimensions, we get eight "Core Drives". There are four that align with the extremes of each dimension and four from mixing those.
- CD1: Epic Meaning and Calling — pure White Hat
- CD2: Development and Accomplishment — White hat and Extrinsic
- CD3: Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback — White hat and Intrinsic
- CD4: Ownership and Possession — pure Extrinsic
- CD5: Social Influence and Relatedness — pure Intrinsic
- CD6: Scarcity and Impatience — Black hat and Extrinsic
- CD7: Unpredictability and Curiosity — Black hat and Intrinsic
- CD8: Loss and Avoidance — pure Black hat
That is enough to get started with Octalysis to apply a bit of gamified thinking when designing an experience. Look at which of the Core Drives your "players" will be leaning on for your sort of experience and make sure you have sufficient coverage of those Core Drives in your design and delivery. Simple, but not necessarily easy.
Game Techniques
To make it a bit easier, each Core Drive has a pool of "game techniques" that are associated with that flavor of motivation. The hundreds of game techniques on the list with their associated Octalysis Core Drives can be a bit overwhelming, but they are just there to spark ideas, not to be some sort of checklist or goal to implement them all!
The CD2 Trap
The first thing to realize from looking at gamification through this lens of Core Drives and game techniques is that the majority of what people call "gamification" is clustered in a very few places. There is a reason Yu-kai named his Octalysis book "Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards" — most people get stuck in those CD2 game techniques and never consider the rest of the options. And while we may eventually decide to include points, badges, or leaderboards in our design, it will have been based on a clear understanding of the audience and experience rather than the easiest things to pull off the shelf.
Beyond the Core Drives
Understanding and applying the two dimensions and eight Core Drives is the first level of Octalysis design. There are additional levels that consider your experience as distinct phases over time and look at your audience as more than one "player type". There is also the fundamental tool for applying this into a business context called the Strategy Dashboard which aligns player wins with business wins.
My Application
Over the years, I have applied this model casually as I considered an experience I was designing as well as very explicitly doing Octalysis design for businesses. Where my heart always comes back to is applying these concepts into learning experiences. Adapting the Strategy Dashboard to align learner wins with learning outcomes. Incorporating the Core Drives across the learning experience design. Considering the phases and learner types across the broader context of the learning experience.
In fact, Octalysis is a Level 4+ component in the ID/LX framework. By the time we have gotten through IDLX Levels 1 and 2, we have most of what we need to start an Octalysis analysis and design session.
The Bottom Line
If you take nothing else away from this brief intro into Octalysis, at least recognize that there is more to good gamification than slapping a few game techniques on an experience. And we certainly don't need to make every experience a video game! The thinking tools from Octalysis allow us to consider our audience, align their needs with our broader goals, and make for more engaging environments that keep people around long enough to have the experiences that can change their lives.
I think that's worth the effort. Don't you?
The Octalysis Framework was developed by Yu-kai Chou. His book "Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards" is the definitive source.