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business, business consulting, city, city government, Consulting, Coursera, EA, EA active 2, Electronic Arts, exercise, food, gamification, government, John, John Russo, Kevin, Kevin Werbach, marketing, obese, obesity, overweight, Playstation, Playstation 3, Russo, Russo Business Consulting, scenario, University of Pennsylvania, Werbach, Wharton
Since I’ve recently been involved in training workshops and certification courses, I wanted to share some of the scenario based assignments I’ve had to answer. I think this is a great opportunity to gather all your unique insights on how you might have answered these questions.
The 2nd assignment I’d like to share was a scenario based on using motivation effectively in gamified systems. This is an assignment given to me during a Gamification course provided by the Coursera online offering taught by Kevin Werbach, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
In this scenario, I was approached the mayor of a medium-sized city in the Midwest of the United States who believes that gamification techniques can transform city government.
He would like to start with the health of city employees. The city has 50,000 employees and they happen to have exactly the same rates of obesity as the U.S. average: 34.4% overweight (but not obese) and 33.9% of them are obese. 53.1% of the city’s employees do not meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity and 76% of them fail to meet the Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity. The city pays for health benefits for its employees and this cost is a huge part of the city budget. Economists in Mayor Morrison’s office have estimated that a 3% improvement in the average physical fitness of city employees would amount to a US$94 million reduction in annual city health costs; a 5% improvement would save US$188 million.
My task was to describe a gamified system that could effectively motivate behavior change to address this challenge, either intrinsically, extrinsically, or both. The answer should address the fact that this is an internal gamification project, targeted at the institutional goals of the city government. The system can use any technology (or no technology!), as long as the resources required seem justified by the scope of the opportunity.
Here was my answer:
Our gamified system will use the 6Ds.
Define Business Objectives:
1. Reduce overweight city employee rate by 3% in the next 3 months, and by 5% in 6 months.
2. Reduce obese city employee rate by 3% in the next 3 months, and by 5% in 6 months.
4. Reduce the rate of those not meeting the aerobic physical activity guideline by 3% in the next 3 months, and by 5% in 6 months.
5. Reduce the rate of those not meeting the muscle strengthening guideline by 3% in the next 3 months, and by 5% in 6 months.
Delineate Target Behaviors
1. Overweight/obese employees engage in 3 aerobic exercise sessions/week.
2. Overweight/Obese employees engage in 2 strength training sessions/week.
3. Overweight/Obese employees add one healthy food alternative to their diet/week.
4. All Non- Overweight/Obese employees continue good habits, and inspire the others.
Describe Players
1. All employees including Mayor Morrison.
2. Motivated by achievement, learning, inspiring others, creativity, fun, improvement, and financial incentives, variety.
3. Engagement Loops – Activities will provide positive feedback upon completion of milestone activities, resulting in motivation to complete the next set of activities.
4. Progression Loops – Employees who have never completed a push-up will complete 5 push-ups in 3 months, increasing a little each week. This will be divided into the 3 classic progression loop phases: Onboarding education, chest strengthening exercises (the climb), walking in place (the rest period to avoid boredom of constant challenge.)
Don’t Forget the Fun
1. Learning: Introduce unique exercises doable with one’s own body weight or with common household furniture, like triceps dips on a stationary chair.
2. Accomplished athletes in our population of employees will have fun inspiring others in the group to find the joy that comes with physical fitness.
3. We will establish metrics that measure improvement in key areas, and chart these as a function of better physical fitness. We can then divide the saved money 3 ways:
Financial reward for those employees.
Restitution for the capital expenditures of our gamified system.
Donations to charities that are deeply meaningful to our employees.
Deploy the appropriate tools
1. PlayStation 3 offers a system called “EA Sports active 2”. It include a heart rate monitor, an on-screen avatar that mimics the user’s movement to provide immediate feedback, badges, and web-based progress tracking.
2. Here are quotes from the packaging that specifically fit our objectives:
“Stay Motivated with the Ultimate Cutting-Edge Fitness Program”
“Endless Exercise Variety”
“Have Fun While You Get Fit”
3. Although there are setup costs, each copy of the game allows 2 players, so that cuts the financial capital in half and increases motivation through collaboration. It is also a one-time cost, whereas the financial gains via the better management of health benefits costs will be ongoing.
4. The additional needed software is an integration between the EA Active output and city-specific performance metrics. We want to chart the relationship between physical achievement in the game and better performance at work. Using achievement as an intrinsic motivator provides benefits for the employee and the city.
What are your thoughts on how you would have answered this question? Stay tuned for more posts where I Share My Learning in the future.