TLDR; Focus on the reason behind the measurement. Use trends in measurement to help adjust strategy.
Monitor and Act on Trends
One way of implementing gamification is through the use of leaderboards.
And you can see that on a lot of online training sites and apps like, Duolingo.
And even on racket (where this was orginally recorded), there are leaderboards up there.
Even on social media sites where you have got numbers of followers and visible numbers of likes and things like that, it might be tempting to use these for motivation.
“I am rising up the leaderboards!”
“I am gaining new followers!”
But what if the numbers start dropping?
If those numbers were motivating then the drop, may well be demotivating.
We need to find a purpose out-with the numbers.
I am using racket but the purpose for me using racket is a way of framing short thoughts to clarify them for myself and then try to communicate them succinctly in the short time that we have got.
And then I am using that to repurpose for blog content and social content.
So I weave this into my general content approach.
My purpose is out-with the numbers the leaderboards are usefl ways of… in fact, I don’t actually know what the numbers on the racket Leaderboard mean.
I am looking at the leaderboard, as a potential source of people to model, to identify what successfully Trends on the platform.
The people At the top of The Leaderboard have been measured as successful so whatever they’re doing is considered “success” on the platform.
But my motivation is out-with the platform, it’s bigger than the platform.
So the leaderboards are an interesting, source of research, but they’re not the reason, that I am doing it.
I find it more useful to receive emails from racket that someone has created a post, because that then acts as a trigger for me to think if I have anything useful to share.
With all the counts and metrics that we use in our work and life there is a danger that we chase the number and not the reason behind the number.
If we are measuring something important and it’s important that the number of rises, then the trend is Important.
And if the trend starts going down then that is a trigger to investigate what is going on.
Perhaps you need to change the strategy, perhaps we need to change the things, we are counting.
But the motivation behind the action is separate from the numbers in the leaderboards because that’s what keeps us going.
This was originally recorded on Racket in 202106
