Gamifying Your Life — The Everyday Designer #30

Before we begin

I wanted to apologize for being off for so many weeks. Life got ahead of me, between franticly looking for work, a little good old mini internet cancellation, and being sick, my mind hasn’t had the space or time to devote to writing for you guys. If I’ve offended you, feel free to unsubscribe, I completely understand. If you’re sticking around, thank you. I’m back with some interesting thoughts to share with you all. You’re a real one. Thank you

Onto the goods

The other day (as I was furiously playing Starfield) I was thinking about the power of video games from the angle of incentivization. The way some games are so well designed to effortlessly make the player, “get to the next checkpoint” in the game, or take them on a side-quest that will unlock a certain power, so that it will be easier for the person to beat that boss. To be quite frank, I’m in awe at how many hours I’ve clocked playing Starfield (no I will not be sharing numbers haha) and I couldn’t help but wonder how this game managed to keep me excited and willing to sacrifice hours of good sleep, and time to do other normal things, for the sake of “progressing” in this game.

Now, I know what you’re thinking…

“Alex, its called being addicted”.

The reality is I haven’t owned a console in years. The last time I got this excited for a game release was like Halo 4 or Last of Us. Admittedly, I bought a console only to play this game. I’ll probably sell it again soon. But apart from the fun, captivating and oddly philosophical storyline, the cool ship warfare gameplay, the myriad of side quests you can choose to do, I was wondering why I wanted to keep playing this game. I’m sure game devs think of this all the time. In fact, I’m sure advertisers and marketers think about this concept a lot as well. “How do we keep customers”. “How do we make them keep coming back.” “How do we incentivize them.” Then I realized it.

The skill tree.

Seeing the badges light up and colour in, whenever you unlock a new one, reading the descriptions and feeling like “heck ya, I want that!”. The sounds that occur whenever you choose the skill you want to unlock or level up. All of it makes we want to keep playing, keep getting experience, so I can keep unlocking these powers or abilities. It works.

The power of incentivization

Then I got thinking, “how can I relate this to my real life”? I’m sure you’ve this concept before so its not that new but just the power to reward yourself in the process of growing in your craft or abilities could be a game-changer for some of you (no pun intended 😉). I’ve started thinking about how to to apply it to my own life. The first thing I went to was designing “badges” for myself. Sure, maybe it turned into a design project, in classic designer fashion, but its still one step in a better direction than none at all.

Maybe its setting up a rule for yourself that if you get “x” big goal done for the day, you get to do “x” thing, or you give yourself “x” time to doing something that you love. Maybe its that goal you’ve had in the back of your head come to the foreground and put some actual work into it, and the incentive for that is a healthy one. I just think there is so much potential with incentivizing your life, and I think even if you gave it a shot, in some way or another, you could unlock ways for yourself to “stay in the game” and keep your head up and even thrive in this game we call life haha.

Try it out

I will definitely love to hear your thoughts about if you do end up trying to gamify your life, what methods or ideas are you going to try out?

In the coming weeks, once I refine my thoughts on how to implement gamification strategies, I’ll share my findings with you all.

Thank you 🙏

Please let me know if you found this article helpful at all or if you’re going to try to gamify your life in some way or another.

Feel free to DM me, comment here, or email me at hello@theeverydaydesigner.co would love to get a conversation going!

Have a great week, and go design some beautiful things. 😍

🌊 Currents

ICYMI I sent out my first freebie for you guys, vetted by a few great designers in the industry!

🔑 Design Resource Freebie: Portfolio Project Template — My first of many free design resources, this came out of a frustrating time where I’ve been struggling to develop case studies for my portfolio. This notion template is meant to make your portfolio preparing easy as you get your ideas, thoughts, rationales, research, images, videos, animations, gifs, mockups all in one place; in an order that is good to present to your viewers. (I will also be coming out with a Figma template for the more practically-inclined 😉)

📚 Currently reading: Beauty by Stefan Sagmeister & Jessica Walsh — a must-have IMHO for all designers in their tool belt. A dear friend of mine (thank you Jeff) lent this to me and now I will be picking up a copy for myself. It speaks to injecting beauty into every piece of art and design we create. MABA. Make Art Beautiful Again haha.

🎥 Currently watching: Graincheck — Otherwise known as Taylor Pendleton, who started out as an creator for Moment, and now a member of Sunny Sixteen studio and runs her own youtube channel, she is an absolute gem of a human and photographer. The video linked is her lasted masterpiece, displaying how she used her emotions in the moment, to come up with incredible self-portraiture, while being vulnerable about her thoughts in the meantime. Just such a raw, beautiful emotion. Well worth a watch.

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