Principles of Game Design for Business Software
This is a summary of the Starting Greatness Podcast interview.
Mike Maples Jr interviews Rahul Vohra of Superhuman about the principles of Game Design (as opposed to gamification) with the objective of creating joy out of using business software.
(Link to the episode)
Rahul Vohra is the founder of Superhuman the email management software. He is a clear systems thinker and shared his thoughts about various elements of game design for software.
“Today our business software feels like work. We have to check our email, submit expense reports and to data in our CRM. But I wonder what if we could make software less like work and more like play and with game design, we can.
(…)When you make a game, you don't worry about what users want or need you obsess over how they feel when your product is a game. People don't just use it, they play it” - Rahul Vohra
The Five Components of good game design
1- CAR Goals: Concrete, Achievable and Rewarding
““our first principle of game design. If you want to build software, like it’s a game, then create goals that are concrete achievable and rewarding.””
2 - Emotions: Design for Nuanced Emotions
“The best games create strong emotions because strong emotions are the foundations of our memory. We must therefore be able to analyze emotion and to do that: We need vocabulary.”
“So at superhuman, we care deeply about the top level category of joy. And we aim for specific emotions within joy. For example, we design for enthusiasm and excitement. Our users come to us super excited. We design for optimism and hopefulness. Our users genuinely want superhuman to improve their lives. And we design for pride and triumph for when you hit inbox zero, especially if it’s the first time in years, you rightly feel like you accomplish something special. And when you do hit inbox zero, we show you stunning and gorgeous imagery. And we do this to widen the emotional repertoire beyond joy, into love and surprise. We pick images that peaceful and tranquil that creates a sense of longing and sentimentality and that even amaze and inspire a sense of awe. And so that brings us to the second principle of game design, which is design for nuanced emotion.”
3- Controls: "Create Rapid Robust Controls”
“Create rapid and robust controls. Be ready for extremely fast sequences of inputs into your software as if your user or player is playing a fighting game. And you’ll make it feel more like a game.”
4- Toys: Make fun toys and then combine them into games
“Consider features of your own product. Do they old playful exploration? Are they fun even without a goal? And do they create moments of pleasant? Surprise. If so, then congratulations for you have a toy and you’re on the way to building a great game”
5 - Flow is the mental state of being fully immersed in an activity with feeling of focus, involvement, and enjoyment
Five key components:
1 we have to know what to do next.
2 we have to know how to do it.
3 we must be free from distractions.
4 we must get clear and immediate feedback
5 we must feel a balance between challenge and skill for if the activity is too hard, we feel anxious and if the activity is too easy, we feel relaxed or bored.
But if the activity is hard and we also feel skilled enough to take on the challenge, then we feel flow
