A process can be clear, efficient, and easy to measure while the people inside it remain reluctant to participate. Yu-kai Chou gave that tension a useful name in his 2018 Constructrr interview: the difference between function-focused design and human-focused design.
The distinction matters before a team adds points, badges, rewards, or tokens. A reward can change what people do for a while. It cannot explain why the original experience felt frustrating, risky, or meaningless.
The paycheck assumption leaves part of the system undesigned
Yu-kai Chou described function-focused design as an approach that assumes people will perform the required behavior because the task and compensation already exist. He said human-focused design remembers that “people in the system have feelings, they have motivations, they have insecurities.”
In the construction example he used, competition, ego, saving face, and concern about future work all affected behavior. Those were Yu-kai's observations, not a diagnosis of every project. They show why a technically organized process can miss what participation feels like to the person expected to use it.
A reward can narrow the reason for acting
Yu-kai Chou also warned that an outside reward can become the reason a person continues a behavior. Once the reward becomes familiar or disappears, the behavior may stop even when the person once had an internal reason to care.
That warning does not make every incentive harmful; it changes the design question. Before adding a reward, the team needs to understand whether it is supporting interest and meaning or replacing them with a short transaction.
A token needs a behavior model beneath it
In the token portion of the episode, Yu-kai discussed scarcity, earning, spending, and utility. Those 2018 examples belonged to an early token-design conversation. The broader design point is that a digital reward only has meaning when people understand how it is earned, why it matters, and what they can responsibly do with it.
A practical review can begin with one behavior the team has trouble sustaining. Trace the moment participation drops and name the friction people encounter there. That gives the team something concrete to improve before it reaches for another incentive.
The decision is not whether work should feel like a game. It is whether the process has been designed for the people whose behavior makes it work.
