Transcript: Gamification and Blockchain: The Future of Work

Having the best functionality and efficiency, oftentimes it's better to have the most amount of delightfulness in your system. Most systems are what we call function-focused design, which is it assumes that people in the system will commit the behavior to optimize for efficiency, for usability, ergonomics, sometimes for safety. Whereas human-focused design remembers that people in the system have feelings, they have motivations, they have insecurities. There's reasons why they do or do not want to do something and it optimizes for that. If you look at function-focused design, it's a bit more like a factory.

You assume people will do their work because you pay them to do it and then you just figure out how to maximize your production. Whereas human-focused design is a little bit more like a theme park where you design it to be really, really fun and then you can predict that people automatically want to line up for hours and hours just to enjoy the experience. You want to think about how to maximize delightfulness in an environment as opposed to necessarily the maximum amount of efficiency. So there are things where whatever they do, they feel delighted like, wow, I don't know what I did but it seems to be so successful and all these positive feedback reinforcements coming back to me.

I should spend more time here. Really about thinking about those motivation and actually making it more engaging, more fun, which is why usually if you look at function-focused or human-focused, as long as a lot of people are involved in the process, human-focused design always wins at the end when you look at outcome. Hello and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, The Best Way to Build It, episode number 64. I'm your host, Brittany Campbell-Turner, and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects.

We talk about fostering trusting relationships, help you to understand how to lower risk, be under budget and on schedule, and most importantly, exceed your end user's desires. Last week we spoke with John Gordon, author of quite a few bestsellers including The Energy Bus, You Went in the Locker Room First, The No Complaining Rule, and the most recent book that was released last year, The Power of Positive Leadership. He also just finished up a book this year called Power of a Positive Team that will be released later on this year.

So all of his messaging really is about teaching people how they should live with more vision, passion, positivity, and purpose. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, check it out at constructor.com slash ep63. Today will be the start of our second blockchain series. We are kicking off the discussion talking about gamification. What does it have to do with our lives?

What does it have to do with construction? What does it have to do with blockchain? We will be investigating the answers to these questions as we kick it off with Yu Kai Chow, gamification author and international keynote speaker. He is the creator of the Octalysis framework. Yu Kai has fascinating perspectives on what influences and motivates actions as he's an expert in making games more productive and making life more gamified.

He has been a leader in the field of behavior design and influences. He says that when it comes to design, to specifically pay attention to human-centered design so that you focus on motivations so that people can be more engaging and have more fun so that it can be a delightful experience versus focusing on the amount of efficiency. So with that, let's get into the interview. So we are interviewing Yu Kai Chow, gamification author and international keynote speaker. He's the creator of the Octalysis framework.

He has been a leader in the field of behavioral design and influences by making games more productive and making life more gamified. Yu Kai, welcome to the Constructor podcast. Excited to be on the show. So for the audience, please share at a high level, what's your definition of gamification? So gamification is applying all the fun and exciting elements of games into activities that are serious, that are productive in real life.

So in life, there are things that we feel like we have to do but we don't necessarily want to do. In terms of doing our training, paying our taxes, constructing a building, and we just feel like, oh we have to do it. If we don't like it, just suck it up and work hard. And there are things in life that we enjoy doing like playing games, you know, hanging out, watching movies, but it doesn't really get us anywhere. It's not really useful, but some people can spend five, six, seven, eight hours a day just being addicted to these things.

So my line of work in gamification is understanding why do these games appeal to the brain so much and apply that same methodology and knowledge into the serious activities so that everything that's important can actually be enjoyable. Why did you even get interested in gamification? How did you get on this path? It all came around like 2003 and I was a pretty heavy gamer at the time. I spent a lot of time trying to be the best gamer possible in the game, leveling up my characters.

And then I started to quit the game and I felt really empty. I was like, well I spent thousands of hours leveling up my characters in the game, getting more gear, getting more gold, conquering quests. But once I quit the game, I really have nothing. You know, I'm still the same guy in front of a computer and wouldn't be great if I spent those thousands of hours learning a new language or playing the violin, whatnot. I'd be actually high love in real life, not just in the game.

So just let me down a path to explore whether, number one, how can games be more productive? You know, the more hours you spend in the game, the better your real life is. You are making better income, supporting your family, getting closer to your loved ones, becoming healthier, you're getting your job done. And at the same time, looking at how to make life more fun in general, because a lot of people feel like, you know, life is the grind, it's the boring stuff, stuff you have to do, but is there a way to make it more exciting?

So I started down that journey and I started a few different technology startups and companies and created some different philosophies, wrote a book, and eventually that became the body of knowledge called gamification. It became something that all sorts of organizations cared about. So different governments, different company nonprofits, hospitals, started learning about because they all look into a way we want our target audience, whoever it is, our employees, our customers to behave a certain way, but they just don't do it. They're not motivated to do so.

So how can we make it fun and engaging to do these behaviors? And that's how I started in this field and became relatively well known in the field. Now, you mentioned influencing behaviors and I wanted to really unpack the discussion about the Octalysis framework, which you've developed, but there is an element of the different approaches to designing games, right? Or even just designing an experience. And it's either human focused or functionality focused.

Could you share with us about what the difference is between those design approaches? Most systems are what we call function focused design, which is it assumes that people in the system will commit the behavior. And so it optimized for efficiency, for usability, for ergonomics, sometimes for safety. Whereas human focused design remembers that people in the system have feelings, they have motivations, they have insecurities. There's reasons why they do or do not want to do something and it optimizes for that.

So if you look at function focused design, it's a bit more like a factory, right? You assume people will do their work because you pay them to do it. And then you just figure out how to maximize your production. Whereas human focused design is a little bit more like a theme park where you design it to be really, really fun. And then you can predict that people automatically want to line up for hours and hours just to enjoy the experience.

And what's interesting is in the case of a factory, you're actually paying these people to do relatively mundane work in the factory. But in the theme park, they're actually paying you to stand in line for hours and hours just to enjoy those few minutes of fun. And so a lot of industries, especially in construction too, you know, a lot of companies are just thinking about, oh, you know, what's the stuff that needs to be done? What is the function? And they assume, right, everyone's going to do their thing, right?

Everyone's going to work hard and get it done and all works well. Now, unfortunately, every project is not done by robots done by humans, and everyone has their motivation. It's like, oh, there's competition, or you're trying to please the owner. There's some saving face dynamic, there's some egos in the mix. Some people are insecure.

Well, what if we finish the project and then I'm out of a job? And it's really about thinking about those motivation and actually making it more engaging, more fun, which is why usually if you look at function, focus for human focus, as long as a lot of people are involved in the process, human focused design always wins at the end when you look at the outcome. Yeah, because people are motivated by something almost higher than themselves, right? Is that another way to say it? That would be one of the motivations.

You know, a lot of people would argue, well, look, people are just motivated by incentives, right? You pay them or they work harder, you pay them less, they don't work as hard, which there's a lot of behavioral science that suggests otherwise. There's a lot of study that shows they're motivated by intrinsic reasons. They just enjoy the work, or they do it for their family. It's interesting, they work much harder, but when you pay them more at the beginning, they work harder, but shortly after they feel like they're underpaid again, they feel more entitled and they actually don't necessarily work harder.

And you're bringing in another component, which is something called Epic, Meaning and Calling. When people feel like they're fulfilling a bigger purpose than themselves, they're not just saying, oh, I'm here to get a paycheck and not get fired, in which case they'll work hard enough to get the paycheck and not get fired. If they feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves, they're actually changing the world. They're building something useful in the community. They are improving the lives of others.

Suddenly, they're more driven. And a lot of times when people are on this Epic, Meaning and Calling motivation, you will see some sacrificial type of behavior, put in a lot more time, a lot more heart and energy, not just, oh, what's the bare minimum to get the job done? And a lot of times, again, that makes a project much more successful and impactful. So before we move further into some of the elements of the Octalysis framework, you mentioned Meaning and Calling. I kind of want to give the audience a little bit of a baseline.

Why am I talking to a gamification group? As you know, the discussion has been around blockchain and why it makes sense to even incorporate this type of governance model into construction. And I thought it was really important to unpack the behavior drivers. I think that UKAI has an interesting perspective on how the influences take place within gamification. And we're going to unpack from a blockchain perspective as well.

But I just wanted to share that if we can go ahead and get into the Octalysis framework, could you share with us what it is? And then let's go ahead and dig into each one of the drivers. So the Octalysis framework is the piece of work that I'm most known for. It's called the Octalysis because it's analysis based on the octagon shape. So if you go on Google and you search the term gamification framework, you'll see it as the first result, the Octalysis framework.

Of course, searching Octalysis and octagon analysis will lead you there too. But you'll see a visual. So the thing about the calluses is that it breaks down all motivation into eight core drives that motivate us. So every single thing we do inside or outside of the game are based on one or more of these eight core drives, which means that if there's none of these eight core drives there, there's zero motivation. No behavior happens.

So everyone who listens to this podcast is listening to it because of at least one of these eight core drives. Some people might be listening because of core drive seven, unpredictability, curiosity. They're just curious, you know, what is this gamification about? Let me find out. Some people might be listening because of core drive five, social influence and relatedness.

Oh, a coworker, a friend told me about it. So I showed up. Some people are here because of development accomplishment. I want to advance my career. I want to get my project done better.

Occasionally some people are here because of that epic meaning and calling we just mentioned. I believe this is where the world is moving towards and I really want to be part of that movement. And when I do some of these workshops with large Fortune 500s, some people are there just because of core drive eight loss and avoidance. Oh, I don't want to get fired. So I show up.

But hopefully that's not a lot of people, I guess, in the audience right now. Again, without those eight core drives, nothing happens. No one listens to the podcast. Your customers are not buying anything. Your employees are not working.

No behavior happens. So we break that all down into those eight core drives. Now what's interesting about the italicist is that there's different natures of those core drives based on where it's placed on the octagon. So the top side of the octagon is what we call white hat core drives. And those are drives that make people feel powerful in control.

They feel good, but there's no sense of urgency. So oftentimes, because we're fully in control, we procrastinate a little bit. The black hat core drives are on the bottom and they make people feel urgent, obsessed, even addicted. But in the long run, if that was the only motivator, it leaves the bad taste in the mouths because they feel like they're not in control of their own behavior. So again, white hat makes people feel powerful in control.

They feel good. No sense of urgency. Black hat makes people feel urgent, obsessed, addicted. But if that was the only motivator, people feel bad. And if they can drop out, if they can burn out, they do.

And then when we look at the left side of the octagon is what we call left brain core drives. It doesn't mean it's geographically on the left side of our brains, but it symbolically represents our logical brain versus the right brain core drives on the right side that relates to our emotional brain. So what's interesting is the left brain core drives deal with what we call extrinsic motivation, things we do for reward, a purpose or a goal. But we don't necessarily enjoy the activity itself. So once we obtain the reward, we hit our goals, or we just get used to the reward, it becomes stale.

We stop doing the behavior. So let's say, you know, I have a terrible job. My job is to dig feces out of the ground. It smells bad. I hate it.

But then someone shows up and says, Hey, for every done you dig out, I'll give you $10,000. And then suddenly I'm like, Wow, you know, this is easy money. And I start digging with a lot of excitement, enthusiasm, even engagement. But it's important to recognize that the task itself is still not engaging. It's not fun.

Once I'm doing it for the crap load of money. But once the money's not there anymore, of course I stopped the behavior. Intrinsic motivation, the right brain core drives deal with things that we just enjoy doing to the point that we're even willing to spend money just to experience. So for instance, core drive 30 is empowerment of creativity and feedback. So we don't need a reward to enjoy using our creativity.

Core drive five is social influence and relatedness. We don't need a reward to enjoy hanging out with our friends. And core drive seven is unpredictability and curiosity. That is very interesting. We don't need a reward to be in that suspense of curiosity and unpredictability.

So here's a very interesting example. If you sit there and you press a button before our straight and you're guaranteed a paycheck, that's kind of boring. That's like a job at a factory. Most people don't like that. But if you sit there and you press a button for four hours straight and maybe you'll get a paycheck, maybe you won't, maybe you'll even lose money.

Suddenly that's casino gambling and a lot of people like that. It makes no sense, right? It's the same behavior. One you're guaranteed to pay out. The other one you're likely, you're actually most likely going to lose money.

That's how the casinos make so much money. But our brains prefer the latter because we are paying to experience the intrinsic feeling of maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. You're paying for the field of optimism and hope and unpredictability. That's something that's intrinsic. I was advising the Singaporean government.

They have one casino there and they don't want Singaporeans to gamble. So foreign is going for free, but Singaporeans have to pay a hundred Singaporean dollars, which is about 70 US dollars just to get in. And they were telling me how every year they make hundreds of millions of dollars just from that hundred dollar deposit alone. People are paying 70 US dollars just for the right to lose even more money to these casinos. So this is a very interesting thing about human nature and behavior.

The octalysis framework explains, but a lot of companies working with people, trying to motivate people, don't really understand. The other component, the last part I wanted to talk about in terms of just a high level of the octalysis, is most companies like to focus on the extrinsic motivation, left brain core drives. And the reason is because it's just a lot easier to put a reward on a behavior you want to see, right? Hey, if you do this, we'll give you recognition, we'll give you money, we'll give you, you know, a badge, what not, as opposed to making the activity itself more engaging.

The problem is that the science shows that a lot of times extrinsic motivation can kill intrinsic motivation. What does that mean? So let's say I love to draw. It's my passion. I always draw for free.

Science shows that one of the best ways for you to get me to stop drawing is to first pay me to do it. In the beginning, I'm excited. Yeah, I get paid for my passion. Amazing. And then pay me less and less $200, $50, $10, $1.20.

At one point, I will refuse to draw because, you know, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to draw for 20 cents, even though before I met you, I drew for free. So you have transitioned into that extrinsic motivation of making money. And again, when the money's not enough, I lose interest altogether. This is called the over justification effect.

Before I do it, because it's fun, because I enjoy it, because it uses my creativity. But once I justify it with, oh, while I make money, too, that's OK. But at one point, there's the over justification. I'm doing this for the money. And once that over justification of appears, suddenly we think, OK, well, if there's no money, I don't want to do it anymore.

Or I'm just going to do the bare minimum possible to get the money. Just like in the school these days, all about extrinsic motivation, about the grades, about the diplomas. Even though intrinsically, we all have an innate desire to learn, right? We love to learn when we're little. We're curious.

Later on, it's all about, oh, well, what's going to give me points? Like you flip to the textbook to see, oh, this is the answer to fill in the box. You don't care about why this is the answer. You don't go to the page before and after to read about it. You just want to fill in the answer so you can get your points.

So there is a danger in using too much extrinsic motivation. Again, a lot of our work in gamification and the octalysis group is really about not only creating behavior, understand the nature of that behavior. Is a white hat, is a black hat, is an intrinsic extrinsic and making sure it's long lasting, sustainable type of motivation that glass-tilt the end of its course. Yeah. And I think the other element about gamification I thought was interesting is, and please clarify the terms, but there is a difference between the approach to enjoying the game and playing the game simply to win the game.

Yep, absolutely. I think that there is an element that I'd like to focus on in regards to how we structured teams, right? So I spoke to you a little bit about this before we got into the interview about how construction teams are assembled. I mean, you have an owner operator that wants to build out a space for a particular reason. They want to build out workplace.

They want to build a hospital for their patients. They want to build some retail space or a restaurant so that people have an experience. And that is the focus, ultimately, when they are embarking on a construction project. So there's that element of wanting people to be influenced by how they approach that. That's one thing.

And in addition to that, they assemble a team of architects, contractors, engineers, CEM firms that I might consult like myself. And they have to pretty much corral everyone to act as one team, although they work for completely separate companies and have different interests. I think there are a lot of motivations that play here. I'm particularly interested in the long term approach to intrinsic motivation. What are the most influential, if there is such a thing, motivation that you can incorporate into a game?

We can use any game at this point for that application. Well, when we look at long term behavioral change in the game or outside of game, a lot of time it is that core drive three empowerment of creativity and feedback. So this is on the right top of the octagon, which means white hat, and it's also intrinsic. So if you look at all the timeless games out there, chess, poker, Sudoku, crossword puzzles, all these things, those all have this core drive three empowerment of creativity and feedback.

And so if you look, think about something like chess, right? The definition of this core drive is kind of like you give users the basic building blocks like Lego, and there's an infinite amount of ways for them to use their creativity, try different strategies, give them meaningful choices, right? Sometimes it's not like, oh, they're all over the place being artists and creators because something like construction projects, for instance, requires like a set things to be done, but giving them more meaningful choice, they feel like they're empowered to decide a little bit about how things are done or the order of things.

So there's a little bit of uniqueness in that. But if you look at chess, you know, very simple game, 64 squares, 32 pieces, and people have been playing for centuries. And it's still fun today, right? Chess does not have to be like every week, oh, here's a new piece. Here's a new board.

Here's a new map. A new hero enters the scene. They don't have to add new content to stay engaging because our brains are entertaining itself. Just constantly thinking about new ways to improve on the project, to make things better, to have new strategies. Whereas a lot of other games, you know, the moment they don't add a new mission, a new quest, a new hero to play, people leave.

That's because they rely on more extrinsic motivation type of core drives and more blackhead core drives. So similarly in a project, the more little meaningful choice you give, give them a choice, you know, let them choose between, you know, two or three options and whatnot, at least have some of their input, those suddenly become much more enjoyable and rewarding compared to monotonous type of things. Like you just have to do those 10 things in this right order. And everyone who does this will do the exactly the same way.

So again, different projects do differently. This is also one of the hardest to design for, right? Because how do you get people without disrupting the natural workflow of the job, give people some of that meaningful choice and feel empowered? It's not always easy. But for instance, one of our clients is the largest steel factories in the world.

And it's about how do they follow, you know, safety procedures seems pretty monotonous, but we had a way to make it fun, exciting, a lot of creativity involved. And people are taking these steps and removing more hazards in the workplace. You know, we have projects in SEC compliance training for financial firms. Again, just saying that feels boring, but there's ways to give people more meaningful choices and more empowerment. But those are usually some things we really think about and look into in a project.

First, if this one is too difficult to implement, then of course then we think about the other core drives about social influence and relatedness. The interesting thing about social influence is that it's on the right side, but it's in the middle. So it can be white hat or black hat. Collaboration and social appreciation is more white hat. Makes people feel good, they feel happy, it's sustainable.

Sometimes it lacks a little bit of urgency. You know, people just feel good on their own. Then competition and social pressure, things like that is a bit more of that black hat, where there's a bit more tension, there's more urgency, people got to work hard. But if they're usually creates again, obsessive behavior. And if it's a year long, two years, three years competition, people tend to burn out because it's black hat.

Black hat is good for short term activities. Hey, we have a two week project, let's see who's the best and doing it. Everyone works hard. But if it's like a full two years of competition, you know, again, we talk about it leaves a bad taste in our mouths when we're constantly in black hat. So then people lose motivation in the long run.

And so when you look at long term sustainable design, the collaboration appreciating side is important. And a lot of time is really just about how do you make it easy for co workers to show appreciation for each other. Like those are the some of the easiest things like you do work, most people when they're working, they feel like they're unappreciated. They're like a pawn in the game. They're like a cog in the system.

And they're working hard, but they're not appreciated. They don't really matter. So if you have a setting just to make it easier, and when you talk about software product, it's just like press a like button, right? You don't need people to write up big thing about Oh, you're a great person, because blah, blah, blah. You just click about as it's like, you're cool.

And people feel like, wow, people recognize my work, things like that. You see it everywhere in the game. But I feel like in the real world, there's not enough of that. I mean, as you're talking, it's interesting that my company embraced out of Britain, they were promoting a way to congratulate your colleague, or just share something with them that you're working on or just promote some more informal discussion, right. And what they did was they asked everyone to post on Instagram or on Twitter with the hashtag T talk.

And I think that they were saying that someone would become a winner and get a gift card to probably Starbucks or something, if they got the most interesting photo posted or something like that. So I thought that was an interesting way to sort of promote having those informal discussions, promote collaboration, not necessarily directly on a project, but just internal to the organization. Yeah, that's a great example. Allahamn's, there's big ways to apply game occasion. Sometimes there's small and easy ways, small wins, and to the brain, we need those core drives to feel motivated.

And so as long as it's there, people feel better. And when workers feel better, and they're usually more motivated, and that translates to better work and cohesiveness. Sort of transitioning into discussion about blockchain, you're actually partnering with someone at Ethereum right now. Can I say that right now? Working with one of the co founders of Ethereum on some other blockchain problem.

This is a co founder, and then the co founders went out to do some other things. And so I'm part of that project. So the other details are stealthy, but I am doing something quite impactful, I think, in the blockchain space. Just merely to know how well versed you are in the blockchain realm is enough for this discussion, whether we hear about it right now or in the future. I've been reading up on the tokenization and the fact that people are responding to tokens more in an investment way, especially with initial coin offerings that are out there now.

I'm considering the approach to tokenization. It's likened to points and badges in games. And I wanted to find out what your perspective was on aspects around tokenization. In game design, you often see there are two types of points. Typically, there's what we call status points.

So those allow you to build status and use it to level up. Oftentimes called EXP or experience points. And the thing with status points is usually just keeps going up, which reflects your status, which you've redone. It never goes down unless you are penalized, you know, you did something wrong or whatnot. Then there's what we call exchangeable points, which acts like a currency.

So those are things you can trade with it, you can redeem rewards with it, you can donate it to someone. And so for that, if it goes down, it's normal, right? Because you use it to do something. And those are systems we use in a game to motivate behavior, keep track of their progress towards very win states and just build more equity. So again, one of the things is we need to recognize these points.

And also you mentioned badges. Those are what we call core drive to development accomplishment, which is on the left top of the octagon, which is white hat. It makes people feel good as long as they feel like accomplished and they're progressing, but it's on the left side. So it's extrinsic. You're doing something because of those points or badges or the rewards, not because the task itself is fun.

Now in a game, what people do is it's good to first make sure the game play itself is fun. You know, there's creativity involved, there's social influence involved. There's a lot of unpredictability and people just like playing the game. And once they play the game, then it says, all right, well, if you play this game for long enough that you enjoy, you will start getting these points and these currencies and can do cool things with them. It's usually harder if you say, Hey, if you do this game sucks, it's you hate it.

It's boring. But if you play this game for 100 hours, you'll get these points, right? Or it doesn't really help as much. And so the tokenization is really kind of floating that concept to the real world. And it's like, Hey, what you do in the real world.

And each kind of token has its own premise and its own rules, right? As a game master in a game, you decide, okay, what is the scarcity control? You know, what's the way to earn coins? Do you kill monsters? Do you open treasure chests?

Do you farm virtual crops? Do you pet animals, right? You decide what is the labor that goes into it? What is the exchangeability? What's the reward that comes out?

Is there probability factor? And so the tokenization is almost doing that to the real world where there's a new rule. It's like, Oh, is this mineable? Is there more scarcity in it? Is it an unlimited type of token?

Or there's only 21 million of these tokens, etc, etc. So someone is creating a game rule almost by the life or their particular platform, right? Depending on what that blockchain is for, is it for health care, is for contract signing, you know, things like that, all the same literature goes into that in terms of, okay, how do you make sure the token is not so abundant that it loses value that no one cares anymore? Everyone feels like they have a million of these, so no one cares.

And how do you make sure that there's some kind of probability factor? And is there a way for people to spend? And what's the utility? What's the value of it? So I think a lot of that goes into it.

And it makes people do more desire behavior makes regular activities more interesting, right? Hey, before I'm just using this finance app, but now I can slowly earn a bit of these token, and this token could be useful to doing something else or the value of it will go up. And that itself becomes some kind of game. I'm thinking through in the real world, there's credit cards that you can get reward dollars for using the credit card if you spend it on gas or whatever it is.

And then the other thing that comes to mind, and I'm hoping that they fall in the same camp is frequent flyer miles, you have to fly, you're absolutely flying in order to acquire frequent flyer miles, because you can always buy them. But the fact that you get them is a reward because you are doing something that either you have to or you want to or you need to and there is a response in the points. Absolutely. And well, one of the things is the difference with the blockchain cryptocurrency, the examples you give, they're completely gamification examples.

It's perfectly on point. One of the big difference with blockchain is these examples are run by one company that controls everything they can suddenly take points away from you say, Oh, well, it's been two years, so too bad your points are gone. They can randomly grant you more points if they want to. They can suddenly change the economy, right? They can suddenly say, All right, well, you know, you used to take 10,000 points to get a flight, but we're going to say 50,000 points to be gone in flight.

So suddenly their currency became 80% weaker overnight because they decided that and there's nothing you can do about it. The nice thing about blockchain is once the early rules are set, you can choose if you want to participate in that blockchain that particular cryptocurrency. Right. But once the rules are set, it's all decentralized, right? It's a lot of computers confirming that this is happening.

There's no central company that operates it and makes decisions based on its own profits. And therefore that's what we talk about. One of the biggest values of blockchain, it removes the issue with trust. You don't have to trust some central company or government or whatnot won't suddenly print a lot more of this money and mess up the scarcity. It's all decentralized.

So it's the whole community and all these computers that determine it will happen. So there's the law of the code determines that will happen as opposed to organizations and entities that have their own agendas and profit kind of thinking. And I think that kind of dovetails into my next question about the intention around the code itself and how that intention based upon the model, how do you sort of stripping away the black hat and the extrinsic if necessary? And maybe it's not necessary. How do you ensure that if there is going to be a blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, that there's going to be longevity in it?

Black hat is not necessarily bad. And we don't it doesn't need to be stripped up. Black hat is great with creating a bit more urgency getting people to actually behave. So the white hat are things that we actually want to do on a regular basis. And if we actually do it makes us happy.

The problem is, we rarely get to those things because in our lives, there are already so many black hat things, you know, we're talking about loss and avoidance. Oh, this deadline is coming up, I got to go do this scarcity. Oh, there's this exclusive offer, I have to go take advantage of it. The unpredictability and curiosity. Oh, you know, what's on Game of Thrones?

What's on Facebook? What's on Pinterest? And so we spend a lot of our time doing those black hat things doesn't necessarily make us happy. And we would like to do more white hat activity. So each of these core jobs have their pros and cons.

They're good at one thing and not get another. So the key is about using the right type of motivation, the right place. If some people use black hat to get themselves to work out more, right, that's why you for instance, pay a gym trainer to call you a loser. It doesn't feel good when he does that, you know, you're the scum of the earth and you're in pain. And but after you thank him, right, you're like, hey, thank you for pushing me harder than I could myself, because you're using black hat to do what you already want to do.

And so it's just important to realize that black hat is about short bursts of activities, oftentimes one time transactions, we want people to give you their credit card number, you know, or donation or signing up to something or like a two week competition, you know, short bursts of activity, whereas white hat is more of a long term, hey, you know, we feel good about this. I'm so proud of this project. I feel so connected to my team. So it's usually a balance and it just depends on this exact scenario.

Are you looking to create more urgency and just break through the noise or cut through the noise? Or are you trying to say, hey, a lot of people already doing this, but we want to make sure they're sustainable, they last for a long time. And that's where you have more white hat to it. So it's like any design, it's basically trade offs, you know, using the right elements at the right times is what makes you successful. Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

So layering on the drivers at different times, depending on what you're hoping to do can be appropriate. Absolutely. As far as participants in a particular blockchain, it's going back to this intention question, right? Whether it's developing a blockchain or if it's participating in one, there's the question around the again, the finite versus infinite game, there's there's the desire to play versus the desire to complete the game by winning. How do you get everyone to want to win continuously to be part of that gameplay for a long period of time and not want to just kind of like brush it to the side and say, Hey, I'm done with this.

I think that totally connects to the concept of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, because extrinsic motivation is completely goal oriented, you get the goal. And like I said, once you achieve the goal, you've won the game, you obtained the reward, you beat your opponents, it ends right, because you declare the winner, whereas intrinsic motivation is you enjoy doing it. And so when you enjoyed it, you don't want it to end, you want to keep going. And so one of the funny examples that shows if you tell someone, hey, can you get this job done?

Right? And they say, consider it done. That's a really good thing. Right? Yeah, you got your done amazing, because it's extrinsic, I want a result.

And I guess I consider it done. So the result is already obtained. But if you tell them, hey, let's go to the theme park, and he says, consider it done. And you're like, what does that mean? You know, consider it done.

You've already been to the theme park, it's finished, completed. You're like, No, no, no, I don't want to have been to the theme park. I want to go to the theme. I want to be at the theme park, right? Because it's intrinsic, you want to enjoy the experience.

And so the concept of the infinite game is that people are playing to keep the game sustainable. So therefore, they're making sure every party is happy. It's just they're playing well together, everyone's enjoying the experience. And it's just positively flowing from there. Whereas the finite game is someone's trying to end the game by winning that by beating everyone else.

And so all right, I'm the victor. Goodbye, guys. And so a lot of it is, again, making sure there's more of that intrinsic motivation in the process. So people don't just look to quickly finish it and leave, but they try to stay in and make sure because it's enjoyable to actually make it the best project possible and something that everyone feels proud of while enjoying the experience. Another quick example is, you know, a lot of people have played original Super Mario's on the Nintendo, right?

A lot of people have a lot fond memories of playing it. But very few people have beat the game. Just because you didn't beat the game doesn't mean that you failed. It sucks. It's a terrible memory, right?

By playing the game, you're winning. And, you know, some people do beat it, and that's okay. But a lot of times, playing the game is winning, no matter if you're doing well or badly. If you play, you're winning. For some people's favorite TV series shows, you know, Game of Thrones, whatnot, they would be sad when the last episode plays out, right?

Because there's no more to watch. It's not like, yay, triumph, successful victory. We're so happy that this is the last one we finish. A lot of time, it's like, now what? And so those are the things you want to think about when you're creating any kind of environment, whether it's in the blockchain, whether it's a token sale, whether it's a community, your managing community, internal, external, or your workforce.

Those are all important components to think about intrinsic or extrinsic, and whether people are playing to win or playing to make it thrive and sustainable. I just love this discussion so much. This has been really enlightening for me to even delve down into this subject. Is there anything that you recommend to your clients that you consult with that you might want to recommend to the audience or to this community? Every project is different.

So the advice, if I say the same advice to everyone, usually a little bit more generic. If you look at a high level principle, going back to function focus versus human focus design, I'd say instead of having the best functionality and efficiency, oftentimes it's better to have the most amount of delightfulness in your system. So there are things where it's great technology, it's great functionality, and people respect it, but they don't want to touch it because the moment touch it, they feel stupid. Right? Some people, it's like Photoshop or DJ panels, they know it's advanced, they know it's great, they don't want to touch it because they feel stupid.

But then there's things that whatever they do, they feel delighted, like, wow, I don't know what I did, but it seems to be so successful. And all these positive feedback reinforcements coming back to me, I should spend more time here. So a lot of times you can you want to think about how to maximize delightfulness in an environment as opposed to necessarily the maximum amount of efficiency. That's a good high level principle to think about. Oh, I love that so much.

Please tell us what's the best way to contact you and learn more about what you're doing. People can reach out to me at ukai, y, u, k, a, i, at ukaichao.com, y, u, k, a, i, c, h, o, u, dot com. My work's all over the place. It's on YouTube, blog posts, I have a book recently launched my most ambitious project up to date, which is something called Octalysis Prime, which is learning gamification behavioral design on a gamified platform. So you're exploring and locking powers on it.

Something I'm really proud of. There's a lot of ways to check out my work and of course, reach out to me if you have any questions. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Yucay. This has been really fun.

Thanks for joining us today. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to this interview with Yucaychao. Find out more about yucaychao.com. The most interesting thing about blockchain technology to me is how it changes the behavior of people and how they end to relate with each other.

We talked a lot about this in this episode. There is an increase of trust and accuracy of performance tracking that will take place to keep people reliable and accountable to their commitments. People can understand who did what and exactly when because of blockchain's immutable shared database architecture. Given that there is distrust between parties who happen to be working together, there's definitely an opportunity to fix this problem through outcome based contracting, shared risk, shared reward models. This can help to create the rules upfront in contracts.

The future of commitments is changing and the sheer investment that's around the subject of blockchain really proves the deservedness of investigating the viability even more. Governments are adopting it. Real estate is being transacted with it. Why not construction in the corporate real estate space? I hope you enjoyed the discussion about gamification as it relates to this topic.

But what we'll be digging into next is topics about residential and commercial real estate, supply chain and skills based value transfer for licensed engineers. Next week, we'll be speaking with CEO of Sweetbridge, Scott Nelson. And we'll be talking about the 700 trillion dollars of valued assets globally and how we can leverage those assets to be more liquid and improve supply chain management. Scott has developed a new token economic system to where you can loan money to yourself interest free based on the value of your own asset.

With that being said, starting today, this next series really is going to blow your mind. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, you can do so at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, TuneIn and iHeartRadio. You can also find replays on Periscope. If you find me on Twitter, please leave a review to show you support and let me know you're enjoying the podcast. I look forward to talking with you guys for the next couple weeks about blockchain.