Gamfication comes in many forms. However, one variant has become particularly widespread – the streak. This is the visualization that a certain activity has been carried out more often in a row and without interruption. oee.ai also uses the streak, for example when gamifying the loss reason entry. In this article we look at what makes the streak so special.
The streak is used at oee.ai, for example, when entering the cause of the loss. Emojis are displayed in a row, symbolizing whether a reason for the loss has been entered. The default configuration is a “thumbs up” for a successful entry and a “monkey sees nothing” for a missed entry. Employees are intrinsically motivated to fully enter the reason for the disruption because they do not want to interrupt the series of “thumbs up”.
Why was this form of visualization chosen? Psychology gives us answers:
- Consistency Bias: People have a natural tendency to value consistency. Once people start a streak, they are motivated to maintain it because breaking the streak feels like a disruption to the established pattern. This bias encourages people to continue engaging in the activity.
- Sense of achievement and progress: Recognizing a growing streak strengthens a person’s self-esteem and sense of competence and their desire to continue the behavior that led to the streak.
- Loss aversion: The fear of losing something can be a powerful motivator. In the context of a streak, the longer the streak, the greater the perceived loss if it is broken. People are more motivated to maintain the winning streak to avoid the negative emotions that come with losing their progress.
- Goal setting and achievement: Regularly setting and achieving small, manageable goals can be very motivating. Streaks break larger tasks into smaller, more achievable milestones, making progress more tangible and rewarding.
- Habit Formation: Streaks can be helpful in forming habits. Performing a behavior consistently over time helps solidify it as a routine, making it more likely that individuals will continue the behavior even without the streak’s external motivation.
- Positive Reinforcement: Each successful day or instance in a series provides positive reinforcement. This positive feedback loop can create a feeling of satisfaction and happiness by associating the behavior with positive emotions and increasing the likelihood that individuals will repeat it.
We now know that streaks are effective because they are rooted in human psychology and how our brains work. Streaks are therefore a robust repetition mechanism. Humans are rewarded in many ways every time they complete an action, meaning the streak addresses many characters and for this reason can be used widely.
oee.ai gamifies productive behavior in some places. Do you have any other ideas on how you would like to gamify your own production? Then please contact us. We provide both the technology for these projects and we are also available for the consulting portion of conception and implementation.