When you fail to reach a challenging goal, say, saving a certain amount of money each month or getting to the gym a certain number of times a week, it can be tempting to just give up on the plan entirely. But new research shows that building some flexibility into that plan can actually improve your chances of success. In this episode of Choiceology with Katy Milkman, we look at how mulligans, skip days, cheat meals, and get-out-of-jail free cards are important strategies for sticking to your long-term goals.

chatbot conversational “game“

Thammasat Design Center

In this randomized clinical trial of 602 overweight and obese adults from 40 states across the United States, gamification interventions with support, collaboration, and competition significantly increased physical activity compared with the control group during the 24-week intervention. The competition arm had the greatest increase in physical activity from baseline during the intervention; during the 12-week follow-up, physical activity was lower in all arms, but remained significantly greater in the competition arm than in the control arm.

A central challenge for all health-related gamification programs is engaging participation, particularly among high-risk patients. Several design elements commonly found within gamified health and wellness programs could be made more engaging by incorporating behavioral insights.

Lifestyle Gamification Case Stats and Figures OPower: reduced measurable energy consumption by over $100M Aetna: increased daily healthy activities by 50% with an average engagement of 14 minutes on the site ClinicalAdvisor.com: embedded a social platform that improved user submission by 300%, comments by 400%, and Slideshow Visualizations by 53% Bottle Bank Arcade: gamified bottle bank was used 50 times more than conventional bottle bank. The World’s Deepest Bin: 132% more trash collected compared to conventional bin Piano Stairs: 66% more of people use the stairs, if they can produce music with it Speed Camera Lottery: a lottery system that causes a 22% reduction of driving speed Toilette Seat: 44% of increase in lifting the toilet seat when urinating Nike: used gamified feedback to drive over 5,000,000 users to beat their personal fitness goals every day of the year Recycle Bank grew a community of 4 million members by providing a gamified recycling platform. Chevrolet Volt: uses a green/amber indicator to give drivers visual feedback of their driving style and reduced the number of people exceeding the speed limit by 53%

Developing Games for Health Behavior Change: Getting Started