Target behaviors
Now that we are clear about what we are trying to accomplish with our system, we will focus on the actions we are hoping to incentivize: our target behaviors.
One of the big questions around gamification efforts is can it really cause behavioral change. Will employees, customers, and stakeholders simply go back to doing things the way they are used to once the game is over? Will they figure out a way to "cheat" the system?
The only way to meet long-term organizational objectives in a systematic way is for the application to not only cause change for the moment, but lasting change over time. Many gamification applications fail in long-term behavior change, and here's why.
Psychologists have studied the behavior change life cycle at length. Studies show that people go through five distinct phases when changing a behavior. Each phase presents a different set of challenges.
The five phases of the behavioral life cycle are as follows:
Awareness: Before a person will take any action...
