jon puleston gaming - 2011

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Game Theory

Turning online surveys into games Jon Puleston


Background

•  GMI interactive team specialise in the design & development of interactive surveys

•  Also conducted extensive research into how to stimulate respondents to give more effective feedback by making surveys more engaging »  3 papers available on this topic


What our research has show us?

•  Making questions more game like can improves responses levels & the quality of data

•  In fact integrating any level of fun or playfulness into a survey can help encourage more active participation

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Some Examples...


Impact of switching to more game like question styles....


Played around with a lot of different approaches...


Results... •  Less straight-lining: up to 80% lower levels in some

experiments •  Lower neutral scoring: average 25% lower •  Higher enjoyment: rating scores could be increase from 3 out

of 10 to 8 out of 10 •  Lower dropout (if questions are designed ergonomically):

able to reduce from 5% to 1% in test experiments. •  Achieved good cross compatibility: Found we could achieve

the same balance of data* * With the exception of slider & tick select based question


Respondents invested 25% more time on task & enjoy it a lot more – survey satisfaction ratings improved by 30%

Simple techniques like changes to button styles and how they function can have a real impact...


20% more clicks – 90% enjoyment - left with a feeling that that survey was fun and so helping to build a relationship with respondents

The value of rewording questions to make them more fun to answer...


3 times as many actionable strap lines

Particularly valuable technique for more creative tasks….


Found that making things competitive can have a real impact…

3 times as many ads!

In the next 2 minutes we challenge you to name as many ads as you can that you recall advertising on TV recently


Using games at the start of surveys to get people in the right frame of mind

Opens up people imaginations – encourages them to be more creative


Helps to encourage respondent to take part in future studies...

85% cross participation in 4 surveys


We have experimented with more gamy approaches to whole surveys...

More time spent on task and richer incite - up to 70% more feedback!


Conclusion •  Gamification is clearly a good way to improve feedback from

surveys •  Really the issue is finding practical ways to apply this thinking to real

surveys - Thinking needs to move upstream in our minds •  There are technical hurdle you needs to be cross too to deliver

these solutions that we are focusing on •  Currently exploring an range of game based question mechanics

and developing them into question components in our system...


Opinion snowboarding...


Opinion showers...


Word cloud building....


Guessing game mechanics....


Scoring mechanics...


Undertaking some research currently to look at...

•  How respondents react to answering questions in this different ways

•  The impact it has on the data •  How these techniques can be integrated adapted into

more general surveys


Set ourselves a challenge to see how we can improve the feedback to a really boring bank tracking survey

“If you had to go on a date with one of these banks which would you choose?”


Where it can go wrong?

•  Piecemeal application of this type of thinking to one or two question in a survey can be dangerous

•  Gaming technique can manipulate how people answer questions so benchmarking is important

•  Potential to foster a carefree attitudes amongst respondents? »  Yes a consideration but in most of the experiments we have conducted so far

found it to be quite the opposite


Q & A? Thank you for your time!

Jon Puleston

jon puleston gaming - 2011

Marketing

game theory

real surveys

online surveys

start of surveys

lower levels

question styles

real impact

lower dropout