In a behavioural science experiment, graduate students went door-to-door on a hot summer day asking residents to turn off their air conditioning and turn on their fans.
A quarter of the homes received a message that said by doing so, they would save over $50 per month that summer. Another group received an environmental message urging them to save the planet. A third group received a message about being a good citizen to prevent blackouts.
“Most people guessed that money saving message worked best of all. In fact, none of these messages worked. They had zero impact on energy consumption,” said Alex Laskey in a TED talk.
But there was a fourth message. It told people that 77 percent of their neighbours had already turned off their air conditioning and turned on their fans, and asked them to join.
“They did. The people who received this message showed a marked decrease in energy consumption simply by being told what their neighbours were doing,” said Laskey. The message told them that their neighbours were doing better and people didn’t want to get left behind.
“Social pressure is powerful stuff. Harnessed correctly it can be a powerful source for good.”
Laskey and his partner Dan Yates took this insight to their company Opower, a software-as-a-service firm that partners with utility companies who want to help their customers save energy.
On personalized home energy reports, they would show how people’s consumption compares to their neighbours with similar-sized homes. Those who use less energy than 80 percent of their neighbours are given two smiley faces to show that they’re doing “great”. Those who use less energy than most of their neighbours get one smiley face for doing “good”. And those who use more energy than most of their neighbours don’t get a smiley face.
The smiley face stimulus is working. Since 2008, home owners and renters have saved over $250 million on their energy bills. During this timeframe, a total of two terawatt-hours of energy have been saved. Opower estimates that another two terawatt-hours would be saved this year alone. Two terawatt-hours are enough to power every home in St. Louis and Salt Lake City combined for more than a year.
Why gaming works
According to Nicole Lazzaro, game designer and researcher and founder of XEODesign, bestselling games tend to engage gamers in four ways.
First there are “easy fun” games, such as those that allow players to drive around a track. “Hard fun” games are about challenge, frustration, and mastery. They include games that involve capturing a boss monster or shooting into a small basketball hoop.
“People fun” games give people the opportunity to socialize through competition or cooperation. And finally “serious fun” games are those that change how we think, feel, and behave. An example would be losing weight after playing a dancing or fitness game.
Opower’s smiley face reports showed residents how they were performing relative to their neighbours, sparking competition and changing the way they consumed energy.
On designing games
Designing games can be tricky. Lazzaro explains that when designers implemented variable tolls on the Bay Bridge to tackle congestion, people would stop on active traffic lanes to wait for the scoreboard to drop toll rates minutes before it switched to off-peak pricing.
“[Off-peak travel] actually works. More people drive when it’s not rush hour,” said Lazzaro. “If you give people a score they will change their behaviour, but there are secondary effects that go into games.”
Molly Kittle from Bunchball adds that in games, “levels, leaderboards, and badges aren’t the weight and the motivating factor” but “tap into what’s already happening inside us”.
“You won’t have a return on investment unless you’re thinking very seriously about the user experience, how they’re interacting with the website, application, or game, what they want, their identity, and what motivates them.”
Gaming for good
Can games solve real-world challenges? Game designer Jane McGonigal believes so.
“Gamers are super-empowered hopeful individuals. These are people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world. The only problem is they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worlds, and not the real world. And that’s the problem I’m trying to solve,” McGonigal says.
“We have to start making the real world more like the game.”