Feminine Gamification Viewpoint: Roles
When you are designing with ladies in mind, treating us as one homogenous group is likely to set you up to miss additional opportunities to engage with us. Most women although we think very holistically and probably have few boundaries between the various roles we play in life, will make decisions based on the role we will most likely be playing whilst interacting with your device, software, campaign etc.
So for example gamification aimed at structuring the life of a busy mother, will need to sell the benefits to the busy mother. If your technology is not easy and straightforward as well as useful for the busy mum and childproof, the uptake will be limited. If however your design is aimed at the professional lady, then the key benefits to focus on will be how to make me more efficient in work, achieve more or come across better will need to be clear.
Our choices in technology and apps are driven by the key role we perceive to play. When you are looking at designing gamification to drive behaviour change for ladies, find out what is the key role the lady plays when interacting with your tool. What does she need to achieve in this role, what values are most important to her in that role, what is her peer group doing?
Design the tool for one specific role and once this is proven and tested, only then venture into making your tools also transferrable to the other roles the lady may play.
Ladies, what is your favourite gamified campaign, tool and what role do you play when using it?
