A focus on User Experience has swept the software industry over the last 4 years. The iPhone and the iPad have demonstrated how a rich, engaging and immersive User Experience can cause major disruptions in a market and create new ones. As software providers look to gain market share and create their own disruptions, User Experience and Extreme Usability have been in the front of mind. This push has led us on a chase to make things easier and easier for our users. Click tracking, eye tracking, customer focus groups and social media engagement have become the route to User Experience and Extreme Usability. However, is simply making software prettier and easier to use the answer?
In the challenge to create software that cause users to become deeply engaged and immersed in the experiences, new thinking around Motivational Design and making software truly fun and sticky is gaining momentum. Bringing together behavioral economics, social engagement, cognitive psychology and game theory, Motivation Design doesn’t focus on making things easier, but in making things fun, immersive and addictive – the kinds of experiences people flock back to and rabidly promote to the world.
Dave Wolf, VP of Strategy at Cynergy joined the Roundtable and discussed Motivational Design and how companies like eBay, Verizon, Bank of America, and others are using Motivational Design to grab market share, increase customer retention and grow revenues. Cynergy helps companies imagine what their software products could be like, design how users will experience and interact with that software, and develop those ideas and designs into complete software products. Their work has been covered by CNN, Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes and the BBC. Check out some of the cool apps Cynergy helped develop at Cynergy TV.