Special: Level Up Your Product: Innovation with Game Mechanics – with Mike Hyzy and Bret Wardle

How product managers can gamify their products, process, and career

I am interviewing speakers at my favorite annual conference for product managers, the PDMA Inspire Innovation Conference.  This discussion is with Mike Hyzy and Bret Wardle, whose session is titled “Level Up Your Product: Innovation with Game Mechanics.”

In our competitive landscape, businesses constantly seek innovative ways to captivate users and empower their teams. Mike and Bret are sharing with us the power of gamification and its potential to revolutionize digital products and product management careers.

Mike is a senior principal consultant at Daugherty Business Solutions. Previously he has been a product management consultant and has held senior product management roles.

Bret is a product leader with 15 years of game and software management experience who advocates for the convergence of design psychology in games and software.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[2:13] What is gamification?

Gamification is applying game concepts, mechanics, and psychology to anything outside of games, including careers, product, or life.

[2:54] What’s an example of gamification?

Board games are a perfect example. Storytelling emerges from playing board games. You go back years later and say, “Remember that time when we played Monopoly…” We can apply storytelling elsewhere and put it into products. There’s no reason why a spreadsheet can’t be shared in a story.

Intricate game mechanics like getting points and unlocking levels help create a story and memorable experiences.

[6:16] Why should product managers care about learning to use gamification?

As we grow in our product management roles, we have to expand our toolboxes. Gamification is another tool to be innovative and enhance user experience, engagement, and retention. You don’t have the goal of doing gamification. You have a different goal—teaching users a new language, building a community of product managers, helping people hit their weight loss goals, etc. Gamification is a set of game mechanics and tools to help you get your user there.

Gamification sometimes get a bad rap. Someone puts up a leaderboard and leaves it there for a year and then says, “Oh, gamification didn’t work.” There’s more to the mechanics of gamification than just putting up a leaderboard or giving points. There has to be a story behind it. There have to be fresh ideas—you never want to play the same level over.

You can also gamify your product development process and make it more fun for your team. I started gamifying our retros. We did a Mario-Kart-themed retro and asked questions like, “What’s the shell that hit you? What’s the banana you slipped on? Why did you want that powerup?” It changed the conversation and energy within your group.

[12:27] Tell us about gamifying your career.

I made a list of skills and achievements, and every time I get a certification or a raise, those are like levels that I’m completing. As product people, we can create our own story. Let’s build levels into it, figure out where we’re getting points, and reward ourselves.

[15:13] Are gamification and goal setting different?

I think of them differently. The experience of writing a book over the last year has included secret levels I didn’t even know about like working with a publisher and creating a PR plan. Those weren’t goals—they were more challenges in the game. You can set goals, but when you gamify your product career, it’s just a more competitive mindset.

Gamification also includes the idea that accomplishments earn rewards.

[17:39] What are some examples of gamifying products?

The mapping tool Waze treats traffic like a medieval dragon that users defeat together.