increasing online engagement with gamification

Increasing Online Engagement Between the Public and the Legal

Profession

Stephanie Kimbro, M.A., J. D.

Fellow, Stanford Law

Center for the Legal Profession

DATA2J Roundtable

University of South Carolina Law School

March, 2015

Overview

• What is effective online engagement?

• Positive engagement with gamification• A look at the science behind the art

• Game Mechanics and motivators

• Examples of gamification, games and simulations for legal services

Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Online Legal Conversations


Where are the lawyers?

Consumers

LegalZoom

Rocket Lawyer

Pearl.com

Other Branded Networks

Press

Bloggers

Engagement Comes First

What is engagement? • Experiential marketing• A sense of an actual relationship with a brand,

rather than a one-off purchase• Emotional involvement or commitment

Methods of initial engagement?• Educational, self-help resources available online

• Web advisors, web calculators• Expert systems, checklists• Document Automation and Assembly• Free legal forms with instructions• Video tutorials• Online tri-age methods to identify the existence of a legal need• Matching legal need of consumer with appropriate service – whether that’s the

law firm, unbundled, self-help, legal aid, etc.


Traditional Online Engagement Methods Failing

• $4.5 billion was invested in social media in 2011, yet 84% of those customers never saw the company’s Facebook update

• Companies spent $3 billion on user generated content and other web-based communities but 70% of consumers never logged into those resources.

• Companies that depend on the Internet to reach consumers have seen a decrease in community adoption, inactivity in loyalty programs, a decrease in their ability to motivate consumers based on their brand, and lower conversation rates


Who are we engaging?

• Why their mindset matters

• What happens when personal pride comes into online decision making?

• What happens when a civil justice situation is embarrassing for a person and that impacts their online decision making around getting help?

• How do feelings of shame or guilt impact decision making?

• Providing experiences that take this mindset into consideration

• Consider research about transference of empowerment and mindset from online to FtF communication (Proteus Effect)

• This research needs to be connected to these statistics so that the legal profession can get a better handle on how to create online engagement methods that will be the most effective.


Why Gamification?• Positive, longer-term ENGAGEMENT

• There is solid science behind the art.

• Gartner Inc. reported 70% of Global 2000 organizations by 2015 would have at least 1 application that was gamified.

• By 2015 25% of workplace processes that have been redesigned will have some form of gamification.

• Market for gamification is expected to grow to over $2.8 billion by 2016.

• Number of employees who grew up as digital natives is increasing. They are used to receiving real-time feedback and online communication. They are also used to more engaging methods of communication, most of which already incorporate game mechanics.

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Science Behind the Art

• Behavioral science

• Neuroscience

• Psychology

• Sociology

• Education/How we learn

• Marketing

• Game Design & Development

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)


Heuristics to Understand Online Engagement

Four Types to help narrow down decision-making online:• Recognition-based heuristics (“the most recognizable

or familiar website is the best” or “the first resource that comes to mind is the best”)

• One-reason heuristic (choosing one lawyer over another because he or she graduated from x law school, but ignoring all other data related to selection including those that might be equally or more informative)

• Trade-off heuristics (all of the factors in a decision are given equal weight and the choice with the most “cues” or pieces of information wins)

• Social heuristics (imitating someone else’s decision making online that has been successful for that person to achieve their goals).


Flow

“the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and

heightened functioning”

•CsikszentmihalyiHis TED talk


http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

Fiero• Primal craving for challenge, to explore, and to

conquer and succeed

• A neuro chemical high

• Dopamine• increases focus and the ability to learn

• feels good = a reward system, a positive mental state

• Designing failure so that it rewards


4 Essential Human CravingsAs defined by Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

Desires:• satisfying work, • hope or experience of achieving something - success, • connecting socially, and • meaningful work that allows us to be a part of something

larger than ourselves.

• When is addressed in business workflow, employees show• increased motivation to engage in the process• do the work at a level that fulfills their maximum potential.


When tapped into people become more engaged and can actually have fun accomplishing work.

Intrinsic MotivationBehaviors as defined by Dr. Amy Jo Kim

Behaviors that may be used for intrinsic motivation:

• self-expression or the desire to show off their creativity and express who they really are,

• competition (both with others and to improve yourself through mastery),

• exploration (this can include anything such as content, tools, people, worlds, etc. as long as they are accumulating access and knowledge to new stimulus), and

• collaboration (which includes socialization and being a part of a team or collective)


4 Methods of FunAs defined by Nicole Lazzaro, Game Designer and President of XEO Designs, Inc.

The four types of fun:

• Hard fun

• Easy fun

• Serious fun

• People fun

• Lazzaro’s research focuses on finding ways to create the emotions involved in fun without having to build an entire storyline as one would have to in a video game.

• There are multiple methods of playing.

• The same emotions and behavior changes that are involved in playing can be experienced by having at least 3 out of the 4 methods of fun and allowing the player to switch between them at any time.


Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology

Four types of gamers:

1) achievers

2) explorers

3) socializers

4) killers

• Most players embody more than one.

• Match the player type with the intrinsic motivation.


Game Mechanics• Achievements, such as badges, certificates, awards, scores

• Social mechanics, such as comments, ratings, review, followers

• Disincentives, such as losing points for behavior that the firm wants to discourage

• Progress bars to indicate progression through a process or task

• Programming rewards such as giving a specifically named reward for a desired action when it is taken within a specific amount of time

• Countdowns

• Lotteries

• Productivity, such as adding elements into a work process that would make the players happy to be playing a game because it means they are being productive at the same time

• Modifiers, such as making it so that accomplishing one task will add points to the next task or multiple the score

• Adding significance to the accomplishment of the task so that the player feels the result is important


Sample Motivators

Good games have more than one:

• Collecting

• Creating and exploring custom worlds or environments

• Exploring or experiencing beauty or art

• Social interacting

• Feeling accomplished after completing something

• Random discoveries

• Organizing or creating order out of a mess

• Role playing


• Becoming the king of the hill• Being involved in a mystery • Relaxation or mindfulness • Learning a new skill • Competing with others • Bettering society • Self-improvement or doing

things for one’s family • Taking care or helping others • Laughing or engaging in the

absurd • Being scared

Games for Social Good

• Free Rice

• Half the Sky

• Data Dealer

• iCivics

• NuLawLabSimulation

• My game dev experiments & Lessons Learned


Online Simulation for Self-Represented Parties


Photo courtesy of Dan Jackson Executive Director – NuLawLabNortheastern University School of Law


Experiments in Legal Games for Access: Illinois Legal Aid Online Game Project

Draft Menu


Estate Quest


Conclusions• Gamification as a strategy for online engagement may be

more cost-effective than developing games related to specific legal services.

• Game mechanics may be imbedded into existing legal services resources to increase engagement and improve learning and outcomes from these resources. Some of the same psychological benefits found in full games can be designed into the tech with appropriate game mechanics.

• Games may be better for preventive/educational purposes.

• Simulations can be useful for self-represented individuals.


Looking forward

• Gamification in legal services

website and mobile applications

• Increase in social media interaction tied with gamification strategies

• Preventive legal games

• Gamification for self-represented to assist with completion of legal forms, process

• Simulations for self-represented litigants to transfer to real-world experience


Other Resources• Increasing Online Engagement between the Public and the Legal Profession

with Gamification: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2586150

• Gamification in Law Firms draft working paper on SSRN with bibliography: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2578110

• 2014 LSC Report of the Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice mentions games and gamification

• “Accessing Justice in the Contemporary USA: Findings from the Community Needs and Services Study” by Rebecca Sandefur, American Bar Foundation; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Sociology; University of Illinois College of Law, August 8, 2014 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2478040

• My books

• Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online, ABA/LPD (2010, 2nd edition 2015)

• Limited Scope Legal Services: Unbundling and the Self-Help Client, ABA/LPD (2012)

• Consumer Law Revolution: Lawyer’s Guide to the Online Legal Marketplace, ABA/LPD, (2013)

• Online Legal Services for the Client-Centric Law Firm, Managing Partner, Ark Group Publishing, 2013


http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2586150


http://www.lsc.gov/sites/lsc.gov/files/LSC_Tech Summit Report_2013.pdf
