Fitocracy : The Fitness Nation!

Official Logo

Fitocracy is a new and fast growing social network for anybody interested in staying fit. The site was created by Richard Talens and Brian Wang, and was launched in February 2011. Fitocracy is valued at 4 million USD.

Fitocracy has an extremely vibrant interface with positive feedback instilled in every action loop. The system is heavily gamified where every workout gets you points and achievements get you badges. The points system is a simple implementation of experience points. The network is extremely social with a lot of motivation and positive interactions. It is growing pretty quickly as it has over a million users who form a diverse userbase all the way from geeks to gym trainers.

One of the positive impacts of gamification is that it causes behavior change. A simple extrinsic motivational system of points and badges can make the even the most mundane or the most difficult activities seem possible and engaging, that too, on a regular basis. In the case of exercise, depending on the individual, users have many different types of motivation for doing it.  Some may be motivated by family, some by the possible health benefits, others by targets to achieve.

Points Tracker

It varies across the entire motivational spectrum. However, where Fitocracy succeeds is that it tries to capture and stimulate each of the different types of motivations through their system. By doing this, they allow users to themselves traverse through the motivational spectrum to stronger forms of motivation, or to simply increase the intensity of their current mechanisms. This over time, leads to the establishment of patterns and behaviors such as stepping out early or using the stairs in your office (points!). Fitocracy is one of the best uses of gamification that there is and it is doing so in an effective manner.

The points is finely grained and dynamic. Finely grained, as it (tries to) cover the entire spectrum of exercise types. By allowing for diverse activities, all the way from Yoga to canoeing, it allows users of diverse interests to log in their activities. It even gives users the option to explore and try out different exercises in the process. Giving users meaningful choices, is an important part of a gamified system. Moreover, there is the feature to create and save routines as per your needs which gives the much necessary control that users require. Autonomy is another basic aspect of gamification and Fitocracy provides it pretty nicely.

The Neighborhood Fitocracy Bot

Coming to the interface, it just reeks of fun. This is extremely infectious as most users also respond in a similar fashion! All the animations used, especially the Fitocracy Bot, are designed to be simple and happy.

The icons that are used all over the site are colorful, clear and seem exciting. The system feedback is not drab or like what you would expect from an application. Each message is motivating and forward-thinking. The UI buttons have not been left behind as well. Take a look at the Ok button.

Yes. You are.

Yes. Thats how cool the system is.

I have been using it for a week and I am pretty happy to say, that I have been manipulated, to get up and go out for a run every day! This is one gamified application, getting addicted to which, has lots of health benefits (unless you actually are into exercise).

Gamification @ Stack Exchange

Now, that we know about Stack Exchange and Area 51, lets skip to the main part. The Gamification Site Proposal finally went into the commitment phase. It has been moving along slowly, but if speed is any indicator, then slow is better than fast.

The topic of the proposal is gamification. Gamification is a buzzword which means the use of game elements in non-game engagement contexts. The term, however inaccurate and incomplete, will stick, as most of the work being done, and there is a lot being done, on the field already references and uses the name. Gamification has spread like wildfire over the past few years and will continue on an upward trend till 2016 after which things are expected to slow down. There are a huge number of designers who develop gamified applications and a significant number of people who are treading into it for the first time. The gamification course on Coursera has had a total of 19000 individuals complete it with greater than 70% marks. Add to that the number of professionals already working on gamified systems, and you get a significant number of internet using gamifiers.

What is missing from here, is a single collaborative knowledge sharing resource where developers may collaborate with researchers and work on their problems. A place where professionals may interact and discuss the principals of the field. What is missing is one Q&A site that deals with all of the issues of these diverse user groups. Herein comes gamification.stackexchange.com.

The creator of the proposal is himself a professional of the field, Ryan Elkins. This shows that there is a space to be filled. Also, the 10k Courserians that complete the course everywhere have nowhere to go and discuss once the course gets over (the course forums are cleared every session). Gamification.SE can be a home to many of them as well.

All in all, the user-base is real and vast, and there is no major competition nearby. Excellent conditions for the site to come out strong.

Coming to the scope, the site would cover the psychology that is involved in gamification, along with design and user experience. All of these is technically on-topic on other sites, but at less than 4-5 questions on gamification per month, it is safe to say, that none of the sites would have a problem.

So, what are you waiting for? Register your support!

8 Weeks of Gamification

Coursera, the biggest MOOC provider on the internet, has a course on gamification.

You get this for completing the course.

The professor teaching the course is Kevin Werbach of Duke University  The course just completed its second run this May. This course is rather rigorous compared to some of the other courses on Coursera. It consisted of three written peer reviewed assignments, four quizzes and one exam. It had a lot of guest lectures from professionals in the field of gamification like Amy Jo Kim, Bing Gordon, Daniel Debow and Susan Hunt Stevens. Overall, it was an excellent course that made you think and work. The lectures by themselves are not too heavy or theoretical but are loaded with examples and analogies that make it easy to understand and apply the concepts.

Kevin Werbach. Rather excited.

I started the course in the beginning of April, same time as the official start. The first two units were pretty basic and provided an overview of the concepts. I started to complete the quizzes and assignments within the deadlines. The first quiz was an easy 5 mark affair which, as Professor Werbach later mentioned, was intended to be part of the onboarding process. This was in the first week itself. It was easy and I think most people would have gotten the full 5 marks. In the second week, things got a little harder as we dived into some specifics of gamification. Next, came the second quiz and the first written assignment, peer reviewed. This is where the fun began. The second quiz was slightly tougher and rather interesting. However, the written assignment, even though short, tripped up quite a few people. I am not sure whether it was because of the difficulty or misinterpretations of the question, but overall, a lot of people messed up.

In the third week, we delved into some basic psychology. This was very interesting as we explored the reasons why gamified systems work, and what the focus should be. Now, came the third quiz and the second written assignment. These both were significantly tougher and a sign of things to come. The quiz was rather conceptual and required a bit of analysis and application beyond simply what was discussed in the videos. The assignment was also significantly longer and tougher as it dealt with designing an entire gamified system and justifying the different elements by correlating them with motivational theory. Now, if you were attentively watching the videos, then this assignment could easily be aced. However, because of the peer assessment process, it was important to write a good assignment but not an exceptional or unconventional one. Many people who went with unconventional approaches to attempting the assignment ended up with really bad marks. It wasn't that their assignments were not good, but simply that, one, a large part of the students  had English as their second or third language, and two, nobody really has the time to sit and decipher your assignment. Hence, I would strongly advise to write a simple conventional assignment using bullets, headings and clear simple English.

Now, we came to the second part of the course. Week 4 dealt with the technical and design aspects. The primary focus was on the Gamification Design Framework based on the Gamification Design Document is made. This week, however, was somewhat light with just one quiz to submit. Again, moderately difficult but easy to score in with a bit of smartness. What came in the beginning of Week 5 was the real challenge. A mammoth 1500 word written assignment. I wont give the details to spoil it for you, but trust me, this was tough. This one was long, required a lot of work and research. The time given for this assignment was 2 weeks, and quite rightly so. I did it in over the last three days and got full marks, but I wouldn't advise you to do it like this. My assignment was not very good, irrespective of the marks I got. I would have done better had I started it on time. Hence, set out sufficient time for the assignment and work on it throughout the week. The Week 5 units dealt with specific application areas of gamification such as enterprises and designing for social impact. Week 6 had the last units which dealt with advanced topics. 

Finally, most of the coursework was done, with just the final exam left to conquer. This was in the seventh week of the course schedule. As per Professor Werbach, the final exam was not hard, but according to everybody else, it was. It focused more on the second half of the course, but had some questions from the first half as well. If you had concentrated in the first half, then those questions weren't a problem. The real tough ones were the ones' based on the last few units. Most of it was application based, and rather technical when it came to the different concepts of gamification. You needed to know exactly what was what, else you could mess up significantly. The marks on this varied over the entire spectrum from what I could gather in the discussion forums.

With this, the course came to an end and Professor Werbach signed off with a course stats video. This course performed similar to most MOOCs with a slightly higher retention rate. In this run of the course, a total 8000 people completed the course with marks greater than 70. I was one of them with 96.6%.

In summary, some of the things you should do throughout the course :

• Watch the conceptual videos carefully. The ones discussing applications can be taken somewhat lightly as it is based on how much you understand the theory.
• Either have a good memory, or watch the course videos multiple times. You could also just make notes along the way, and make tings simple, but whats life without procrastination-induced challenges? 
• Make sure to get good marks in the quizzes as the assignments' scores are dependent on the set of peers assigned to review your paper.
• Be sure to attempt the final exam. You cannot (practically) earn the certificate without giving the final exam.

So, if you have been reading till here, I am guessing you are signed up for the course. Best of Luck!

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Resources :

• Course Certificate
• Assignment 1
• Assignment 2
• Assignment 3

_{All resources for reference only. Violations of the Honor Code are taken very seriously.}

The Stack Exchange Ideology

One of the first things that most people relate Stack Exchange to are forums. So, lets get this out of the way first.

Stack Exchange is not a forum. 

It is not intended for discussions in the conventional sense. The format strictly discourages it and moderators have more than enough tools to control unnnecessary off-topic chit-chat. Not that they are dictators or the like.

Now, lets focus on what Stack Exchange actually is.

Euler Diagram. Not Venn.

This was posted by Jeff Atwood on Stack Overflow: None of Us is as Dumb as All of Us. It was intended to describe what Stack Overflow is, but is equally valid for all of Stack Exchange (100+ sites and counting).

Stack Exchange (SE) forms the tiny subset of this diagram that includes Wiki, Blog, Reddit and Forum.

• Wiki signifies community action and contribution.
• Blog signifies individual postings and contribution.
• Reddit highlights the sharing and filtering of good content.
• Forum signifies a part of the interaction that the site provides.

So, SE is much more than just a tech forum. SE provides an excellent format and has some strict policies in place, some of the best picks of which are :

• Its objective Q&A
  SE does not accept discussion oriented or opinion oriented questions. These are kept away from every SE site like the plague. The format is specially tailored for questions that ask about getting from point A to point B, and answers describing the route. Any thing extra gets taken down quickly unless its relevant (take a cab, rather than the bus).
  
  
• Every question is created equal.
  Each question goes straight on the main page, and there is no differentiation based on who asked, or what their standing in the community is. This does not happen on a lot of forums as popular users command more views than newbies.
  
  
• Every answer is (almost) equal till proven otherwise.
  Every answer needs a certain level of technical skill on the part of the answerer otherwise they get downvoted and pushed down. Moreover, even the popular/famous users need to write as good or even better a 1000th answer than they did their 1st, otherwise they wont get votes. Unless you are Jon Skeet. With high reputation, come higher standards. Compare that to Quora or any technical Q&A site, where the most popular answerers can post weak answers and still get a deluge of upvotes.
  
  
• Closing/Redirecting questions to already answered questions
  Every Web 1.0 forum does not have this feature. If great content is once created, you need to bookmark it to be able to find it in the future. If somebody else asks the same thing, you need to be around to guide them to it. Else, you have another post asking something answered 10 times before, and being answered, yet again.
  On SE, there is an extremely strict policy on closing questions. If there is a previously existing question that answers the same, then the new question is closed (no new answers can be posted to the new question) and redirected to the old question. This minimizes redundancy of content and makes good content widely available.
  
  
• Voting. Both Up and Down.
  This ensures that good content stays up on the main pages and bad content disappears. This motivates users to work and put up good content. Also, this works on both questions and answers.
  
  
• SE is not a social network. It doesnt intend to be.
  There are no options to follow a user or private message expert users. You get known, if at all, by your contributions to the site, and each contribution is evaluated by the same standards. This greatly reduces the chatter on the side and reduces unproductive content generation. Moreover, this means that users cannot have a group of followers who go about upvoting their posts. (Stalkers are present, but form a minuscule part of the community). Plus, there are regular checks to pick up and reverse serial voting patterns (serial voting refers to when a user upvotes a large number of posts belonging to the same user).
  
  
• A very good gamified system
  This is usually not mentioned whenever we talk about SE, because users are so used to the system that they do not regard any part of it as something that is contrived or added. Most of the game elements work very well in excellent harmony. The system gets tweaked from time to time to keep with current community trends. You can interact directly with SE developers and community managers regarding any platform issues or suggestions, irrespective of you being an expert or a newbie. 

This should give a general idea of what Stack Exchange is all about and why it is such a huge success.

Originally posted on Quora.