Last week I read a wonderful interview Fast Company did with Michael Fergusson, founder of a company called Ayogo that develops games to help people modify their behavior. While the entire interview is worth a read, below are a few gems I feel speak to our philosophy behind Earndit:
- “We’re not trying to do huge things like make smokers into non-smokers, or basketball fans into soccer fans. We’re trying to motivate small actions by giving rewards.”
- “Instead of making the primary goal getting one person to do a thousand healthy things, we focus instead on getting a thousand people to do one healthy thing. To do this, we focus on two things:
- instant gratification rewards for healthy activity, in contrast to the usual approach of making long-term health your reward for doing healthy things
- making those instant gratification rewards something that you can use”
- “Fun is functional. One of the most powerful evolutionary traits is play—there’s no mystery to me why the more sophisticated the intelligence of the animal, the more likely we are to see play as a key behavior.”