engage research

points of view

MORE THAN A GAME

Have you ever missed your train stop because you were absorbed in your crossword
or magazine quiz? Whiled away a rainy afternoon with cards or a board game?
Played the slot machine on a seaside pier? Or do you own one of the 22 million
games consoles in use in the UK?

Before we started thinking about making surveys more like games, we knew about
the negative effect that bored respondents can have on the information you get
from surveys. We've developed effective techniques for overcoming this through
better design, language and imagery, using more creative questioning techniques
and applying learning from behavioural science.

Over the course of the experiments we undertook it became clear that the more
the respondent enjoyed the experience, the more feedback we received. But when
we started to observe the correlation between the amount of fun respondents had
completing a survey and the quality - not to mention quantity - of feedback they
gave us, we began to look to games for further inspiration.

Our year-long study conducted involved more than thirty research experiments
undertaken with more than 5,000 participants on behalf of six clients: Sony Music,
Allianz Insurance, AMS Media Group, Heinz, Kimberly-Clark and Mintel Research.
The findings should change the way online research is conducted.

We began by exploring how questions could be redesigned to be more fun and

game-like in nature and what impact this would have. We experimented with the
wording of questions, to humanise them, make them more engaging and link them
to potential real-world emotional experiences. For example, instead of asking
somebody to tell us what clothing they liked to wear, we asked them what cloth-
ing they would wear for a first date. Instead of telling us where they liked to go on
holiday, we invited them to imagine that they had to publish a magazine offering
holiday recommendations, and instead of asking respondents how much they liked
a brand we asked them how happy they would be to wear its name on their T-shirt.
The results were instructive: we got two or even three times as much feedback to
the more engaging
questions and par-
ticipants consistent-
ly took more time
providing their
answers.
 Rules can transform a boring task into a game. How does a ten-mile hike in the rain
carrying a 15kg rucksack sound? But what about a game of golf? We explored how
rules that we all know from playing games could be adapted to turn questions into
puzzles. A question such as "Describe yourself" yielded on average 2.4 descriptive
words, with effectively 85% of respondents answering. When that question was
changed to present the challenge "Describe yourself in exactly seven words" the
descriptors increased to an average of 4.5 and the response rate rose to 98%.

We also spent some time looking at the way many video or online games are struc-
tured to provide the player with tasks which when put together are turned into a
series of quests. Our study found that by adding a motive to answer a question we
could improve the response rates. For example, we asked respondents how much
they liked each of a list of music acts. Typically, this yielded evaluations of 83
artists. Not bad. However, when we asked them to imagine that they owned their
own radio station and to decide which of the artists they would put on their sta-
tion's playlist, respondents were willing to spend longer deliberating their answers
and the average number of artists evaluated rose to 148.

Most game playing, of course, taps into our competitive spirit, so we explored ways
in which we could add a more competitive framework to questions. When we asked
respondents to make a list of their favourite foods, we received an average of six
items in response. When we told them they had two minutes to make a list of their
favourite foods, not only were respondents conditioned to spend the aribtary two
minutes that we had allocated, but also it produced an average of 35 items in reply.
That can make a major difference to the quality and insight a brand would receive
from its online research.

engage research
points of view
 Rewards also have a major role to play. Most games have mechanisms for reward-
ing players, and we explored how we could incorporate these into surveys. A typi-
cal question such as "What emotions do you think people associate with?" pro-
duced an average response time of eight seconds and a 50% reported enjoyment
rate. When we told respondents they would win a point for every answer they
guessed right, time spent rose to 12 seconds and 90% said they enjoyed the expe-
rience.

But it's not just about language and question wording - design and visual stimuli are
also important. We experimented with a range of fun selection processes. For
example on the playlist question, respondents could place a 'Banned' sticker over
the artist's name. When we gave respondents a packet of crisps and a series of
labels to describe them, ranging from "well designed" and "good colours" to "uno-
riginal", we produced 15% more activity (in clicks) and 50% more fun reported by
respondents. The game concept became even more popular when we gave instant
feedback, for example by revealing their suggestions as correct on screen - 80% of
respondents said they enjoyed this approach.

That was the theory established - the next challenge was

to put it into practice. We have worked with clients from
different industries to see how we could apply these
techniques to the types of research they typically con-
duct. Experiments included media diaries, usage and
attitude studies and co-creation-style questions, using a
range of game approaches to great effect. Across the
board we have seen consistently high completion rates
and enjoyment scores, respondents willingly spending
significantly more time answering, and a greater quanti-
ty and quality of response to our gamified questions. The
research showed that almost everyone will respond to
game mechanics, and with the right sort of mechanics for
your audience and research needs these game-inspired
techniques really deliver

engage research 66 Alwyne Road, London SW19 7AE

Email: engage@engage-research.com
points of view Telephone +44 (0)20 8819 5532