Rob Alvarez
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Why a Gamification Expert HATES Duolingo’s Strategy | Episode 444

 

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Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

Episode Summary

Tetiana Kobzar, product designer with 18 years of experience and creator of the Comportance Framework, joins Rob to share how behavioral design turns clinical and educational software into products people actually want to use. She walks through the seven steps of Comportance (goal, baseline, emotion, hypothesis, minimum validation, cadence, and iteration) and shows how it shaped a gamified speech therapy app for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and a mini-game replacement for 27 cognitive assessment tests. The conversation covers why founders overload products with functionality, why Duolingo’s Black Hat motivation works for some users and burns out others, and how Octalysis fits inside a wider behavioral design practice. Listeners leave with a practical structure for designing engagement and a sharper read on when game-based beats gamified.

About the Host

Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Key Takeaways

  • The Comportance Framework runs seven steps in order: define the goal, set the baseline metrics, design the emotion (motivation and positioning), state one hypothesis, build the minimum validation, set the measurement cadence, and iterate. Most founders skip the goal and emotion steps and jump straight to functionality.
  • Tetiana’s team at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital replaced weekly-only speech therapy with a gamified app where clinicians set tasks as mini games, letting kids practice pronunciation between sessions while the therapist tracks progress.
  • A separate Tetiana project replaced 27 pen-and-paper cognitive assessment tests with mini games on tablets, capturing extra signal (timestamps, finger tremor, voice recordings) that paper tests cannot measure.
  • Most products fail not because users are irrational but because founders treat them as rational agents. Behavioral biases and cognitive overload kill engagement faster than missing features.
  • The Pareto trap in client work: founders spend 80% of their attention on the 20% of clients who complain, while the 80% of healthy clients who quietly bring most of the revenue get under-served. Reverse the ratio to protect recurring revenue.
  • Duolingo’s streak mechanic is heavy Black Hat motivation. It drives high retention but creates rage-quit risk: a user who loses a 4,000-day streak rarely returns. The near-miss has to threaten loss without delivering it.
  • Game-based design (where the experience itself feels like a game) opens more creative options than gamification (points, badges, leaderboards bolted onto a non-game product), but both belong inside a wider behavioral design practice.

Topics Covered

  • 0:00 — Why Duolingo’s Black Hat motivation backfires
  • 0:24 — Rob’s intro and the Core Drives in the Wild guide
  • 2:47 — Daily life after the acquisition
  • 4:14 — Favorite fail: design for the end game
  • 8:16 — Alder Hey speech therapy app and 27 cognitive tests as games
  • 11:26 — Game-based versus gamified, and where the line blurs
  • 15:44 — Where Octalysis fits inside the Comportance Framework
  • 17:11 — The seven steps of Comportance, walked end to end
  • 23:50 — Cognitive overload and treating users as humans
  • 27:24 — Duolingo streaks, near-miss design, and rage-quit risk
  • 31:42 — Book picks: Cialdini, Yu-kai Chou, Don Norman
  • 33:29 — Civilization, board games with the kids, final advice

Get the free Core Drives in the Wild guide, behavioral design applied to real products: professorgame.com/WildCD

About Tetiana Kobzar

Tetiana Kobzar is a product strategist and behavioral designer with 18 years of experience building software for healthcare, wellness, and education. She is the creator of the Comportance Framework, a seven-step methodology that brings behavioral science structure to product design. Her recent work includes a gamified speech therapy app for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and a tablet-based replacement for 27 cognitive assessment tests, and she shares behavioral design ideas through her #BehaviouralDesignThursday LinkedIn series and industry talks.

Find the Guest Online

Mentioned in This Episode

  • Proposed guest: someone from Duolingo
  • Recommended book: Actionable Gamification by Yu-kai Chou
  • Recommended book: Influence by Robert B. Cialdini
  • Recommended book: The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
  • Favorite game: Civilization series
  • Duolingo Is Not A Free Language Learning App, It Is… (The Octalysis Group)
  • Alder Hey Children’s Hospital speech therapy app (Tetiana’s project)
  • Comportance Framework (Tetiana’s seven-step methodology)
  • Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou

Free Resources and Get in Touch

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Why Duolingo’s Black Hat motivation can burn users out

Tetiana Kobzar (00:00)
Duolingo because they are considered to be like a lot of gamification at the moment. But to be honest, not very big fan because I think that they are using a lot of Black Hat motivation and that it doesn’t work for me personally. So I got like, too much pressure on me. Stop it. I don’t want to.

Rob (00:24)
Hey, Engagers and welcome to Professor Game. As you know, we are the number one gamification podcast and we explore how gamification, games and game thinking help us boost engagement to multiply retention and build stronger products. And I’m Rob, I’m the founder, I’m the coach at Professor Game and I’m also the head of engagement strategy Europe at the Octalysis Group, which is a leading gamification consultancy and professor of gamification, game-based strategies and other solutions at top business schools around the world, including IE Business School, EFMD and EBS University. Before we dive into today’s super interesting conversation with Tetiana, if you’re missing anything around struggle or any struggles with retention, churn, engagement in your product, in your business, and want to turn that around, please look at our guide, The Core Drives in the Wild, to see how we successfully use motivation in business situations. And from the experience of many of our past guests, as you know, we have plenty by this date. All you have to do is click on the link in the description and you’ll get the email sequence. So Tetiana, we always like to know if our guests are ready, if they’re prepared for the interview. So we need to know Tetiana, are you prepared to engage? We have Tetiana Kobzar, is that a good pronunciation? Is that decent? She has 18 years of experience building software products that people actually want to use. And she applies gamification and behavioral science to design human centered solutions for healthcare, wellness, and education, working with everyone from early stage startups to hospital innovation teams. And she’s the creator of what she calls a Comportance Framework, which is a seven step methodology that brings structure and behavioral science principles to product design process, giving teams clarity, alignment, and full ownership. And she shares her ideas through her Behavioral Design Thursday on LinkedIn series and speaks at industry events on the practical applications of behavioral design in the modern world. Tetiana, is there anything that we’re missing that we should know before we get started?

Tetiana Kobzar (02:22)
No, thank you. Thank you for having me and for such a nice introduction. Yeah, that’s me. Absolutely. And I’m also a big fan of Octalysis approach and Yu-kai Chou is like my idol. So yeah, that’s very, very nice that we share the same vision and approach to the motivation and engagement.

Daily life after the acquisition

Rob (02:47)
Amazing, amazing. So Tetiana, what does a regular day with you look like? What are you doing in these days? What gets you fired up? What are the kinds of activities you’re performing these days?

Tetiana Kobzar (02:57)
Yeah, you know, now I’m in a quite interesting stage of my life because I used to be a founder of a company that got acquired recently. So that’s why now I’m in a little bit like a transition period.

Rob (03:15)
Congratulations, of course, I’m sure in order.

Tetiana Kobzar (03:18)
Thank you, thank you. Yeah. And also like, you know, my daily life consists of working with my clients and with my team. Also, like I do a lot of self-education, not, you know, I spend less time on self-education than I want because it’s always like, you yeah, I…

Rob (03:38)
I’m sure we all do.

Tetiana Kobzar (03:41)
I buy the books, I buy the courses and everything and probably spend one hour maximum per day, but I want to spend eight. but I think that my day is more or less what you can imagine from the consultant and tech founder because I also work on my own little startup in parallel. So a lot of things to do, a lot of different hats to wear.

Favorite fail: design for the end game

Rob (04:14)
That sounds super interesting Tetiana, thank you very much for sharing that. And the next thing that we’d like to do with our guests is always go all in, right? We talk about your favorite fail or first attempt in learning and having being acquired from a startup and having all of these things that you’ve been doing, I’m sure that you have plenty of these moments. So can you share one of those with us, especially if it has to do with behavioral design and all of these things, we would be very, very interested to be there, live that moment with you and potentially take out some of those lessons that brought you here.

Tetiana Kobzar (04:36)
I think the biggest like, know, realizations of a thing that I did probably not very right. They are not related that much to the behavioral design or gamification, but more about the business administration and those types of things. But in general, what I would like recommend everybody who is, it doesn’t matter if you want to, if you plan to sell your business or you just want to build it forever, or you are building your product is to focus on the recurrent revenue. That is something that I realized. actually, to do the product design, to give this value every month to the users instead of like, you know, give them one piece of useful content or useful functionality and then lose them. So that’s like, you know, for the end game and for, so design for the end game and further stages. To give value all the time because that relates to anything, to work with the client, to work with users, do the product or service. Because that is something that your business is your recurring revenue and all the rest is not. So some ad hoc people who come and go, clients who come and go, they actually could bring you some additional money, but they do not add value to your business. So that is something that I learned through the failure, let’s say.

Rob (06:04)
Is there any, any moment when you realized that you were not designing for the end game, you, as you very well said, which was like, you know, now I better start thinking about this in a different way, especially, again, you mentioned end game and it’s literally the same, same structure of thinking. You’re not just thinking about discovery. So how do people find out about you in marketing? You’re thinking about how to retain them through across the whole journey. Was there any particular moments when you were in your business that, that this happened that you can share?

Tetiana Kobzar (06:33)
Yeah, actually, you know, because from my business that got acquired is more, it’s not a product, it’s more like a service business. So my users are my clients as well. And that is like, you know, that is a usual situation when you are putting so much effort at the beginning of the engagement, you are like, you know, care very much about your clients and the products that you are building for them. But then, you know, when the relationship goes on, everybody is having this status quo. I would say that it’s like this Pareto principle that you are spending 80 % of your time on the clients who bring you 20 % of value. Because usually the good clients, are not causing you any problems. They are not complaining. They are just working and you’re working together and that’s it. But you know, the clients who you communicate regularly, who has some problems, who have like, you know, always complaining or something, you know, you’re, and eventually they will, if they start to do it, they probably not exact match with you, but you spend like so much effort and so much time on those type of clients instead of better investing it into building the relationship with the existing ones. So that’s something that I realized at some moment and I changed the approach and started to give more of my time and attention to improve our relationship and improve the products of our clients.

Alder Hey speech therapy app and 27 cognitive tests as games

Rob (08:16)
Sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing that, Tetiana. And actually, how about we turn that around and look for a proud moment? One of those things that actually did work well. And hopefully this time we will tie it directly to some of that gamification that I’m sure you’ve done plenty of.

Tetiana Kobzar (08:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because gamification is definitely my passion and my favorite products that I participated in are gamified either like game-based solutions or gamified ones. Frankly speaking, I like game-based more because it requires more, there are more creativity and more, you know, more ways to make the experience truly engaging because usually gamification is like, know, when you are just adding some elements to the non-gamified product. It’s rather, know, it’s often it’s similar, you know, and a lot of owners and a lot of founder, they prefer very, let’s say, common approaches, like, you know, the points, badges, leaderboards and like streaks and other things. And yeah, that’s why game-based learning, game-based products are my favorite. So one of my favorite ones is that we made for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. That’s a gamified application that helps children with their speech therapy. So the kids, instead of just only seeing doctor once per week and that’s it, they have the app that helps them to practice between those speech therapy sessions and the clinician set up their goal for this week, they set up their tasks and tasks are made in like form of some mini games that they need to play and on their way of playing, they are pronouncing some sounds and like practicing, practicing their assignments. So that’s like one that I really, really enjoyed and that’s one of the recent ones. Another example that I also like love and I… still, so that way I used to, I worked on it like about like four years ago, but it’s still like also one of my favorites. Because it’s like, it’s has been on the market for a long time. I see that a lot of users and a lot of institutions use it as well. We replaced 27 pen and paper tests that like people with some cognitive impairments or the state of cognitive function that needs to be checked regularly. They used to do it in the doctor’s office and they’re bored and they are not motivated to use it. Instead, we replace it with mini games that they are motivated to play, they are engaged, they want to do it. The tablet actually measures a lot of additional data as well, like all the timestamps, how the finger is trembling or not. Also, like recording the voice and other things. That’s like two of my most favorite examples.

Game-based versus gamified, and where the line blurs

Rob (11:26)
So you mentioned, never, well never, at least not in public, I don’t usually engage on the discussions where people are like, that looks a little bit more, that’s more game-based learning. No, this is serious games. This is applied games. This is gamification. Usually I tend to go for, you know, using gamification as a sort of umbrella term where you can be creating a full-blown game, as you were suggesting. Or it’s something that has, is more on the, we can call it more corporate side in a way where you don’t feel like you’re in a game, but you’re getting, know, LinkedIn using the progress bar when you’re creating your, your, your, your profile is a very good example of that. It’s gamified, right? So you’re using a strategy that you learned from games. It’s using the underlying principles, Core Drive 2, Development and Accomplishment. All of that is there, but it doesn’t feel like you’re in a game all the way to something that could either literally be a game or feel like a game. But I was curious because then you were saying these two applications and that’s the, some of the typical stuff that I could be working on nowadays as a consultant. So where do you draw that line for in your experience for, you know, serious games or however we’re going to call them and something that is more in the terms of gamification.

Tetiana Kobzar (12:34)
Actually, I do not draw this line because, you know, for me, I’m very much with you about that. you know, having, I have a bit wider term, it’s like behavioral design that basically, know, following the Octalysis is like gamification, but it’s describes a lot of principles that are covered in behavioral design as well, because that’s about motivation, about what triggers users, what like makes them like or dislike or act or not act and there are like, know, different applications. Anti-Core Drives. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And all those like, you know, Black Hat, White Hat, motivation techniques.

Rob (13:14)
There’s a lot of videos by the way around, and I think they’re still in the open from Yu-kai analyzing different behavioral science things through the lens of Octalysis framework. Like from Maslow to Deci and Ryan with intrinsic motivation, like all of that. He’s done many of the analysis through, like you see it through the Octalysis and you can do, like, this works this way and flow as well and all of that through those frameworks. So yeah, absolutely there. We always like to talk about gamification and behavioral design for sure.

Tetiana Kobzar (13:43)
Yeah. So I’m just, yeah. So when I’m saying like gamification versus game-based learning or game-based solution, that’s more of the distinction that my clients usually have. know, so when somebody comes to you and say, help me with the gamification and you are like, I am starting to tell them about it. So the gamification actually is much wider term that…

Rob (14:07)
Yeah, I’ve heard that too many times.

Tetiana Kobzar (14:10)
Yeah, exactly. So they like, know, so you’re just, that’s about like motivating users. It’s about like making them love, making them return through the like other things. And people say, yeah, yeah, okay. But we want something more like Duolingo, you know, or something like that. You know, so then, and then you know, that’s why, know, it is, and I’m sure that you, you have seen this pattern as well, you know, through your consultancy that sometimes people, that’s like a good case, creative one, when people come to you and say, okay, so I want to bring like to make my app more engaging or I want my users to return more or do some particular actions that they are not doing, but I want them to do, or I want to change their behavior like, know, and keep this and make it consistent. So when the task is more, let’s say, when the people come to you with the problem and you together find the solution, so then you have more tools to integrate, but sometimes people come you with the idea what they want to have and they just want your help with shaping it. So like, you know, they already did some research, they want to do more like, you know, the traditional, traditional gamification that everybody understands how it works and they want to try and they just need like a little tweaks or something. So that’s not a big, let’s say strategic task, but more like, you know, a local tactical one. that’s, why I made this distinction, but I’m absolutely with you that it’s a wider term that covers more.

Where Octalysis fits inside the Comportance Framework

Rob (15:44)
Tetiana, when you’re facing one of these projects, whether big or small, I’m guessing that you run through some kind of thought process or strategy or something, you know, what we call the five-step process in Octalysis Design. I don’t know if you use that, something different, like how do you approach these problems and especially, of course, getting to the solutions that you create?

Tetiana Kobzar (16:03)
I use a lot my own framework that named Comportance to make a structured approach to validate the request and make it more a strategic session, let’s say, and integrating. So when it comes to the part of emotion, I usually refer to Octalysis. All my clients heard about Octalysis and I share your Octalysis Group resources to display or explain some of the principles. this is framework. It combines different, let’s say, best practices for each step and like, know, emotion and motivation. I always refer the Octalysis and like, usually we start with the analysis of the analytics of the current solution. What do they have? What they don’t have? What they want to change?

The seven steps of Comportance, walked end to end

Rob (17:11)
Amazing. And you give us a quick brush through your seven steps, like the one that you measure or however it is that you approach this.

Tetiana Kobzar (17:18)
Yeah, sure, with pleasure. So, Comportance, it was like, I invented it based on my experience working with different founders, with different startups, with different products. And I see that sometimes people focus on one part of the process and not thinking too much about other ones. like, know, when people apply in Agile, they’re usually more about the iteration and like, you know, the continuous delivery, but they are not thinking too much about, I don’t know, why they are doing this and what they are trying to achieve at the very end. they are too iterative. What I see also in a lot of cases, the behavioral components or the gamification motivation component is very often missed. people…

Rob (18:04)
Not existing most of the time. Function is there, they can do it, so they will do it.

Tetiana Kobzar (18:07)
God. Yeah, exactly. And that’s the question that a lot of founders, they are stopping and think, okay, how do we want our users to feel when they’re using our app? We don’t know, they want to be able to solve their problem, but you can do it in a very different way. So yeah, so we started like in the Comportance, we start with the like seven questions. So we started with the goal. So that’s also a question that not always people know the answer to say what we are trying to achieve. So what it’s usually either what problem we are trying to solve or what we want to improve, what situation we want to improve.

Rob (18:51)
that oftentimes they think they have the answer very clear and then they start explaining it and they have no idea what they’ve…

Tetiana Kobzar (18:57)
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And without goal, you know, you can move to very different directions. So that’s like a very strategic part. Then it’s a question of how it looks like. So measurable result that we are trying to achieve. So what moment of time, how do we know if we reached the goal or not? And it should be like, you know, possible to say at any particular moment of time. So that’s why I try to bring it to some measurable, like, you know, basically smart. goal set up. it’s like, you know, it should be achievable. It should be measurable. should be all everything. that you can…

Rob (19:33)
Relevant and timely. Yes.

Tetiana Kobzar (19:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you’re having this goal and then the next question is, what is the baseline? So what are your current metrics? And that’s surprising enough. Another point that very often people do not have answer to, that’s because they are not measuring enough of data. And that’s like, know, thing that I am… I’m 100 % like, you know, pushing all the time that we need to measure as much data as possible. so our decisions should be as data driven as possible. So log all the user activities, analyze it regularly. Even if probably at the moment you are not going to analyze it, collect it anyway, because you will be at the moment when you want to analyze it and you want to know what is happening and to where, because that’s always when it comes to engagement, when it comes to like user behavior, is always, it’s not like one or zero, they are doing it or not, you know, because catching the exact moment when they are like drop off or when they struggle, when they spend more time that like we want them to do. probably, you know, and tweaking each of those, like the more, like, you know, the smaller you can do this, like measurement and the point of identifying the problem, the better. So that’s… For the data, we need to measure, need to understand what we want to achieve and what is our current level, where are we now? And then it comes to the emotion. So how we want users to feel when they’re using our app. What emotional and motivational drives we want to trigger to get them to do the actions that we want. What is, like, and it affects a lot from like, you know, when we understand the positioning of like how we and our product is going to be received by users. So who we are, you know, in this, let’s say role play, are we like a strict coach or are we like a friend who are giving advice or are we an expert who is sharing the knowledge or we are the teacher. Lots, a lot of possible like, you know, this positioning and it’s applied to all the language we use, all the like… Even the colors, the tone and all other things. So that’s very important. That’s where Octalysis and more the gamification techniques come in place. The next part is let’s make a hypothesis. usually that depends on the process where we apply this. If it’s the new product, so that will be like maybe main functionality. So what is like valuable for users because… That’s another thing that founders, especially like, know, the first time founders, they have a tendency to bring too many ideas. know, so application will solve all the problems at once, but you know, to make like one hypothesis, like, man, so, okay, so at first our application will be using this problem. If it goes well, we will obviously add new functionality, but focus on something like… smaller, so if it’s possible to have one hypothesis, it’s the best. And then the next step is like minimum validation. So that’s more or less an MVP approach. So how we can still bring this value, but make it as fast as possible and as simple as possible and see if the app, actually if our users behave in the app as we expect them and if it’s valuable and so the iteration. And then the cadence. Cadences like when we start, when we measure, if our hypothesis is working or not, how we measure it and how we decide if it’s like, it’s okay, we need to tweak or no, it was like a wrong one and we need to iterate again. So that’s actually like a little iteration to the measuring the current results, how far they from goal, are we moving in the right direction and repeat, you know, this cycle. So that’s a Comportance framework, trying to combine everything into one more consistent and organized approach.

Cognitive overload and treating users as humans

Rob (23:50)
Nice, nice, very interesting and very deep as well. And from your experience, Tetiana, is there some sort of best practice when you’re looking for solving these problems? There might be things that you see cross throughout and maybe not a silver bullet, but something that, you know, if you think about this, if you do this, it would probably help your project be a lot better.

Tetiana Kobzar (24:06)
I don’t think that there is like, advice or something that you can do that improves everything. It’s more again, you know, so that’s rather what I see a lot in startups that, and as I already mentioned, that they are not thinking about the users as people who are irrational. So they are more like building a product for the like functionality efficiency. And they are treating the people as rational agents rather than people who have their like cognitive biases, who have behavioral biases and who need to be addressed from the different perspective. So that’s what I would recommend to always think about people who are using it rather than robots, I don’t know.

Rob (24:57)
Yeah.

Tetiana Kobzar (24:58)
Yeah. And also what I, tendency I see in a lot of applications is the complexity. So that’s like, a lot of founders have a tendency to think that the more you have to offer, the more valuable your app becomes. But in reality, it’s different. Because again, very basic behavioral design principle about the cognitive overload. So when we see too many functionality, we just feel tired and stupid and we want to just run away instead of using it.

Rob (25:38)
When people see that and say, yeah, but more functionality, it’s good. You can do more things. It’s like, well, have you ever gone to one of these restaurants that instead of handing you a very simple direct menu where you can choose, of course you need choice, you want choice. Instead they hand you like a booklet that has like 20 pages, right? So many things happen, you know, from an operational perspective, you know, there’s a lot of frozen food. So that’s on one side, not great, but let’s assume that they are able to maintain some operational efficiency there and still do it well. How do you choose? You spend half an hour? one hour going through the whole menu, or do you do things like go to the back page and look at the incorporated options and ignore absolutely everything else anyways? So cognitive overload is a real thing, even though people, even when they hear about it, they understand and they see the data, like, yeah, but still they should be able to do more things that’s always good. mean, it’s really, really hard to sort of grasp and feel that. So I always, at least in my, the place I’ve lived in that tends to be the, the Indian or the Chinese restaurant. problem where they have these huge booklets. So I always talk about the Chinese restaurant and the Indian restaurant, depending on where, where people are from. To explain the difficulties that then you face and that it is a real thing. Like it’s not a made up stuff or principle.

Tetiana Kobzar (26:53)
I agree with you, my favorite example and that actually from real life, I opened like one of these period tracking apps and I didn’t find how to track my periods because it was like, know, there were so many different articles about like, know, women’s health, like some advertisement of different products and other things. And actually where is the calendar? I didn’t find it.

Rob (27:18)
There’s the real reason I came here.

Tetiana Kobzar (27:21)
Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

Duolingo streaks, near-miss design, and rage-quit risk

Rob (27:24)
Absolutely. Tetiana, with all the experience that you have and the plenty of people you’ve talked to and looked at and researched as you were mentioning, purchasing all these books and courses, some of them not finishing. Maybe you’re curious about hearing one of these people on the Professor Game podcast or the Payfuture cast.

Tetiana Kobzar (27:42)
Bless you.

Rob (27:44)
Spring. Spring is here.

Tetiana Kobzar (27:48)
You know, Rob, actually, I’m pretty curious. It would be interesting actually to hear more of Yu-kai Chou. I haven’t… Did you invite him for the podcast, by the way?

Rob (28:00)
I think he is the one who’s been the most. I’m not sure about that number, but probably has been four times and he’s episode one and 400 as well. So he has interesting episodes there. Of course, the first one is talking about the Octalysis framework in general. There’s one on Octalysis Prime, the remote framework that they launched some time ago and kids and gamification as well. We talked about that. I was about to have my first kid, so I thought it was very timely. But yeah, I’ve known him for quite a few years. Just recently we started working together formally.

Tetiana Kobzar (28:32)
Yeah, so I saw it in LinkedIn. That’s really cool. forward. Yeah. that’s like, mean that I can read and listen to Yu-kai Chou for like, know, for whatever, whatever, whatever times he can do it. that’s cool. You know, actually it would be interesting to listen some of people who probably, know, Duolingo. I’m not sure if you had invited some of them because they are considered to be like, you know, the idol one of gamification at the moment. But I would be really curious to, to be honest, not very big fan of, because I think that they are using a lot of Black Hat motivation and that’s it doesn’t work for me personally, so I got like too much pressure on me. Stop it. I don’t want to use it, but I see that it’s like a huge success. It would be like really curious to know how they do it so easy. Probably nobody would answer those questions honestly, because there’s probably some secrets and data, nobody is sharing it like this. But that would be interesting to know how they grow and how their retention works. Because like for me, it feels like, it should bring to burnout, but they are growing and is it for their like new users acquisition or it’s like, you know, so that’s just, are finding their niche for the people who actually like this type of motivation and it works for them like for the longer run. And, you know, so that is something that would be interesting to discover.

Rob (30:12)
Looking for it as we speak, I know a colleague from the Octalysis Group wrote a blog post about Duolingo and how it’s, or the discussion on whether it’s really a language learning app or something else. Maybe you’d find that one interesting as well, but it’s a very interesting case study for sure. There’s lots of Black Hat motivation. I did an episode analyzing the streaks as a mechanic. I’ve always found it very interesting and very useful. It’s very… Duolingo is not a free language learning app. It is. And that’s how the whole article starts. I’ll link it up in the show notes. But also the streak mechanic is very interesting because it’s true. have all that pressure and people do come back for that and so on. But it is very Black Hat. And what you’re always avoiding with these kinds of loss techniques, you’re threatening to lose your streak, but you never really want them to lose the streak. Like how do you manage that near miss situation or actually that near missing, you’re almost missing out on how do you manage that? And the rage quitting, somebody who’s been on a streak for 4,000 days, all of a sudden falls sick, falls asleep, like whatever, and they lose a 4,000 day streak. That person, in my opinion, or in my experience, what I’ve seen is never coming back. Right? Never. Not a single, like they’ll hate the app after that. So… It’s a difficult one, but they do have amazing, amazing results as well. Amazing results in terms of retention, among others. Tetiana, and from all those books that you’ve read, all that stuff that you’ve seen and you’ve gone through, is there any book that you would highlight, any recommendation for the Engagers?

Yeah, I wouldn’t if that’s what you want, for sure.

Book picks: Cialdini, Yu-kai Chou, and Don Norman

Tetiana Kobzar (31:42)
I mean, Actionable Gamification is one of my favorite books and I totally recommend it to everyone who didn’t read it before. I purchased but haven’t read yet 10,000 Hours of Gamification by Yu-kai, so I’m not sure yet. I cannot recommend it yet. I’m sure it’s good, but I didn’t read it. So, know, one of my favorite books is, and it’s actually the first one that I ever read on the topic. It’s Influence by Cialdini. So love it. It’s like, you know, still relevant despite being written, I don’t know how many years ago. And yeah, it’s one of the really, really good ones. And Design of Everyday Things. I recommend the three instead of one, but I hope that’s okay.

Rob (32:49)
So you mentioned the Cialdini, the Design of Everyday Things and Yu-kai’s book. Perfect. Tetiana, what would you say is your superpower in this whole behavioral design situation?

Tetiana Kobzar (33:01)
I think my superpower is ability to go into details, but keeping the bigger picture in mind as well. So not getting buried into the little things and at the same time, not losing the bigger picture and keeping it in mind and being able to align the team to follow this track.

Civilization, board games with the kids, and final advice

Rob (33:29)
Sounds like a very useful superpower these days for sure. Tetiana, we get to the difficult question now, or at least the one that I would find the most difficult, which is what is your favorite game?

Tetiana Kobzar (33:36)
My favorite game, I think, still is Civilization. So I really, I really like it. I like strategy games. I like games that are not too stressful, not speed-based or like, you know, reaction-based. I’m not very good at that. So yeah, I think that’s Civilization. need to, you know, because I am a curious person as well and there is always, it brings some like interesting, I don’t know, historical moments or something. I like to read. like, you know, about some characters or about somebody like, you know, in the Wikipedia or now it’s more like, you know, chatting with the different AI about the, was this person? What did they do? What they are famous for? Even like with my kids, we play now this board game, it named Simulo. And it is like, you know, so the association game when you can, even you like. need to code with the cards, know, some like another card, whatever. So I will not explain the rules, but it’s like we bought the edition about the like history people, people from the history. And that is like, you know, super interesting because every game, you know, we are just setting the table and some like some random people appear there and we are just sitting and looking in the AI if you don’t know the story of the person or like some interesting fact, about them or something like that. So that is like another, another cool thing.

Rob (34:59)
So Tetiana, thank you very much for all the advice, everything that you’ve shared. It’s been an amazing journey, at least for me. I hope you’ve had fun as well. Is there anything else you’d tell the Engagers, any final piece of advice, and of course, where we can find out more about what you’re doing nowadays.

Tetiana Kobzar (35:14)
I’m most active in LinkedIn, so I would encourage everyone to follow me there. And as for the final advice, I would say that I would advise to experiment more, do more controlled experiments, data-driven decisions, and more like courage, let’s say, to change things.

Rob (35:37)
Courage, that’s a difficult one for sure, but it is very, important, especially in these initiatives where things are changing, things are different, people are, might be expecting, not expecting. It can be a tough one for sure. Tetiana, thank you again very much for taking your time and investing and being here with the Engagers, sharing your knowledge, your understanding. However, as you know, and the Engagers know as well, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. And thank you once again, Engagers, for hanging around after this interview. And as I mentioned at the start, if you are interested in looking at our guide of the Core Drives in the Wild, especially for corporate and business settings, now as a consultant in the Octalysis Group, I have access to some significant and interesting data and I can talk a lot more about the way we see things through the Octalysis framework. Just go to the link below, click there, and we will send you an email sequence with all of these cases or drives one by one analyzing different situations and giving our strategic advice. So, Engagers, thanks again for staying around and I’ll talk to you and see you soon.

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