With the new iPhone app, Leap, people challenge each other to tasks such as keeping one’s diet (http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57387693-285/get-motivated-by-challenging-your-friends-on-leap/). “Compete with your friends and show the world you’re a winner!”, claims the app.
We’re attracted to comparing ourselves to friends because, to us, just like to kittens and puppies, it’s a no-brainer to fight for available food – even over the malnourished bodies of our siblings. Sorry – this is hardwired and feels fun. But the elephant in the room is why we need our iPhone to generate a peer arena to compete in, to be accountable in – why we are not already surrounded by it.
Not long ago, our motivation to complete a task such as “clean your inbox” was coming from senior members of family or team. These tasks carried a penalty if unattended. “Being social” was not a task – you were social all the time because you were surrounded by people you were accountable to.
Adult tasks could be seen as an agreement, an obligation to someone. This is self-evident in tasks such as arriving to a meeting, and like the rabbit in Alice’s wonderland we mutter to ourselves as we hurry to a meeting, ‘Oh! The Duchess! Oh! won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!’. He didn’t need an iPhone app.
A task is created when we promise to bring the milk – an obligation so basic it serves as the tile of a to-do app, successful because people dread the consequences of violating even seemingly minor agreements with family.
To illustrate my point, think about gamifying a challenge such as “I will remember everything I promised my spouse this week”. If we do, friends give us stars. Will this work? No, it would be threatening and would not add much to our motivation. But if we do not have a spouse (I used to live in an area where most people are single), Leap could help us create an artificial social penalty. Remember “Virtual Girlfriend” apps? Perhaps Leap could develop into a dark “Virtual Girlfriend”, perhaps “Virtual Nagging Girlfriend” (or boyfriend – though women are more social, and already have more social assets to lose than men, without any app).
Thinking about the inherently transactional nature of to-do lists, I’m suggesting calendars are really an Accountability Management tool, designed around people, their agreements and their obligations. I’m not talking about User Centered Design, but about Social Design, or Social Interaction Design. We could be embracing this complex human behavior and designing for it. Contacts book should start from calendars, email inbox design should start with meeting events and bosses. We could be designing for concrete social interactions / stories, supporting meaningful social functions, instead of designing for a generic “collaboration”, an entity that sometimes springs from nowhere in board meetings to support dysfunctional management.
I could go on and on, but I’m late! She’ll be savage.
