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A
Duolingo because they are considered to be like Ethelon of gamification at the moment. But to be honest, not very big fan because I think that they're using a lot of black hat motivation and that's. It doesn't work for me personally so I got like, you know, too much pressure on me. Stop it. I don't want to.
B
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 and multiply retention and build stronger products. And I'm Rob, I'm the founder, I'm a coach at Professor Game and I'm also the head of Engagement Strategy Europe at the Octasis 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 struggling 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 Tatiana, we always like to know if our guests are ready, if they're prepared for the interview. So we need to know. Tatiana, are you prepared to engage?
A
Absolutely.
B
We have Tatiana Kobzar. Is that a good pronunciation? Is that decent?
A
That's right.
B
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. Tatiana, is there anything that we're missing that we should know before we get started?
A
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 actalysis approach and yeah, and yuka Chao is like my idol. So. Yeah, that's very, very nice that we share the same vision and approach to the motivation and engagement.
B
Amazing. Amazing. So Tatiana, what does a regular day with you look like? What are you doing in these days? What gets you fired up? What are kinds of activities you're performing these days?
A
Yeah, you know, now I'm in a, in a quite interesting stage of my life because I used, I used to be a founder of company that I. That got acquired recently.
B
Nice.
A
So that's why now I am in a little bit like a transition period and I am.
B
Congratulations. Of course, I'm sure. In order.
A
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And also like, you know, my daily life consists of, of working with my clients or and with my team. Also like I do a lot of self education. Not, you know, I spend less time on self education that I want because it's always like, you know, I'm sure we all do. Yeah, I, I buy, I buy the books, I buy the courses and everything and like, you know, probably spend like one hour maximum per day, but I want to spend eight. Yeah, but, yeah, but I, I think that's like 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, A lot of things to do, a lot of different hats to wear.
B
So that sounds super interesting, Tatiana, thank you very much for sharing that. And the next thing that we 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 these things, we would be very, very interested to, to be there, live that moment with you and potentially take out some of those lessons that, that brought you here.
A
I think the biggest like, you know, realizations of things that I did probably not very right. They are not related that much to the behavioral designer gamification, but more about the business administration and those type of things. But in general, what I would like recommend everybody who is. It doesn't matter if, 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 recurring revenue. That is something that I realize. And actually so 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 like that, that relates to anything to work with the client, to work with users like do the product or service. Because that is something that like your business is your recurring revenue and all the rest is not. So like, you know, 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, that is something that I learned through the failure. Let's say.
B
Is there, is there any, any moment when you realized that you were not designing for the end game as 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 endgame 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, the whole journey. Was there any particular moments when you were in your business that, that this happened that you can share? Of course.
A
Um, yeah, actually, you know, because from my, my business that, 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, care very much about your clients and the products that you are building for them. But then, you know, when the, when the relationship go on, you just, you know, everybody is having this status quo and you are just like, you know, that is. I would say that it's like this Pareto principles that you are spending 80% of your time on the clients who bring you 20% of value. Because like, you know, usually, you know, the good clients, they are like not causing you any problems. They are not complaining. They are just, you know, 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 one 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.
B
Sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing that Tatiana. 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.
A
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, to, to make the experience truly engaging. Because usually gamification is like, you know, when you are just adding some elements to the non gamified product. It's rather, you know, it's often it's similar, you know and a lot of owners and there are a lot of founders 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, game based Lear Game based products are my favorite. So one of my favorite favorite ones is that we made for elder Hay Children Hospital. That's a gamified application that allows that helps children to with their speech therapy. So the kids, they instead of just like 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 they 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, practice practicing their assignments. So that's like one that I really really enjoyed. And that's, 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 one of one that I really love. And because it's like it 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 re so they used to do it like you know, in the doctor's Office and they bored and they motivate, are not motivated to use it and instead we replace it with like mini games that they are motivated to play, they are engaged, they want to do it. And the tablet actually measures a lot of, a lot of additional data as well. Like all the timestamps, how the fingers trembling or not Also like you know, recording the voice and other things. So that's like two of my most favorite examples.
B
So you mentioned. I never, well never very. At least not in public. I don't usually engage on the discussions where people say oh that looks a little bit more, that's more game based learning. Oh 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, you can call it more corporate side in a way where you don't feel like you're in a game but you're getting you know, LinkedIn using the progress bar when you're creating 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 or 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 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 actually I
A
do not draw this line because you know, for me I, I'm very much with you about that like you know having I have a bit wider term. It's like behavioral design that basically you know, it's following the actualysis 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 you know, different applications. Yep, exactly, exactly. And all those like you know, black hat, white hat motivation techniques.
B
So all there's a lot of videos by the way around and I think they're still in the open from Yukai Analyzing different behavioral science things through the lens of otalysis framework like from Maslow to D.C. and Ryan with intrinsic motivation like all of that, he's, he's done many of the analysis through like you see through the oktalazine you can do. It's like, oh, this works this way and flow as well and all that through those frameworks. So yeah, absolutely there. We always like to talk about gamification, behavioral design for sure.
A
Yeah. So I'm, I'm just. Yeah. So when I, when I'm saying like gamification versus game based learning or game based solution, that's more of the distinction that my clients usually, you 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. So the gamification actually is much wider term that the gamification.
B
Yeah, I've heard that too many times.
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So they like, you know, so you're just. That's about like motivating users. It's about like making them love, making them return through the like and other things and, and people say yeah, yeah, okay, but we want something more like duolingo, you know, or something like that,
B
you know, of course.
A
And then that's why you know, it is. And I, I'm sure that you're, you know, 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 action that they are not doing but I want them to do or I want to change their behavior like you know, and keep this and make it consistent. So when, when the task is more, let's say when, when the people come to you with the problem and you together find the solution so then you have a more tools to, 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. So that's, that's why I made this distinction. But I'm, I'm absolutely with you that that's a wider Term that covers more
B
Tatiana when you're, when you're facing one of these projects, whether big or small, I'm guessing that you run through some kind of thought or strategy or something. You know what we call the five step process in Intellisys 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.
A
I use a lot my own framework that named Comfortance to make a structured approach to validate the request and make it like more strategic session let's say and integrating. So when it's come to the part of emotion I usually refer to actalysis. So I all my, all my clients heard about actalysis and I share your actalysis group resources to display or explain some of some of the principles. So like my, this, my framework it combines different let's say best practices for each step and like you know, emotion and motivation. I always refer the acatalysis 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. And yeah amazing.
B
Can you give us a quick brush through your, your seven steps like the one that you measure or however it is that you, you approach this?
A
Yeah, 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 about other ones. So like you know when people apply in Agile they 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're trying to achieve in the, at the very end. So they are too, too iterative. What I see also in a lot of cases the behavioral components or the gamification motivation component is very often missed.
B
So people non existing most of the time. Yeah. Oh the function is there, they can do it. So they will do it.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly but and that's, 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 know you can do it in a very different way. So yeah, so we start like in, in the comportance we start with the like seven questions. So we start with the goal. So that's Also a question that not always people know the answer to say what, what we are trying to achieve. So what it's usually either what problem we are trying to sell solve or what we want to improve, what situation we want to improve.
B
And I'm guessing that oftentimes they think they have the answer very clear and then they start explaining it and they have no idea what they really want.
A
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And without goal, you know, you, you can move to very different directions. So that's like a very strategic part. Then it's the question so 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. So it's like, you know, it should be achievable, it should be measurable, it should be of everything so that you,
B
that you can specific or relevant and timely. Yes.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're, you're having this goal and then the next question is and what is the current baseline? So what, what are your current metrics? And that's, you know, 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, you 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. And 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, it 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 so probably, you know, and tweaking each of those like the more, the smaller you can do this the measurement and the point of identifying the problem the better. So that's for the data we need to measure, we 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 are 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 a user. 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 or lot. A lot of possible like you know, this positioning and it's, 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 here where octalysis and more the gamification techniques come in place. The next part is let's make a hypothesis and usually that, that depends on the process where we're applying 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 you know, the first time founders they are, they have a tendency to bring too many ideas like you know, so application will solve all the problems at once but you know, to make like one hypothesis like main. 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 one, if it's possible to have one hypothesis is the best and then you know, 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 it like if the app actually if our users behave in app as we expect them and if it's valuable and like you know, so the iteration and then the cadence. Cadence is 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, that's a comportance framework trying to combine everything into one like more consistent and and organized approach.
B
Nice, nice. Very interesting and very deep as well. And from your experience Tatiana, is there some sort of best practice when you're, when you're looking for solving these problems, there, there might be things that you see cross throughout and maybe not a silver bullet. There's something that, you know, if you think about this, if you do this, it would probably help your project be a lot better.
A
I don't think that there is like, you know, one advice or something that you can, that you can do that 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 their users as people who are irrational. So they are more like building a product for the like, functionality, efficiency and they are treating 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, what I would recommend to always think about people who are using it rather than robots. I don't know.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A
And also what I, what tendency I see in, 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 like, again, you know, very basic behavioral design principle about the cognitive overload. So when we see too many functional, we just feel tired and stupid and we want to just run away instead of using it.
B
So 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 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? Do 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, it's like, yeah, but still they should be able to do more things. That's always good. 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 Indian or the Chinese restaurant problem where they have these huge booklets. So I always talk about the Chinese restaurant, the Indian restaurant, depending on 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. Tatiana, you. Yeah, go ahead.
A
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 period because it was like, you know, there were so many different articles about like, you know, women's health, like some advertisement of different products and other things. And actually where is the calendar? I didn't find it.
B
Where's the real reason I came here?
A
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Tatiana, with all the experience that you have and the plenty of people you've talked to and looked up 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. Sort of a future guest.
A
Bless you.
B
Spring. Spring is here.
A
You know, Bob, actually I'm pretty curious. It would be interesting actually to hear more of Yukacho. I haven't. Did you invite him for the podcast, by the way?
B
I think he is the one who's been the most. I'm not sure about that number, but probably is. He's 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 Octalsis 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, my first kid, so I thought it was very timely. Um, but yeah, I've known him for quite a few years and just recently we started working together formally.
A
Yeah, yeah, I saw, I saw it in LinkedIn. That's. That's really cool. Looking for. Yeah, so that's like, I mean, that I can read and listen to you Kachao for like, you know, for whatever, whatever. Whatever times he can do it. So that's, that's cool. But you know, actually it would be interesting to listen some of people who, who probably, you know, from Duolingo and I'm not sure if you had invited some of them because, because they are considered to be like, you know, the ethylon of gamification at the moment, but I would be really curious to. I. To be honest, not very big fan of. Because I think that they're using a lot of black hat motivation and that's. It doesn't work for me personally. So I got like, you know, too much pressure on me. Stop it. I don't want to. I want to. I don't want you to use it. But I see that it's like a huge process and I would, it would be like really curious to know how they do it. So is it like because of how. I mean probably, you know, nobody would answer those questions honestly, you know, because that's probably there like some secret and data is. Nobody's sharing it like this. But that would be interesting to know how, how they grow and how their retention works because like for me it feels like you know, it should bring to burnout but they are growing and is it for the like new users acquisition or it's like, you know, so that's just. They 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. To discover.
B
Looking for it as we, as we speak. I know a colleague from the ectalysis 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 because I've always found it very interesting and very useful. It's very. Duolingo is not a freelance 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 you have all that, you know, the 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. Right? 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. 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. Tatiana and from all those books that you've read, all that stuff that you, you've seen and you've gone through, is there any book that you would highlight,
A
any recommendation for the engagers apart from Gamification by Actionable.
B
Actionable Gamification. It could be that one if that's what you want for sure.
A
So I mean that Actionable Gamification is one of my favorite books and like I totally recommend it to would recommend it to everyone who didn't read it before I am. I purchased but haven't read yet 10,000 hours by Yuka. So I'm not sure yet. I cannot recommend it yet. I'm sure it's good but I didn't read it. So you know, one of my favorite books is and it's actually the first one that I ever read on the topic, Its 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, one of the really, really good ones and Design of Everyday Things. I recommended three instead of one, but I hope that's okay.
B
So you mentioned the Cialdini, the Design of Everyday Things and Yukai's book Perfect. Tetiana, what would you say is your superpower in this whole behavioral design situation?
A
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.
B
Sounds like a very useful superpower these days for sure. 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?
A
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 Civilization I need, 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 who was this person? What did they do, what they are famous for. Even like with my kids we play now this, this board game it named Similo and it is like you know, so the association game when you can even you like need to code with the cards, you know, some like another cards, 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, something like that. So that is like another, another cool thing.
B
So Tatiana, 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 to tell the engagers, any final piece of advice and of course where we can find out more about what you're doing?
A
Nowadays I am Most active in LinkedIn so I would encourage everyone to follow, follow me there. And as as for the final advice is I would, I would say that I would advise to experiment more controlled experiments, data driven decisions and more like courage, let's say to change things.
B
Courage. That's a difficult one for sure but it is very, very important especially in these initiatives where things are changing, things are different, people might be expecting, not expecting. It can be a tough one for sure. Tatiana, thank you again very much for taking your time and investing in 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, the Hotelous Group, I have access to some significant and interesting data and it can talk a lot more about the way we see things through the Optalysis framework, just go to the link below, click there and we will send you an email sequence with all of these cases, core 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.
Title: Why a Gamification Expert HATES Duolingo's Strategy | Professor Game Podcast, Ep. 444
Date: May 11, 2026
Host: Rob Alvarez
Guest: Tetiana Kobzar — Gamification & Behavioral Science Expert, Creator of the Comportance Framework
Theme:
This episode dives into the ethics, strategy, and psychology of popular gamification, with a strong critique of Duolingo’s use of “black hat” techniques. Guest Tetiana Kobzar discusses her approaches for human-centered gamification in health, wellness, and education. Together with host Rob Alvarez, they explore what really drives lasting engagement, the pitfalls of “dark” motivation methods, and practical frameworks for designing engaging, ethical experiences.
Tetiana’s Critique:
“They’re using a lot of black hat motivation and that’s... it doesn’t work for me personally, so I got, like, you know, too much pressure on me. Stop it. I don’t want to.” — Tetiana, (00:00 & 29:25)
Host’s Perspective:
“Duolingo is not a freelance language learning app... the streak mechanic is very interesting, but it is very black hat... someone loses a 4,000-day streak? That person... is never coming back.” — Rob, (30:12)
Tetiana, on what motivates her:
“I want to... I don’t want you to use it [black hat motivation]. ... For me, it feels like it should bring burnout, but they’re growing... So is it just finding the right niche?” — Tetiana, (29:25–30:12)
Favorite Projects:
Business Lessons: Always design for recurring value, not just initial engagement. Support long-term user/client relationships, not just high-touch onboarding. (04:36–08:14)
Quote:
“Your business is your recurring revenue, and all the rest is not... Design for the end game and further stages to give value all the time.” — Tetiana (05:05)
This episode takes an unflinching look at the psychology beneath popular digital engagement, contrasting quick-fix, pressure-based tactics with sustainable, ethical behavioral design. Listeners get practical frameworks, real-world stories, and thought-provoking critiques—not only of apps like Duolingo, but of the underlying choices every product leader faces.
To go deeper: