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Comment by red_admiral | Hacker News Reader

I might be in a minority overall, but I really dislike gamification creeping into everyday life. I don't want some kind of cutesy "points" for showering ecologically, possibly linked to a virtual currency on an app (which conventiently also collects vital telemetry information).

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Actually it's exactly the kind of thing that gamification works for. Gamify boring scutwork that nobody (except the likely contrarian responder here) enjoys. Gamify showering, flossing, or taking out the garbage and all the tasks that people aren't deeply invested in but with existing habits they'd like to improve.

Alfie Kohn, in his book Punished by Rewards, synthesized decades of actual research results on the subject long before gamification was even minted as a term.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541132.Punished_by_Rewar...

It doesn't need to be digital feedback. Imagine you could physically see the water from a shower filling into a column of water. Let's say 70 liters might reach 6 ft. If someone could see this and wanted to use less water, then they just need to keep their showers short enough that the water fills to the 60 liter mark, then the 40 liter mark, until they're happy with their efforts. No crypto currency. No telemetry.

That I could get behind. The parent post though said "positively reward them (via tone—and other UI hints—of the message, e.g., “you reduced your shower carbon by X this month! Great work!”)" and that crosses my personal line for creepiness.

What you are referring to has significant overlaps to my concept of “libertarian paternalism,” more familiar to me as so-called “benevolent paternalism,” and was popularized by the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_paternalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)

Thank you for mentioning Kohn’s work.

It boggles my mind how super smart people just don’t get that human beings cannot be incentivized the same way rats and birds can.

Reward/punishments (same thing) kill intrinsic motivation. It has been proven countless times.

Providing feedback as in making something visible is another story altogether and can be empowering.

Speaking to people like an adult trying to manipulate 3-year olds is condescending, inappropriate and repulsive.

Not going to lie, I'd feel compelled to either completely fill, or completely empty that column.

Being able to see how many resources you have used or have left has been around since the dawn of time. A stack of logs from which you take away for example. Being able to see how much water you use is as much "gamification" as a fuel meter on a dash board.

The point isn't really gamification, it's providing information to the user. If you don't have any information on your consumption, you'll have a hard time reducing it even if you wanted to.

Typically, we provide that feedback by charging for resource use, and that works extremely well (most recent anecdote from my area: as the local rented garden community started measuring water usage and splitting the bill by usage instead of head count, usage dropped by 70% without any damage by under-watering), but that's generally a longer-term aggregate and immediate feedback works much better.

It’s kind of gamification, at least the bit about explicit positive reinforcement. But “neutral” feedback loops are inherently positively reinforcing, as your anecdote indicates.

I don’t like the gamification of everything either, but if the fate of the planet hinges on it (it doesn’t), I suppose I could stomach it.

I don't mind gamification personally. I'll do it to myself, even if it's just the harmless kind of "just keep running until you've reached that tree ... now that tree over there" to keep me going. Gamification works even if you know that it's gamification.

I agree that it brings up ethical issues when you're using gamification for behavior modification of others, but on the other hand it's also a bit like communication (as in "you cannot not communicate", the absence of a signal is a signal as well), when you choose not to gamify something, you're choosing to strengthen the habits that are currently in place.

I like your example, but here's some of my own: I was told as a child not to leave the tap on when brushing my teeth. There was a campaign to put a brick in your toilet cistern to reduce the amount of water used on each flush. I take more showers than baths. I have a low-flow shower, I turn it off for the bit in the middle where I'm applying the soap/gel, and I've now read an article saying that a mist shower would be even better at saving water.

None of these items is in any way quantified or measured - but all of them have or could contribute to me saving water even if none of them has a measuring device attached.

I've gone through many of the same things, up to the point where I had to beg my father to remove some of the stones because it was uncomfortable that the toilet wouldn't actually flush.

I think that one-time-actions like these are easier to do without constant feedback. Somebody measures it, explains the savings to you, you do it once, done. Usage-based savings likely require more frequent feedback unless you're somebody that has a very fine-tuned habit system.

No, I agree. While I would love to see a water meter, I don’t need the shower head making commentary like “great job!”

It might come over less childish if the system (the system's designers) didn't shy away from negativity.

being scolded by my shower is not exactly the future dystopia I imagined.

It would probably be more like:

<Cheery Computer Voice> "Water-flow will be resumed after these messages... "<Ads Play...>

Playing an ad in the shower after 5 minutes would definitely make me take shorter showers and use less water. You could be on to something there.

I can imagine that as a scene in Demolition Man

Doesn't need to be points, just feedback. In fact the GP didn't mention points. I have no idea how much water I spend in a shower. 5l? 10l? 50l? I can look up estimates, but that's it. This would be valuable feedback for many people, even without the gamification part.

I don’t want gamification but having the data is good. It would also be nice if I could set the shower to a certain temperature instead of guessing every time.

This sounds almost feasible if one feels comfortable to install a flow meter and a thermometer into the tap, and to hook it up with a microcontroller. Setting a certain temperature requires more work. I wonder whether there are products on the market for this already.

My parents used to have one with a mechanical thermostat. It was pretty simple and worked well once you had figured out your target temperature.

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