The Magic Potion of Game Dynamics

Hello Aaron,

Thank you for coming back and continuing the conversation. And thank you for your regards to my work. I definitely appreciate that.

I believe Fogg has a definition for Trigger. Have you check out his work at Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. There are a lot of good stuff there. I definitely have learn a lot from him.

I think your definition would work well for people who are motivated by didn't have the ability. But there are a lot of situation where people have the ability but are not motivated. In that case, he is well aware that his ability can satisfy his motivation. Signaling his ability can satisfy his motivation is no use, because he knew it all along that he can (has the ability) perform the action. He simply doesn't have the motivation. So that definition may not be general enough.

Maybe I should say that a trigger is a signal that tells the user to perform the action now. The key is "now." And I must clarify that action is not caused by the triggers alone. You really need a convergence of all three factors. What cause behavior is not trigger. It is a combination of Motivation, Ability and Trigger. Trigger just tell them to do it at the time the trigger was activated.

I apologize if I still didn't make this clear. But when I write about this factor later, I will give more examples. Hopefully things will be clear by then.

Thanks again for digging into this topic. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who also have the same confusion. I think your question will definitely help clarify them. And I will try hard to keep this in mind when I write my later posts. Stay tuned!