Agile Startup uses Gaming to Make the World a Healthier Place

“Big companies are into project management when they should be into product management. They want on time and on budget come hell or high water regardless of customer satisfaction,” said Trapper Markelz. Instead of just completing projects, Trapper's company is focused on building products that create ongoing relationships with customers. To do this they develop products that cultivate early evangelists who help them clarify and validate their core value proposition. Then those same evangelists help them grow their customer base by advocating for the values and products they helped to create.

This requires an agile approach to product development. You need to get the first version of your product out there quickly and find out what kind of customers use your product and what they like and what they don’t like, and what else they want to see. Trapper’s company is called MeYou Health and they use agile practices to develop software that supports a direct to consumer business model to work with customers on developing healthy behaviors and promoting personal wellness.

[ I do lively presentations on this and related topics - mhugos@yahoo.com ] 

Using Gaming Techniques to Address Real World Problems

For years Trapper has been deeply involved in gaming and last fall he began looking for ways to use what he learned from gaming to address real world problems like promoting sustainable energy and healthy living. MeYou Health was launched as a subsidiary of Healthways (NASDAQ: HWAY) to attract gaming and social media talent and figure out ways to use techniques from gaming to create health and wellness programs.

Trapper explained that they have an agreement with Healthways that gives them 18 months to bring a family of products to market and build up a customer base. In December he hired a startup team which developed their core product during January and February. Then they launched the product in a closed beta test at the end of March and are now enhancing it based on feedback they get. In August they will roll out their first publicly available product. They are also developing in parallel a Facebook game, an iPhone game, and a sentiment analysis product for Twitter that will create a wellbeing index.

To reach their 18 month goals they follow an agile process in everything they do. That process is to define what they call a “minimum viable product”, and get that product to market as soon as possible for validation by an initial audience. Then when they see what people like, they iterate rapidly to enhance and grow the product (here’s a recent morning creative session).

Promoting Habits and Behaviors that Get Healthy Results

The design of their products is guided by an understanding of how games appeal to peoples’ psychologies. Trapper says gamers display mixtures of four kinds of behaviors, so every product they build has features that appeal to these behaviors. The four behaviors are: 
1. SOCIALIZING – people play games to interact with other people
2. ACHIEVING – people play games to get to the next level or acquire the next item
3. EXPLORING – people play games to unlock the next part of the story or narrative and see new parts of the game
4. COMPETING – people play games to compete and win against other people

The MeYou Health product enables people to create groups and guilds for the socializers, and for the achievers the product lays out the things people need to do to move up to new levels. The product also creates content and experiences for the explorers, and it keeps track of peoples’ progress to appeal

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