A friend of mine is a plumber. He's 47, two trucks, three employees. He bills between $180k and $220k a year depending on the year.
When he finishes a job, he packs his tools, washes his hands, gets in his truck, and drives off. Nobody throws confetti. Nobody tells him congrats, you completed a challenge!
He wouldn't understand the idea.
The asymmetry between professions
I noticed something while talking to users in different trades. Physical trades — construction, cooking, healthcare — almost never use gamified tools. Desk jobs are full of them.
Why? One guess: in a physical trade, the work is visible. The floor is laid or it isn't. The omelette is cooked or it isn't. The patient is better or worse. You don't need a screen to congratulate you.
In a desk job, the work is invisible. So we invent little green lights to reassure ourselves we exist.
The trouble with little trophies
They infantilize. It's the right word — unpleasant but accurate. They treat a professional like a kid who needs a star on their notebook.
A freelancer billing $85k a year doesn't need an app to congratulate them for completing three sessions. They completed three sessions because it's their job. The way my plumber friend soldered three pipes.
What we put in its place
A number. The week's total hours. The month's revenue. The count of finished sessions.
That's it. No star, no congratulations, no you're improving!. Just the bare fact, shown without commentary.
Respect as the default
The deeper reason: Sablio is built for people who already know how to work. Our job isn't to motivate them. It's to stay out of their way.
If you need an app to congratulate you for working, you don't have a tool problem. You have a job problem, and no software is going to fix it.
— Patrick