Why gamify your app?

It’s generally believed that games are dopamine releasers. The chemical gets released when you are happy or excited. When you gamify a non-gaming app, you are helping your users to compete and beat others; thereby, giving users a kind of kick that prompts them to use the app over and over again. So, if you introduce this experience to any of your app, be assured, you’ll make your app more enjoyable for the users.

The best part is that you don’t have to overhaul your web or app. If your app is already doing good, gamification simply takes it a step further, be it in terms of increasing user engagement through fun activities, interaction, loyalty, and things like that. Long story short, gamification elements propel app sales.

Key facts about app gamification

You don’t have to have a gaming app to introduce gaming elements to your app. Quite the contrary, the norm is to add gaming elements to non-gaming apps such as fitness app or an education app.

Other key facts about gamification according to Gigya:

• Gamification bumps up user engagement by nearly one third
• Online comments increase by 13%
• Social media sharing by 22%
• Content discovery by 68%.1

Examples of top non-game app examples leveraging gamification

Fitocracy – Gamification for fitness

Fitocracy is one of the top fitness apps for men. It’s an all-in-one app for getting in shape. The app not only gives you access to a personal coach but also helps assess your health by setting up a personalized nutrition plan. Not to mention, it offers custom workouts to meet your fitness goals. We get to see the gamification aspect of the app when Fitocracy makes you compete against others, prompt you to undertake different fitness tasks, awards badges, and so on.

Snapchat – Gamification for messaging

Snapchat’s popularity is based on two of its gamification features. First, it is the disappearing feature, wherein the stories, be it in the form of videos, photos, and messages, disappear immediately after the recipient views it. This ensures users’ privacy.

Second, the more you use the app, the higher the score you earn, and the more the trophies you get awarded. Sure enough, high score and prizes won’t yield any real benefits, only that you get to boast about your score among friends and fellow users. But then, no matter what, it keeps users busy and motivates them to come back to the app over and over again.

Byju’s – Gamification for education

This education app leverages cognitive learning techniques to keep the students engaged. With Byju’s educational app, students learn to master subjects through videos, practice tests, and so on. The app’s gamification allows students to play games, earn points, and also compete against participants through quizzes and competitions.

Competition propels students to work hard for better results. Tests and quizzes allow users to measure their performance as to whether they have clearly understood the concepts or not. This kind of gamification results in a win-win situation for the app and its users, and the data could be leveraged by the app development team to design more effective modules.

5 best strategies to gamify your app

1. Identify your business objectives

As you already know, all apps are not alike. Meaning, you cannot simply apply a one-size-fits-all gaming strategy to your apps because the strategies that may work for one app may not work for the other. So, your primary goal is to have a crystal-clear idea about your business objectives, which, in turn, will help you plan your app gamification elements.

2. Know your target audience inside-out

You need to have a complete idea of your target audience in terms of their age group, interests, and so on before framing your gaming strategy. Plus, you need to analyze their behavior regularly. Check out with Tubik Studio, the team with big experience that will help you to identify your target audience.

3. Strike a right chord with a striking story

Some games hijack your attention from the first scene itself, and some don’t. Why? Simple, it’s the thoughtful story and script that makes the difference. A narrative element is required for every game. One sure-fire to make your story connect is to involve users in the story and keep them on the edge of their seats.

4. Set-up them up with rewards

As it turns out, people undertake tasks only when they are pretty sure that their efforts will be recognized or rewarded, or maybe it offers them a sense of achievement. An in-app gaming experience offers all these perks to the app users. You can motivate users with rewards, virtual goods, leaderboards, badges, and also progress displays.

Simple game apps set up with rewards propel user engagement. For example, a travel app that offers a badge to users for using it a couple of times or a fitness tracker app that provides recognition for beating a friend’s exercise stats. Both these apps use gaming elements that prompt users to use the app over and over again.

One can even try limited-time offers, discounts, and more. Such rewards propel user engagement as well as drive business revenue.

But then, no matter what, balance out task complexity and user involvement. If the task is too complicated, users might get frustrated and leave the app. And if the gamification process is too simple, people may get bored. So, make sure that you balance out, and people get to learn something new through the gamification process.

5. Tap into the social component

Social components, such as in-game chat and community, could complement your app. In some cases, you could include competitions to your mobile app, as in which users played more games or ran the most in a week.

Plus, you could add platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and more into your game. This helps users share achievements easily, which, in turn, adds to their feel-good factor.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to keeping users hooked to your apps, gamification should be your go-to strategy. The biggest plus is that you do not have to spend tons to set-up these strategies in your app. In-app quests, colorful badges, simple competitions, and more are good enough to keep the user interest alive and keep them coming back for more.

Author Bio: this is the guest article by Jennifer Warren, a content crafter with GoodFirms, a research and review platform for mobile app development, software development, game development companies, among many others. 

Сообщение 5 Best Practices for Mobile Apps with Gamification Elements появились сначала на Design4Users.

The word “gamification” stands for the technique of exerting game mechanics into the non-game environment. Designers often use gamification to create effective digital products and secure high level of user engagement. In one of our previous articles, we’ve mentioned common game mechanics such as challenges, points, badges, leaderboards, and journey. Each gamification element serves for certain goals and has a different influence on users. Today’s article is devoted to one of the most commonly used game mechanics called user journey. We’ll define its essence and find out how it works for UX improvements.

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What’s user journey?

To make pleasing UX design, it’s vital to think out all the stages of user interactions. The thing is that one person may use a product for accomplishing different goals each day, even more, they apprehend the product differently every time. Designers and researchers noticed that experience and user interactions gradually evolve as people gain more skills in using the product. Such characteristics make it similar to a journey which players go through in games.

Considering this fact, designers come up with the idea of applying a game mechanic called user (player) journey in digital products. User journey can be defined as user’s progression stages over the time of product usage. Designers create UX that way so that people could go step-by-step through the various features and interactions which gradually change depending on users needs.

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Let’s look at the example. A standard video game always has different levels from the easiest to the most complicated one. This way a player can adapt and easily comprehend how the game works on the easy levels and then constantly learn and make a progress. By the end of the game, a player is usually a skilled competitor who can deal with more complex tasks. If people receive difficult tasks at the beginning, they aren’t able to handle them. Or in case a game only consists of easy challenges, players will soon be bored.

The same works with digital goods. A product which has a simple system of interactions often attracts users with its convenience. However, if people use it for a long time and there are no changes at all, they may get bored. In case a product has an enormous amount of features at the start, they may just get lost within it. To avoid such problems, designers need to think of UX as a user journey, guiding them step-by-step to the point of achievement.

Stages of a user journey

User journey is a game mechanic which aims at making the process of interaction with a product easier and more understandable. A user feels as a real player starting the personal journey of the product usage. Designers plan different stages which a player (user) will gradually go through. Let’s look at the common steps which a user journey includes.

Onboarding stage

People who only start their journey within a product need to be actually onboarded. It means that users should be offered an introduction to the features so that they wouldn’t be afraid to make a mistake. Also, it is good to present a navigation system if it has some peculiarities.

Designers use onboarding tutorials in various digital products. Tutorials appear to users who launch an app or a web product for the first time helping them get oriented within unfamiliar features and controls. One more task designers need to accomplish at the stage of onboarding is user motivation. The product should be presented that way so that people had a motivation to use it more than once. That’s why onboarding tutorials need to contain short but clear info describing the possibilities of a product helping users to understand if a product can be useful for them.

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Scaffolding stage

When users continue their journey, they go to the next stage of interactions called scaffolding. The step includes disclosing features progressively as the users become more experienced in using the product. Unlike the onboarding stage, users don’t get long instructions. Scaffolding is more like a practical part. Users are trained to use a product proficiently, and the more they learn, the more tools (features) they receive. This stage allows users to gradually learn more about a product and receive more features as far as they need to use them. Users don’t get a great number of features at once, so the interactions system won’t seem too overloaded or complicated.

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Progress stage

No matter what tasks people do, they always want to know about their progress. Providing feedback on the results of a user journey, we can inspire them to continue. It’s a core step since people lose the enthusiasm of a beginner pretty soon and they need to be motivated to stay.

Some may ask what progress can be in non-game digital products? For example, a social app can notify users when they gained a certain number of new followers or friends. Meanwhile, educational applications can inform users of how much they’ve learned from time to time. All small details matter. Just tell people they achieved something and they get a dose of enthusiasm to continue.

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Endgame stage

Designers usually stop at the stage of scaffolding and progress uniting them in the endless loop, where users constantly learn and receive feedback. However, sooner or later people get bored of such patterns and may quit the product. Here is why the endpoint of a journey is also important to be thought out.

Endgame stage doesn’t mean that users will receive the message “Thank you for being with us! Bye-bye.” At this stage, proficient users are recognized as experts or veterans and they are usually given some privileges for loyalty. People like to be valued and they often give it right back. It’s not a secret that loyal customers are the best marketing managers for a product. New users willingly follow satisfied users’ testimonials.

Why a user journey?

User journey is a complex game mechanic that requires deep attention to details. Each stage should be carefully planned and connected to the others. Moreover, it requires long-term plans for future updates, so the process of user journey development may take a long time. Of course, some may ask if it is worth the effort to bring it into a product. Let’s see what user journey can give you back.

Clear interaction system. Users receive features gradually at the stage of scaffolding and users learn to utilize a product step-by-step. An approach helps to avoid problems with incomprehensible interactions and functions.

Increased user engagement. One of the gamification principles is to make users always motivated and involved in “game”. User journey is usually full of different tasks and achievements which people can gain, so users can’t resist game spirit.

Customer loyalty. If a product is constantly improved for its users, people really appreciate it. Moreover, if a product has some privileges for loyal customers, people trust it more.

Product recognizability. As we said above, satisfied customers are effective marketers for a product. Users willingly share their pleasant experience and it won’t stay unnoticed.

The element of fun. As any other game element, user journey is a good way to bring an emotional aspect to a product. People always need some kind of recreational activity so that they could escape from everyday routine for a bit. By adding the fun element into a casual product, you help people reduce some stress and relax for a moment.

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All in all, we can say that user journey is an effective method for UX improvement. However, a designer and a client should consider the fact that gamification works well not for every product. It depends on a type of an interface, its target audience, and business goals. For more detailed information, check our previous article where we’ve defined the tasks which gamification helps to accomplish and don’t miss the updates on gamification in UI coming soon.

Recommended reading

Gamification by Interaction Design Foundation
42 Rules for Engaging Members Through Gamification: Unlock the Secrets of Motivation, Community, and Fun
Gamification in UX. Boosting User Engagement.
Gamification: Designing for Motivation
Two types of user motivation

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Gamification Mechanics in UX Design: User Journey появились сначала на Design4Users.

What is gamification?

When we say the word “gamification” in the context of design, it can be easily mistaken for the game design. Still, these terms hardly relate to each other, even more, they are opposite in many aspects. In the tech world, the word “gamification” stands for the technique of exerting game mechanics into the non-game environment, such as websites and mobile applications. For example, if you want to encourage the users to interact more with your application, you can add the game element such as a challenge. They can be challenged to check-in every day during a week and be rewarded if they do so. The thing is that people like having a clear goal and even more to be rewarded after it’s achieved, so such a challenge would doubtfully pass unnoticed among the users. This way, designers are able to influence users’ behavior and motivate them as “players” to do the expected actions via game elements such as a challenge and rewards.

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Types of game mechanics for UX improvement

Gamification is a complicated design technique that requires using various game mechanics referring to the interactive UI elements. The main task for designers applying gamification is not to turn the product fully into a game. For this reason, there have been distinguished the effective game mechanics that are commonly used in the design. Let’s see what they are.

Challenge

Human nature always makes us take the challenges and prove that we are able to handle them. So, a challenge is thought to be one of the most compelling game elements motivating people to take an action which can be a great tool on the way for UX improvement. In order to enhance the challenge effect, it may be a good idea to use some kind of rewards, so that users could feel even more motivated.

Upper Streak Challenge in Upper App

Points

To measure the players’ success, many games use the points system. The gamified product can apply the same scheme that helps both users and stakeholders: the first sees their achievements and the others can estimate user engagement of the website or application. It is not necessary to make the count of points in the rating form. It may be just the number of check-ins or video views.

Badges and stickers

When users complete the challenge or gather a certain number of points, they can be awarded the badges or stickers. This kind of virtual rewards is often used in video games, so people are familiar with them. Stickers have gained people’s love long ago, therefore this kind of reward will be appreciated. Besides, the badges and stickers give much room for creative experimentation since they can be designed in various ways. Such rewards can become additional drivers of motivation.

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Leaderboards

The thing making the challenge even more interesting for people is the competition. Not many things can motivate users better than the desire to be a leader. The list of the “players” ranked in the order “Who’s got more badges” can increase users’ enthusiasm. However, in some cases, it may work contrarily demotivating people due to the high ranks of the others. That’s why this game element is recommended to be applied carefully.

Snake Battle

Journey

This game mechanic aims to make the process of interaction with the product as easy and understandable as possible. The user should feel like the real player starting the personal journey of product usage. For example, on the onboarding page from which the user starts, they can be offered an introduction to the features, so that users won’t be afraid to make a mistake. When the journey continues, it is recommended to use the method of “scaffolding”. It means to disclose features progressively as the users become more experienced in using the product. Such an approach allows people to avoid errors and makes the product pleasing to use. Also, the journey element may be supplemented with the progress feature. Providing information about the progress of the user’s journey, we can inspire them to continue.

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Constraints

Many of us may think that it is not funny at all, still, there is a game element constraining players’ time. For example, the task in the games are often needed to be complete in a limited time, otherwise, players lose. The same approach can be applied to the gamified product. Users may be offered to do something which is available only today. The constraints make people react faster and somehow motivate them to take action right here and now.

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These are some common examples of game elements in design but there is room for the innovative game mechanics that can be applied in UX design. The major point to consider is that the product shouldn’t become too playful if it’s not expected according to the general stylistic strategy and brand image.

The role of gamification in UX design

Today the method of gamification is widely used in design since it is thought to help to solve many problems in UX. The appropriate use of gamification and well-chosen game mechanics can become a valuable tool for UX designers on the way to increasing user engagement of the product as well as conversion rates. So how does it work? First of all, the gamification brings the element of fun to the websites and applications. People enjoy the interactive process full of fun, challenges, and competitive spirit similar to video games, so they are encouraged to go back. Furthermore, the game mechanics are the powerful motivators for the users. The game elements set the tasks and the awards are promised to those who accomplish them. The curiosity and excitement drive people to continue performing various tasks and spend more time on the app or the website.

In addition, today gamification already goes as one of the major design approaches. Plenty of designers have caught the hype and actively apply this method in various projects. That’s why many users might already have an experience of interacting with the gamified products which means they expect the same from yours.

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Summing it up, gamification is quite a new technique that is now on the path of active proving its reliability as an effective design method. Nevertheless, its popularity is growing really fast so it has good chances to become the leading approach in a short time.

Recommended reading

Here are some more articles we could recommend for those who would like to get deeper into the topic:

Gamification Mechanics in UX Design: User Journey
Gamification And UX: Where Users Win Or Lose
Gamification: Designing for Motivation
5 examples of great gamification
Introducing Game Mechanics for Gamification

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Сообщение Gamification in UX. Boosting User Engagement появились сначала на Design4Users.