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.

Halloween is an opportunity to be really creative. Judy Gold

Although Halloween is definitely not aimed to be the most positive celebration comparing to other holidays, still its popularity is amazingly wide and spread all over the world. Today even the countries far from the historic background, which brought Halloween and its traditions to the list of holidays, are keen to take the best from the day. And also it’s not a secret that Halloween has a great impact on business: the only fact stated by history.com and mentioning that one quarter of all the candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween looks really persuasive.

Halloween has also grown into the great source of inspiration for designers who try themselves in various styles, techniques and materials working over new concepts devoted for the holiday: perhaps, there is no design direction that would avoid participating in this movement. Posters, costumes, home decor, invitations and cards, toys and packaging, food decor, illustration, digital art for websites and applications – everything applies powerful creative force fighting for users and buyers attention. And in this process sometimes great art works with immediate wow-effect are created. No wonder that the week before this bright celebration, D4U Inspiration post will be fully devoted to the theme: today we offer you the extensive set of diverse artworks with bright and ominous Halloween spirit!

Background and history

A bit of history won’t do harm to get deeper into details surrounding this famous holiday and preserving people’s beliefs and traditions.

Roots of the custom of celebrating Halloween are hidden in the ancient Celtic festival Samhain (pronounced sow-in) and it marked the beginning of New Year which Celts started from 1 November. The day celebrated the crossroads between the summer ended with harvest and start of the winter with its gloomy cold mood. There was a strong belief that the night between old and new year pushes the boundaries between the world of live and the world of dead. So, Samhain was celebrated as the day when ghosts can come to people while Druids can get their support and predict the future. The day was full of bonfires, sacrifices, specially made costumes and the like. Later, along the line of historic changes and cultural interactions, the tradition mixed with the customs of Roman Empire to commemorate the dead at that time of the year and honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees.

The holiday went through multiple transformations and found its followers in different countries, still America became perhaps the most fruitful ground for it to get deeper roots. High diversity of cultural background of the immigrants from many countries coming to the New World added new features and interesting points making Halloween celebration even brighter through history. Now this is the time when lots of children and adults are open to the mysteries and fun, bright emotions spiced with little pinch of horror.

Certainly, this day is still linked to numerous superstitions that strongly support its mysterious and scary image. People often leave spare places and dishes on the festive table for their dead relatives that could visit them. Black cats are avoided with specially high attention this day due to ancient beliefs of their connections to witches and spirits. People born this day are believed to have superpowers and forseeing abilities. Anyway, whether people really believe these superstitions or just take another chance of celebrating bright moments of life, Halloween becomes a great part of modern culture and annually ignites designers and artists to present the world new and new pieces of creativity. Today Halloween motifs are featured at everything that felt designer’s touch, from traditional illustrations, posters and cards to digital art for computer games and user interfaces. Many samples of design for Halloween show the childish style and nature, as children are directly involved in the process, especially via “treat-or-trick” tradition.

So, let’s look at the variety of visual artworks grounded on the ancient traditions mixed with innovative forms and design techniques and catch some spooky and mystic vibes.

Halloween Design Gallery

By Inkration

By Mauricio Abril

By Icons8

By Caley Hicks

By Caley Hicks

By Alexey Tikhonov and Natalia Plotnikova

By Daria Danilova

By Agatha Carelus

By Tim Verhoeven 

By Julia Molchanova

By Denis Krasavchikov

By Tad Carpenter

By Anna Paschenko

By RADIO

By Justas Galaburda

By AomAm

By Junissa Bianda

By Kate Frolova

By  Hyoju Park

By Pamela Barbieri

By Dmitry Stolz

By Victor Evsyugin

By Gev Marots

By Natalie Smith

By Julien

Bright and shaky Halloween to you! Stay tuned!

For more inspiration, check the sets of other posts from our D4U Gallery, where we gather impressive creatives to share their art with you, for example:

• people illustration gallery
• wine packaging design
• captivating 3D animation concepts
• Procreate illustration tutorials
• realistic 3D portraits
• impressive packaging designs 
• artistic portrait collages
• childhood illustrations
• 3D illustrations
• book cover designs
• sunny digital artworks

Сообщение D4U Inspiration. Halloween Design Spirit появились сначала на Design4Users.