In the ever-evolving UX landscape, gamification is resurging at Hi Mum! as a key strategy. Technical innovations in recent years have enabled new user experiences, but the magic touch of gamification makes interactions approachable and engaging. By infusing game design principles into non-game products, we can elevate user experiences, making them more enjoyable, motivating, and meaningful.
It takes a nuanced understanding of your product offering and, more crucially, your users, to get the most out of gamification; a bad product with a leaderboard is still a bad product.
While the specifics vary from company to company product to product, and user group to user group, we’ve uncovered a few key balancing acts that need to be considered to most any successful gamification endeavour:
When considering gamification, many businesses jump straight to their own priorities - rather than their users. This leads to apps that try to use gamification to intervene in user behaviour, without considering what the user’s own desires are. A product owner says “My KPI for the quarter is improving week 1 retention and using this widget, so let’s add a badge for users who come back after a week and use this widget” and call it a day. These approaches can shift the needle, but can also be distracting, ineffective or even patronising in some contexts.
Instead, focus on amplifying the behaviours that users are already in favour of - what are the user’s goals with the product, and how can we use gamification to help them achieve that?
Waze relies on crowd-sourced data to keep the maps of remote locations up-to-date and give reliable information about crashes, road closures or police cars. However, users would stick to their typical routes and only occasionally report closures and hazards. To encourage users to share that info, Waze gamified the process, granting points for reporting new information, or for driving down less-frequented roads to keep the map up to date.
One reason this worked so well is because the gamification amplified something users cared about already - a shared mission to get better traffic information, at a time when GPS directions were notoriously unreliable.Rewarding and quantifying how much a user contributed to that collective effort made that effort feel recognised - creating an effective incentive which made the app better for everyone.
Gamification is most effective when it amplifies a behaviour users already want to achieve.
Avoid trying to shift users’ behaviours too far from what they want to get out of your product.
Focus on gamifying desirable behaviours that users are already bought in on but you want to encourage.
It can be easy to lose the forest for the trees when gamifying a product - it is tempting to gamify every aspect of every experience, for every user. One of the key balancing acts in designing effective gamification systems is figuring out whether gamification in your product is a feature in its own right, or facilitator for other features. Do your users come to you because your experience is gamified, or to achieve something else?
If gamification is a feature, users will go to your product because it’s gamified e.g. parents looking for e-learning apps want confidence that it will hold their child’s attention - gamification is a feature and a selling point to them. In contrast, users go to products like LinkedIn for the professional network - gamification only facilitates that by encouraging behaviours that make that professional network more compelling.
Feature: Apps like Habitica (habit & task management) and StudyBunny (focus timers) treat gamification as a core feature - adding a layer of motivation to goals users otherwise care about. Users drive the tasks and goals they want to achieve - the apps provide a gamified framework to help them follow through on the habits and tasks they want to get done.
Facilitator: In contrast, users go to products like LinkedIn for the professional network - not gamification. Gamification facilitates the rest of the experience by encouraging behaviours that make that professional network more compelling - completed profiles, posting content or contributing to their latest AI generated content.
Consider what gamification would look like as a feature for your product, and what it would look like as a facilitator for other features.
If gamification is a feature, shout it loud and proud and use gamification to help solve the user’s problems (e.g. finding ways to stay motivated while studying).
If gamification is a facilitator, carefully consider how gamification should come to life to support other product features and journeys.
Waze relies on crowd-sourced data to keep the maps of remote locations up-to-date and give reliable information about crashes, road closures or police cars. However, users would stick to their typical routes and only occasionally report closures and hazards. To encourage users to share that info, Waze gamified the process, granting points for reporting new information, or for driving down less-frequented roads to keep the map up to date.
One reason this worked so well is because the gamification amplified something users cared about already - a shared mission to get better traffic information, at a time when GPS directions were notoriously unreliable.Rewarding and quantifying how much a user contributed to that collective effort made that effort feel recognised - creating an effective incentive which made the app better for everyone.
Gamification is most effective when it amplifies a behaviour users already want to achieve.
Avoid trying to shift users’ behaviours too far from what they want to get out of your product.
Focus on gamifying desirable behaviours that users are already bought in on but you want to encourage.
For almost all products, there will be a segment of users who might love your core product, but just not get on with certain gamification systems. They may balk at attempts to encourage certain behaviour, they might find competition demotivating or have their own preferences. Not everyone is going to want to engage with gamification, especially when gamification might not be the reason they’re using your product.
This means we need to calibrate how we use gamification, and avoid swinging double-edged swords too aggressively. Don’t force users to engage deeply with all aspects of gamification if they could get value from just using the product by itself, e.g. be careful about gamification that requires users to engage in social or competitive behaviour within the app. If you’re not sure whether a part of your gamification features should be required, or optional, that’s a sign you need to test your system with real users!
Duolingo is famously gamified, using all manner of behavioural techniques to encourage users to keep engaging, learning and returning to the app. When adding leaderboards, they recognised that the competitive element doesn’t chime with everyone -leaderboards are kept out of the way in their own tab so users can choose to use it if it’s motivating to them, or just ignore it if not.
If gamification isn’t the main reason users might adopt your product, consider what the experience would look like for someone who doesn’t want to engage with certain gamification tools. Can users opt-out, or is gamification front-and-centre?
Be particularly careful around gamification that brings in social elements or competition.
Test your gamified features regularly and rigorously to find the right balance.
Successfully incorporating gamification into products is never a one-size-fits-all approach. It requires a nuanced understanding of user behaviour, thoughtful implementation, and a commitment to ethical design principles. Hi Mum! already works with many of our clients to amplify their experiences with gamification to drive richer, deeper connections with users.
Let us help you envision, design and test a gamification vision that drives real value for you and your users.
