Use game strategies in your app

Gamification is the application of game mechanics like avatars, points, badges, etc to derive human motivation. When the answer to your problem statement of why a user isn’t doing a task is “lack of motivation”, gamification can be used as a possible solution. It is the craft of deriving all the fun and engaging elements of games and applying them to a part of the product.

The games industry has mastered motivation and engagement by using a human-focused design system that appeals to certain core drives within us.

Let’s go over the 8 drives with some interesting and not so commonly used examples:

• 1. Epic meaning and calling: Do you ever wonder why some people contribute to a non-profit website like Wikipedia? Or why do they buy Life Insurance, sacrificing present joy for potential future cash that they know they won’t use? This is because of their drive to be a part of something greater than themselves and be someone’s hero. They feel chosen and therefore devote a lot of time to creating and maintaining things for the entire community.

Forest, a popular productivity app uses this core driver beautifully. Your focus time starts with a seed that grows if you stay focused and dies if you get distracted. You get virtual coins too after every successful session and you can spend them to plant trees in real life. People resonate with the noble cause of saving the planet and want to contribute.

• 2. Development and accomplishment: Progress towards a goal is an intrinsic driver of motivation. The process of learning skills, making progress, and overcoming challenges feel rewarding and meaningful. It is one of the most commonly applied gamification techniques. Udemy, Duolingo, and Khan Academy have become mainstream examples of the same. From using progress bars to indicate progress or dangling a trophy at the end of the course as a reward, education apps have used it all.

Blinkist, a book summary app, makes its users feel incredibly smart and effective, by showing progress bars for chapters, sharing interesting reads with their friends, and keeping a count of how many books the user has read. Twitter is an underrated example of using accomplishment.

Twitter came up with one-way followings in times when social connections were mutual. It allowed people to follow message updates of folks who were considered awesome. So gaining more followers felt like an achievement. People went to great lengths to earn followers, in turn making Twitter very popular.

• 3. Empowerment of creativity and feedback: Humans are creative beings. We find happiness in learning and imagination. This is why playing with lego, trying different combinations, and figuring things out is so much fun. TikTok users continuously use their creativity to come up with new content and get feedback on them from people who consume it. TikTok comes up with new tools to further enhance that creativity like filters, video templates, etc. Udemy allows users to create their online course on any topic from anywhere in the world. Even Farmville users who have unlocked all sorts of different plants, create beautiful pieces of art through digital pixels.

• 4. Ownership and possession: Humans are motivated when they feel they own something. They want to grow it, make it better. When one spends too much time customizing or growing something from scratch, they feel attached to it. That’s why people spend money on buying outfits for their game characters.

Users of Forest know the ownership they feel for the forest and the motivation to keep playing to keep it growing. In Farmville, a user constantly works towards increasing the value of their assets, expanding their farms, and making them look pretty. People are also more attached to their IKEA furniture because they spent time building it.

One of the easiest ways to utilize this drive is through collection sets. Google Pay did exactly this with its Diwali campaign. They came up with stamps that were a part of a set following the Diwali theme. Users had to collect all 5 stamps with an assured cashback of Rs. 251. We all know how successful that campaign was, from using Google Pay regularly to inviting their friends, users did it all to collect the stamps.

• 5. Social influence and relatedness: Mentorship, companionship, competition, envy, acceptance, and relatedness fall under this drive. This is why you want to buy a product that brings back childhood memories and nostalgia. Fitocracy and Fittr are fitness apps that help people find motivation through the community. People share their progress, provide suggestions and motivate each other. When utilized properly, it can serve as one of the strongest and long-lasting motivations for people to become connected and engaged.

Ron, a salesman for installing solar panels on the rooftops, structured his pitch somewhat like, I have come to install solar panels for your neighbors Smiths and Millers. Would you like it to be installed too? This created an 85% success rate and caused most of them to install it too. E-commerce websites also use the concept of social proof, stating how x users have bought an item. Duolingo recently came up with a feature called Friends Quest, where one can team up and take new quests every week. The idea is to keep each other accountable for completing the quest and winning exciting rewards.

• 6. Scarcity and impatience: This is the phenomenon of wanting something just because it is unavailable. Coffee meets bagel uses a concept called torture breaks. It gives users 5 cards to swipe every 24 hours. Your mind sort of waits for the clock to strike noon so you can go check the fresh cards, likes, and matches. Facebook initially was just available at the most prestigious school, so when it later opened up doors to everyone, they all wanted to join because they couldn’t get in earlier. Clubhouse was yet another company that executed this well. Everyone wanted to get in and was looking for referrals, creating a lot of hype.

E-mart wanted to increase its traffic and sales during lunchtime. They launched a campaign called sunny sale where they built a statue in front of their stores, which transformed into a QR code at noon. Now, because the QR Code could only be scanned between 12 PM to 1 PM, people rushed to the stores to see what happened. This led them to increase their foot traffic by 25% during lunch hour.

• 7. Unpredictability and curiosity: When our brain doesn’t know what is going to happen, it becomes very engaged, thinking about the outcomes. Unpredictable results can drive obsessive behavior because the brain wants to figure out the pattern which is triggering the reward. “Chase picks up the tab” is a good example. A user randomly receives $5 from Chase when they swipe their credit card. This causes users to regularly swipe it, in hopes of getting the reward again. Google Pay is no different. Users earn scratch cards for many transactions and it creates a sense of curiosity to find out what is behind that card. It could be cash, it could be coupons from different brands. Swiggy also uses the slot machine after a user places the order with a random chance of winning some discount. Users place more orders to be able to act, in hopes of getting the discount.

• 8. Loss aversion: Our brains are wired to prevent loss. Losing something feels a lot more painful when compared to the happiness of gaining something. So we go to great lengths to avoid something negative. Beeminder charges a user $5 if they go off track and don’t meet their objectives. Similarly, the tree dies if a user gets distracted during a session on Forest.

Apps asking you to sign up to prevent losing progress on a questionnaire is a classic example of “rightful heritage”. This is when a system first makes a user believe something rightfully belongs to them and then makes them feel like it will be taken away if they don’t commit the desired Action.On the Beeminder app, if you get off track and don’t hit your objectives, then you get charged $5. Some players need skin in the game, and the thought of losing something gets them motivated to take action.

Countdown timers are another way to appeal to this drive. It ensures that the user recognizes the presence of an expiring opportunity by showing them the narrowing down of the window in real-time. Amazon uses this concept well while showing “Lightning deals” where special discounts are applicable for a short period.

So, your next steps are to identify the behaviors you want users to perform, understand why they are not doing it, and then derive if gamification could remove that barrier. Are there any other unique examples that you have come across? Let me know in the comments down below.

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