Analyzing Gamified Solutions — DueProps
DueProps is a Peer Recognition Game for Workplaces
This is an article from my Analyzing Gamified Solutions series— make sure to check out my other articles in the series :
- Analysing Gamified Solutions — Classcraft
- Analysing Gamified Solutions — Memrise
- Analysing Gamified Solutions — Habitica
- Analysing Gamified Solutions — Google Local Guides
Welcome to the game of DueProps!
As always I will break up my analysis as follows:
- Why is gamification implemented?
- How well is gamification applied?
- What I would have done differently?
Introduction
Why is gamification implemented?
In a team environment it's not rare to see competitions to motivate people to achieve the best results. The problem with many of those competitions is that the company often has specific top performers who are highly favourable to win the competition making others quit when they realize they cannot catch up.
That results is recognizing the people who are already being recognized but those who actually need it, don’t get any. DueProps aims to use Gamification to bring recognition to everyone who might get overlooked by the top performers
How well is gamification applied?
Sadly DueProps does not use almost any of the powerful tools gamification provides. In fact DueProps may have used my “5 Mistakes to Avoid in Gamification” article as a guideline when creating the solution.
Not explaining the value of points
The idea of the solution is to exchange “Props” to recognize your colleagues. Every Prop has an assigned value of 2–5 points. Beyond that there are also Levels and Hearts in the system.
DueProps hopes that the idea of giving points to people is enough to fuel the solution with engagement as points themselves have no intrinsic or extrinsic value.
Beyond that, DueProps also features “Hearts” and “Levels” which after my full day of testing have no other value besides “higher number is good for some reason”.
Even if the only idea for points is to construct the leaderboard, the fact that users can have 5 props worth 10 points or 3 props worth 15 points makes the leaderboard moot because it’s unclear what the leaderboard is even measuring.
Forcing the user to make irrelevant choices
There are 117(!!!) different props the user can award and it all begins by choosing one specific Prop out of this list:
There are essentially 4 types of props based on the amount of points they award but DueProps has managed to turn it into an individual choice to make the easy interaction of giving out props as hard as possible.
Stopping after onboarding
After creating your account you are left to discover what DueProps offers instead of showing and engaging you in it. It's a huge loss of potential especially if you are offering a 30-day free trial policy. The solution has to aim for making you invested in the application but fails to do so.
The above screenshot is all that DueProps is doing to promote its features to a new user. Onboarding does not promote a journey, apparent competition, promoting incentives or narrative.
What I would have done differently?
I believe that the idea of the application actually works and solves a real issue. DueProps just has to focus on the correct aspects of behavioural design.
#1 Group the Props
Group the Props by their assigned point value — 2,3,4 and 5 point Props. After defining a point group, the Props in that group will be divided by few simple categories (for example Creativity, Execution, Skill, Thank you ).
That results in 2 main things:
- Props’ values translate into how much recognition you want to award someone hence giving weight to points.
- Making the choice quick and easy by only showing the user specific and contradictory options so it’s easier to choose.
#2 Less text, more action
DueProps has to focus on making it fun and easy to award props to other players. The current solution revolves around reading text and typing description before being able to award a Prop. I would redesign it so it would be easy and playful and looks more of an achievement rather than a chore.
#3 Make it a group effort not an individual effort
Although DueProps says that it is a Peer Recognition Game for Workplaces, everything about the solution suggest that people are playing individually as it is individuals who are trading Props.
Just the simple addition of showing everyone who is in the group on the dashboard and allowing to award Props from that list would make it more team-orientated. Add statistics of teams overall performance compared to other teams using DueProps and you get a team based system.
Conclusion
Boosting recognition through gamified solutions is a great way of helping large teams become more unified and individuals feeling better about their work. Sadly DueProps has not invested enough time and energy into developing a solution that uses gamification to tackle the issue.
Instead we have yet another service who thought applying points and leaderboards is all that it takes for an engaging application.
Other articles on Analyzing Gamified solutions:
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