Gamification : The next big concept
Gamification, while writing this word in the blog I can see dotted red line underneath meaning it is grammatically incorrect word. Clearly, this word is still not an accepted English word in standard dictionaries. I’m sure though, the acceptance gamification has achieved in our daily lives, it will soon be a standard terminology.
Okay, so what exactly is it? When game elements & principles are employed in a non-gaming activity, it is called gamification of that activity. Just when you thought a definition would help you clarify concept, it made things more unclear :D Lets understand things one by one.
- What are game elements & principles? I hope you are already familiar with concept of games. If this is your first day on planet let me define it for you, a game is a well designed form of fun activities towards a reward based goal by clearing challenges within some structured rules. This definition would encompass most of the games that you’ve played. Now, elements & principles of game are the set of components that make up games eg. Fun activity, Goal, Challenges, Rewards on success, Competition etc.
- What are non-gaming activities? Well, you know what are gaming activities, like Tic-Tac-Toe, Temple Run, Poker, Snakes & Ladders, Football. So non-gaming activities are Sleeping, Drinking water, Completing homework, Cleaning your room, Travel to office etc.
Finally, lets connect these two things. Gamification is when you bring the game elements to non-game activities. Now one may ask, why would someone want to do that? Why would gamification be required? The answer is, to make non-game activities as fun as games. If we can bring fun part of games to boring & mundane activities, they would also become enjoyable. It is a win-win for all the entities attached to a business, the consumers now get to see a more interesting fun-reward-challenge based version of same thing and the companies see more engagement from users who are happily using their products.
The interesting thing is that we all have been part of gamification unknowingly since childhood. While in school, how many times have you heard parents say this to you, Alright, if you complete homework in an hour, we will go to see the movie. This small thing was gamification! Your parents brought game elements like reward (movie), goal (complete homework), challenge (an hour deadline), fun activity (completing homework, I know it is not fun but the element of movie has made it fun) and all these things gamified the boring homework task. This was just one example, gamification is nothing new for any of us if we see closely how we gamified our routine tasks in past to bring motivation.
From where I see, even education system is gamified since beginning. Lets see how, you are on level 1 in a game (you join a new class), you learn techniques to fight monsters (you learn things in class), you have fights with small monsters (class tests), you learn more and move ahead and fight more small monsters (more class tests), then you have to fight a giant monster to clear level (final exam to clear class), if you lose in fight you repeat same level (if you fail in exams, you redo same class), or if you win then you are promoted to next level (clearing exams will promote you to next class), you get special rewards if you are among top players (top performers are awarded in exams).
After the What and Why, comes How! How do you do gamification in your business or activity or application? It largely depends on what kind of activity do you have in hand. A coffee shop would need different gamification than a coaching institue. But there are some fundamental generic steps that would help you decide what should you do in either case.
Define a Goal : The purpose of games are to reach a final goal like saving the Princess in Super Mario. Define the goal of your activity and design the flow such that users slowly move towards that goal. Having a goal is what separates play from a game, unless your users know what they are to achieve in the game, they would not be motivated enough to work towards it.
Reward the journey : The goal is one thing, but you have to keep the path to reach that goal interesting and rewarding so that user remains motivated. A user would easily give up unless he sees that he is progressing towards the goal. The path should be rewarded with level ups or badges like things. Remember the Up! movie, where Russel is so proud of his badges and work hard towards earning that one last badge?
Quantify achievement : The points system helps quantify the progress of users. They can show it off and feel proud in it. Different games use different names, betting games use money, card games use chips, some games use coins etc. This can help user know where they stand against someone instantly.
Bring Competition : We love to be challenged, we want to achieve something that our friends have but we don’t. Bring in that feeling of competition in your activity. Show users where they stand compared to their friends, tell them when a friend surpasses them in achievement. It will push them to beat that friend in activity.
Socialize : This is as important as competition. We are social animals, we love social activities. If you bring the social element in game, it will bring life to it. The involvement of friends and family in game would make it more life like.
Two gamification examples that I would particularly share with you are Linkedin and Zomato.
Linkedin has gamified the whole experience of profile building. They introduced the concept of Profile Strength. They segregated the information of any candidate like photo, work experience, education, current title, awards, contacts etc in 5 different buckets. Depending upon the information a candidate has filled in his profile, he is given the profile strength level which is displayed by a small circle in your profile. The incentive of achieving higher level in this meter is more visibility, according to Linkedin.
Zomato has gamified their app completely. They have created 13 levels in their app for users to achieve, the level of the user tells how big foodie he is. Top foodies are shown in leaderboard of their friend circle and regions. Users can add reviews & photos of restaurants to earn points which helps to increase their foodie level in app. It motivates people to flaunt how big foodie they are and how many different restaurants they have been to. The food dineline is again a very creative way that displays when and where this user has gone to eat.
There is lot more to gamification, businesses are adapting to gamification in order to drive more engagement, loyalty, lifetime value, branding and deeper customer relationships. Different companies are gamifying different verticals of their business like consumers, marketing, referrals, interviews, employees, advertisements, community building etc. It’s a great way to spark the motivation and desire in the target audience because of our natural love towards fun & competitions.
