Introduction to gamification and its role in user experience design

19 Feb 2020

Lilith Sylvia Daisy Tamm

Today, the term gamification AKA the use of game-like elements in non-game environments might be more familiar to most people than 10 years ago. Even if this is the first time you are hearing of it, then you have likely already encountered it to a much larger extent than you can even imagine. But what exactly is it and why is it important? What kind of a role does it play in user experience design?

The year was 2007...

When Steve Jobs took to the stage one day in January to present the very first iPhone – a device that is largely considered to be the archetype of all modern smartphones. The following years brought with them the huge smartphone boom, alongside which social media platforms were also growing fast. Fairly quickly, new best practices started to take shape for the creation of solutions during the smart era.

These same best practices are still being used and polished to this day and many of them have become so ingrained in the smart device culture that it is hard to imagine using various platforms without them.

A simple and great example of such a best practice is the pull-to-refresh function, which was designed by Loren Brichter who used it in his app Tweetie – a Twitter client meant for smartphones, which Twitter later bought and redeveloped into its official phone app.

Although Twitter later also acquired the patent for pull-to-refresh, the function had by then already been taken over by every other big player in the field, including Facebook and Google. This function is still used in mobile apps today and what makes it even more special is the fact that it is also a great example of gamification and how gamified solutions are used to a smaller or larger extent in nearly every software solution that people use today.

The ear of gaming/gamification

The term and idea of gamification was supposedly first coined by UK game developer Nick Pelling in 2002. But the term started getting more popular in 2010 when gamification started appearing in more and more new solutions.

One explanation for why gamification has only gained traction over the last decade has been that all the right conditions for it were met only 10 years ago: the birth of the smartphone era, the fast development of mobile internet, and the explosive popularity of social media.

Smartphones that could use a much faster internet connection transformed into the perfect platform for companies to start directly communicating with their target audiences via their apps. At the same time, the development of social media brought a more communicative aspect to the world of mobile apps. Since humans are an inherently social species, then this has played a huge part in the spread of gamification.

But gamification has not just gained positive attention. Gamification tricks have been implemented in various areas, including marketing. There is a plethora of examples out there where gamification has been used in such a way that users can immediately tell that the only goal of whatever they are using is to sell them something.

However, this kind of behaviour can drive people away from the company responsible as it can cause them to feel like the company only sees them as a financial source, not a valued member of their community. The goal of gamification should not be sales.

The goals of gamification

But what is the goal of gamification? Why should companies invest time in it? Zichermann and Cunningham have defined gamification as a term as follows: the process of utilising game-like thinking and game mechanics with the purpose of creating engagement in users and solving problems.[6] In other words, the goal of gamification is two-pronged. On the one hand, it can be used to solve existing problems through game mechanics, on the other, it is a way of creating more interest in a company’s product or service.

Danish web and user interface designer Peter Steen Høgenhaug described the purpose of gamification like this, “Gamification should be used to improve the experience of buying and using a product.”

A properly constructed gamified system will enable users to reach a state of flow, where a person is so deeply focused on something and engaged by it that they completely lose track of time.

To achieve flow, the person must feel that the task they are working on has the perfect balance between the challenge posed by the task and the person’s own skills and aptitude.

It is a state that many describe as entertaining and it is the reason why popular video games become popular – they can make a person reach the state of flow.

Therefore, achieving flow is extremely important since a good entertaining experience helps create positive connections in people’s minds to the thing that offered them the experience. In turn, repeated positive experiences help create a feeling of loyalty in people. In this way, gamification helps create loyalty in people towards one company or another and the entertaining experience also brings them back repeatedly to the company’s app or platform. Both results thus directly affect the company’s business results in a positive way.

Gamification in user experience

User experience expert and professor at the University of Siegen Marc Hassenzahl has said that good UX is the consequence of fulfilling the human needs for autonomy, competency, stimulation, relatedness, and popularity. The mechanics used in gamification mainly rely on motivation and at their core, games are voluntary activities that entertain the player.

The entertaining elements in a game are the motivating elements that drive a person to voluntarily play something. This is because these elements fulfil the aforementioned needs that help create good user experience. But different players are motivated by different things.

In the field of ludology or game studies, there are player types. Richard Bartle has defined four main types of players: Explorers, Achievers, Socialisers and Killers.

For Explorers, the most important thing is discovering the world and bringing home new experiences and things;
Achievers are competitive people for whom the most important thing is to achieve goals and win the game;
Socialisers are the most common players and their main goal in games is to interact with other people;
Killers form the smallest group of players and similar to Achievers, it is important for them to win the game but in their case, they also need to see someone else lose the game and recognise their win.

According to Bartle’s system, each player is a combination of all four types, but in most cases, one type dominates among the four.[6]

As we know, user experience design implements personas when describing user journeys. To implement gamification efficiently in user experience design, we must also think about what motivates our personas – what kind of players are they?

Nowadays, in addition to the four types mentioned above, player types suitable for gamification have also been developed which may help here:

socialisers who are motivated by relatedness;
free spirits who are motivated by autonomy;
achievers who are motivated by mastery;
philanthropists who are motivated by meaning;
players who are motivated by rewards;
disruptors who are motivated by change

To successfully implement gamification in user experience, the solution being developed should offer something for each player type that motivates them and matches their skills in terms of complexity to help them achieve a state of flow.

Once flow has been achieved, feedback loops need to be implemented to keep them in that state. These feedback loops need to inform the user that they are taking the correct actions and moving in the right direction.(G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

It is also important to keep in mind that gamification alone is not a goal. Gamification only works if it has a logical role and place and the user is able to perceive it as an organic part of the whole solution.

Gamified elements must also be developed for different parts during the design process or, if they are retrospectively added to an existing solution, they must be designed in such a way as to match the solution’s context.[9]

Gamification in practice

There are many different ways of practically implementing gamification. The following provides a small overview of a couple of ways of using gamification. Further reading material that includes more practical tips and tricks and advice for gamifying your platform can be found down below.

One of the most common ways of adding gamification to a platform or solution is through awards. Awards can be categorised according to the SAPS system which stands for Status, Access, Power, and Stuff.(G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

Awards that provide status are fairly widespread today. This category includes different scoreboards, badges and levels. Scoreboards and levels are perfect for engaging socialisers, achievers as well as players since they drive competition and interactions between users. Badges only work if they are also visible to others since their direct value lies in whether someone has obtained a badge and if so, who.(G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

Awards that provide access are the types of awards that allow the user to feel privileged. This includes gifts given upon reaching certain levels or advantages that standard users do not have: better seats on airplanes, access to limited-access places, being able to purchase something before others etc.(G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

Power awards are hierarchy-based. These provide standard users the opportunity to gain control over something that in turn affects the platform’s community. An example of this is giving active forum members a moderator role.(G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

Stuff is the easiest category to understand as this simply involves giving users free stuff for their activities. But it is recommended to ensure that stuff is not the only gamified award in a system since people are only motivated by stuff until they get it. (G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

Let us take a closer look at a specific game mechanic that many gamified systems also use: points. Points can be found in nearly every game in some form (e.g. overall score) and they are also used outside of games in many different areas (e.g. credit score, number of friends on a social media platform etc.).(G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

Zichermann and Cunningham propose five types of point systems that could be used in gamified systems: experience points, redeemable points, skill points, karma points, and reputation points.

Experience points reflect the user’s relationship with the platform – what level are they on, how long have they been using the platform, how well do they manage it etc. – these points will never max out.

Redeemable points can be exchanged for the platform’s internal awards; a common example of this is virtual currency.

Skill points can reflect the user’s capability of fulfilling specific activities on the platform – the higher the point count, the higher the quality of their activities.

Karma points can be given away. These enable the creation of systems where users can create positive emotions in each other via altruistic feedback and recognition.

Reputation points play an important role on those platforms where trust needs to be cultivated in users. Usually, the systems behind how these points are generated are quite complex. Their purpose is to give users feedback about the trustworthiness of an item, a place, or a person (e.g. ratings on Tripadvisor). (G.Zichermann, C.Cunningham)

One final practical example of gamification is the aforementioned pull-to-refresh function. This involves a movement that may be quite familiar to those who have visited casinos. This movement has the same type of effect on people as playing slots: the user pulls something (the screen with their finger or a lever) and hopes to win.

In the case of slots, the player hopes to get three identical pictures; in the case of mobile apps, such as Twitter or Facebook, the user hopes to see new posts. The gamified aspect of this function might keep the user in the app, but it does so via an addictive pattern, not through flow.

Gamification around us- examples

One of the most used examples of gamification is Foursquare, which used to work a little bit differently in its initial years. Up until 2014, Foursquare users could use the platform to check in to different places, thus earning points and badges on the platform. Users who had the most check-ins in a particular place would become mayors of those locations.

Some establishments even offered Foursquare users small awards, such as a free cup of coffee in a café. These functionalities made the app very entertaining: unlocking and collecting badges gave people small goals to fulfil and provided them with the option of collecting something while gathering points and becoming a mayor in as many places as possible created a kind of competition between users.

From the point of view of gamification, the system described above thus works as follows: the user’s goal is to check in to a place and the rules state that to do so, they must be near that place according to the GPS. According to the rules, the user can use the app to collect points, earn badges and compete with other people for the highest spot on the leaderboard AKA they can participate in Foursquare’s BPL scheme.

In 2014, Foursquare launched a new app – Swarm – their new gamified which works to this day. In other words, the gamified elements in Foursquare were moved to the new app while the old one was left with more informative functions, such as searching for locations, rating them, leaving feedback etc.

Another example of a gamified app, which is also widely used in Estonia, is the traffic app Waze. Every user’s contribution has huge weight in Waze and the app truly works based on that. Users participate in this “traffic game” by keeping the app open, which enables the system to measure traffic speeds in real-time in various locations, and the app can then display traffic jams on its map.

Additionally, users can also add informative tags on the map, e.g. showing the locations of police patrols or car accidents, and other users can constantly provide feedback about these tags (e.g. whether they are still relevant). Further, the app also awards users points for doing different activities and then adds them to Waze’s leaderboards, both local and global, based on their total scores. Users can also earn in-app levels for their points, thus unlocking new looks for their avatar which can be seen by other users.

So, we can also see gamification used in Waze: the user can only participate in the so-called game when they have the app open, adding tags and comments and giving feedback to existing ones creates communication between users, the user’s total score and leaderboard placement drive competition between users and the user’s avatar signifies their status in the system.

Where to go from here?

In just 10 years, gamification has had a huge impact on how we use apps and platforms in our everyday life. On one hand, it has helped transform boring activities into much more exciting and entertaining ones. On the other hand, gamification has also been used in ways where the benefit to users is non-existent or barely there.

From the perspective of user experience design, gamification can be used to great positive results as it helps to create very positive connections between users and solutions/platforms. But the prerequisite for achieving this is to get better acquainted with the core ideas of gamification and the various ways in which it can be implemented and then doing that correctly.