12 gamification techniques to enhance your user experience design
- Jasleen Ashta
- Feb 26, 2023
- 5 min read
We, as human beings, are chemically wired to love rewards. Dopamine is released when your brain is expecting a reward, which gives us a sense of pleasure. Games are often built to keep users hooked by giving them these rewards progressively.
Sid Meier, the creator of the Civilization series, once said that a game is "a series of interesting choices." A game typically revolves around play, pretend, rules, and goals.
Play here refers to the narrative and storyline you choose while playing.
People can pretend as characters while they build a particular narrative.
There are certain sets of dos and don'ts in a game which makes it challenging.
There are a set of progressive goals - physical or mental that a user intends to achieve.
The word "gamification" in terms of User Experience Design stands for the technique of borrowing and using game mechanics in the non-game environment, such as websites and mobile applications, to enhance user experience. We can inject fun elements into applications and systems that might otherwise lack immediacy or relevance for users through gamification. When you do this right, you incentivize users to achieve goals and engage with the system because they want to. Gamification works exceptionally well when we try to make serious and mundane tasks enjoyable.
Gamification is a part of the design process itself and should not be something you apply after designing and building your product. Here are 12 techniques of gamification that can help enhance your user interfaces.
Tangible user experiences: Tangible user experiences refer to making user interfaces that work smoothly across all platforms (desktops, mobiles, tablets etc.), i.e. responsive user interfaces
Dropbox has a responsive design that functions well across all platforms.
2. Location-based websites: Location-based websites help in personalizing user experiences based on their country, culture and language.
H&M customizes its website according to different countries and cultures
3. Constructive and helpful feedback: When an interface has constructive and helpful feedback within it, it helps make user journeys simpler. The best example for this is "Do you mean" in a google search.
Google - Google uses AI to help correct spellings and provide a smoother search experience.
4. Tell a story: Humans have a habit of breaking down information into bits for remembering. Stories help in forming an easy-to-remember information flow.
Airbnb engages its users by telling stories from customers who have enjoyed their stay at Airbnb. They also take pride in telling their own story and taking the user through the journey of Airbnb.
5. Challenge your audience: Challenges are exciting, and being able to fulfil challenges gives a sense of accomplishment to the users. Even small challenges, when done regularly, can add up to significant results. Therefore, users love challenges, and they often act as motivation to get things done.
Fitbit challenges its users to complete their goals and increase their workout intensity over time.
6. Have a Goal System: Setting goals for users help in giving a sense of purpose to the system. Goals make users feel pleased when they succeed and empower them with a feeling of accomplishment, which acts as an essential component of fun.
Forest helps people select a goal for not using their phone “avoid phubbing” for a particular period of time to increase productivity
7. Have points/ in-app currency: All of us love being rewarded and validated for our hard work. Having points or an in-app currency often refers to having a reward system in an interface. With these scores/ virtual money, we can motivate users to keep repeating mundane tasks or fulfilling challenges.
Duolingo gamifies learning through levels, in-app currency, badges and leaderboards. Duolingo uses gems to customize its mascot or give a user its winning streak back.
8. Usage of badges and stickers: A certain amount of points / in-app currency can lead to receiving badges or stickers within a platform. These are loved by users and help in making the apps creative and exciting. Badges give users a sense of accomplishment and pride and act as motivators.
Gpay often has these events in which users are required to collect badges to earn rewards. This helps in escalating user experience and adding an element of fun in the payment app.
9. Using leaderboards: Competition makes challenges more exciting for people, and they help in building up people's enthusiasm. Things like ranking amongst other users or friends, scores, number of badges, and levels help motivate users to spend more on the interface.
Snapchat launched a location-based leaderboard to encourage people to stay at home and make lockdowns less miserable.
10. Tracking journey/ progress: People like to keep track of their progress, as it's a sign of change and improvement. Progress bars are great motivators for this reason in particular, but also because users dislike incompleteness. Having a half-filled progress bar is slightly irritating, and it often pushes us to fill it in.
BYJU has made its progress tracking mechanism like games so kids get interested in levelling up topics and enjoy learning.
11. Having a set of rules: Limitations help us become more creative and react faster. Rules are repetitive and continuous actions users need to do, and they are tightly integrated with the primary offering of the product.
Tinder launched a set of rules for using the app in 2020, to make the app a safe space. These rules occur while the user is onboarding and help in gamifying the dating experience.
12. Having tutorials: Tutorials are a great way to take a user along the workflow of the interface, and they help the users feel at ease and not intimidated by the new interface. They make users comfortable with the interface and help them utilize it better.
Ghostwriter provides a detailed tutorial to a user upon signing up for the user to be able to use the platform to its full potential.
Gamification is a design technique that helps in making mundane tasks enjoyable. It makes experiences fun and helps in encouraging the user to return to the interface. However, we must agree that it is only the cherry on top of the cake and not the cake. So, if a product does not have an intrinsic value, gamification cannot help in boosting it. Gamification needs to be tied to the product for making the product better. These techniques would not work universally; some might work for a product while others might not. We need to remember that - "Gamification is a tool for increasing engagement and better user experiences and not selling the product."
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