Nowadays the word “gamification” is on the lips of not only gamers, but also of UX/UI-designers. Сustomers are aware that gamification is a trend, that it can captivate users and make them spend more time on the site. Is such a technique as using game mechanics in the interface really a magnet that “glues” the user to the screen? Let’s look into it.

What is behind the term “gamification”?

I already answered this question in the first paragraph. Gamification is a technique in interface design, the essence of which lies in the use of game elements to increase user engagement. This is a superstructure over usability, which means that gamification should not complicate or block the user’s way to achieve the goal. Basically, it is an unobtrusive addition that makes the process of using your product more enjoyable and interesting.

Some years ago, when I was a journalist at a news agency before entering design, I used to add some sorts of interactive elements in my longreads, assembled on my knees with free web services, so that readers weren’t too bored. Of course, it wasn’t a gamification in its full meaning. But it was clear to a young journalist even back then that it is fun to poke something with your hands on a page where you are supposed to only read. These words, in fact, describe the magical effect of game mechanics: if you give people the challenge and interactivity, when they are not too much looking forward to it, they are willing to be drawn into the designer’s proposed quest. Especially if it will dilute the routine.

Types of game mechanics in the design of interfaces

The first thing that comes to mind as examples of gamification are various points, badges and statuses, as in the Garmin app, they are not the very essence of this technique. Gamification should motivate the user to certain actions: reading the instructions from start to finish, meticulously filling out the questionnaire, daily exercise and so on. All these points, badges and other “gaming” stuff are just tools to help you as a designer to achieve your goal.

Challenge

People love challenges. Those who disagree obviously haven’t logged on to Instagram or TikTok in the last five years. Yes, designers have learned how to use the human urge to focus for the sake of not falling flat when faced with a challenge.

If you can skillfully challenge the user in the middle of his everyday tasks, it will encourage him to complete even an activity that a minute ago seemed boring and monotonous. You don’t have to go far to get an example: HeadHunter and LinkedIn are constantly remind you how full your profile is, and how full it will be if you will add more information about yourself to your resume. Most people will be confused by the thought of not having a 100 percent complete profile, even if it doesn’t prevent them from using the product. And if we’ll spread the example of HeadHunter, an indicator in a prominent place indicating how often the employer invites employees for an interview with your level of completeness, one way or another will spur you to fill out this unfortunate form to the end.

But this mechanic can be made even better — just add a reward for completing the challenge! After all, if the completion of tasks will be rewarded, the motivation of the user will be even stronger. A great example of the power of rewards is the interface of the Habitica app, which helps to get rid of bad habits and instill good ones. In it, the main motivator for the user is the points he gets for taking the time to do a new habit. These points can be spent on upgrades and improvements within the app.

Personal Achievements

Those of you who have played The Sims at least a little bit, probably sooner or later came to the desire to create a superhuman in the game. It had to be a character who in his short life should find time to do everything: to master all the available skills, to fulfill all the desires, to move up in his career and in general become almost a god of the world. Remember how you denied the poor Sim some food and sleep, just so he would finally fill up the mechanics skill scale? After all, his life is so short, and you should have time to make him a “Renaissance Man”.

So, the designer can offer the user exactly the same scales, by which you can track the level of mastery of a particular skill. Educational products like the Duolingo app often resort to using this mechanic. The entire language course there is divided into blocks and modules, each of which has its own scale of mastery. After completing the next block and successfully confirming knowledge with a test, the user gets an achievement award, and the scale of the completed block is beautifully filling to the brim.

This is somewhat similar to what I wrote about in the previous subsection, but there is still a difference. There, filling out the conditional questionnaire 100% is not a purpose itself. It is a separate mechanic that promises you more effective use of the product.

Here, on the other hand, the whole point is to master something for the sake of achieving a goal. The scales and achievement icons you fill out are the personal skill bar that the product serves to master. The interface literally pokes its half-empty progress-bars at your inner achiever, and urges you to spend another 15–20 minutes on new exercises. And your reward is your new skill or habit, not some useless badge.

Step-by-step onboarding

Learning how to use your product is generally a good tone. Especially if it doesn’t look like any item from the real world that a member of your target audience uses at least once a day. However, onboarding can be approached creatively and turn the process of mastering the app itself into a kind of game.

In particular, the process of diving the user to the product can be divided into several levels, where the next level becomes available only after the previous one is passed. Of course, it sounds as if the mechanics is only a barrier to the user, but hold on to your indignation! After all, if you reward people for passing your training, it can be a bonus for them, motivating them to continue. For example, at ProdPad, every training phase you pass extends a free trial period of using the platform. This, on the one hand, gives the user more time to immerse himself in the product and get attached to it, and on the other hand, allows you to teach him all the subtleties of the work, so that he will not leave later, faced with something he cannot find or understand.

By the way, it is good to carefully approach the issue of visualizing the complexity of each level and the expected reward for its mastering. So the user will understand whether it is worth it to “play” further, as well as how much time and effort it will take.

Note that refusal to take the training in this case should not be a barrier to using the site/application. If the user knows what to do, let them do it and don’t impose anything!

Social Competition

Social rankings, something many people are so afraid of, can actually be a great game-changer for engaging your user.

The reason people dislike rankings so much is that the risk of ending up in the last positions is quite high. And the social censure you can face if you happen to find yourself at the bottom of the standings is unimaginably uncomfortable. So it’s only worth using the mechanics of social competition in safe territory.

Here are a couple of examples, by which you will immediately understand how to do and how not to do. For example, you have a website with which users donate money to develop a cure for cancer. If you do a donation ranking, we see that a poor student, plucking two kopecks from his scholarship every month, will be, to put it mildly, not at the top of it. Will that diminish his merit? No. Will he be comfortable with seeing himself in the last places? Hardly. Would it demotivate him? Of course it would.

Another thing is if you have an app for runners (hello, Nike Training Club) or athletes. Burned more calories than your neighbor today? Great, you moved up on the chart and got a badge! Down a couple of spots in the rankings? Looks like it’s time to go out for an unscheduled evening run instead of eating chips to a TV show all night long.

When using ratings, it’s important that you take into account the specifics of the field in which your product operates, as well as the mentality of the people who will use it. In this case, it’s not unreasonable to procast your target audience. But that is another story.

Multiplayer

The desire of people to concentrate on something, which I have already mentioned above, can be both individual and consolidated, that means a group. And it works extremely simply: you just need to specify a goal. It has to be big enough to understand that it’s easiest to achieve together, but it has to look realizable. Voila — the user has taken the “bait” and is already looking for like-minded people.

The degree to which this mechanics influences people is nothing short of amazing. The first and most obvious example of how this works is crowdfunding sites. For their essence is to encourage users to join forces to help others or to make someone else’s idea a reality.

However, these mechanics work best when paired with “wraps”: a progress bar that shows how close you are to the goal, and a timer that urges you to hurry. Agree, when you see “30 days to go” on IndieGoGo, you don’t perceive it as “the whole 30 days” but as “only 30 days”. Especially if there’s a lot left to collect.

Afterword

During years UX and usability strive to simplify, reducing the user journey to a short walk from point “A” to call-to-action. However, it makes the very process of interacting with most interfaces boring.

It follows that using unusual tools can make your product stand out from the competition. And gamification in good hands can undoubtedly become such a tool. After all, the pleasure a person gets when playing a game makes the process of interaction with the product not only useful, but also enjoyable.

However, it is extremely important to understand where the use of this or that game mechanics is appropriate. For example, some users consider attempts to flirt with them in “serious” interfaces as a sign of bad taste, which spoils the karma of the company owning the product. So while game mechanics can serve you well, don’t forget to research your audience thoroughly before using them.