Literature Survey on Gamification

UX Gamification Concept: Principles and Tactics | Adam Fard Studio

Points to note:

  • Identify what user’s care about.
  • Identify activities that directly benefit the user.
  • Needs to be done right or else it will just become a piece of decoration element with no purpose.
  • It’s essential that we gamify actions that matter to the user, and, above all, these actions need to promote healthy and useful habits. 
  • Key Elements of Gamification
    • Objectives
      • Creating clear goals allow us to set clear milestones for users. It provides users with a clear guideline regarding what they need to achieve to receive a reward.
    • Reward
      • Positive reinforcement is a potent factor in human psychology. When rewarded, we feel happy and experience less stress due to increased activity in the brain’s dopamine circuit;
    • Competition
      • In a well-designed gamification experience, competitive interest pushes us to perform better. It has a powerful quality of engaging a person without willing to impede their opponents.
  • Example of Gamification
  • Challenges and streaks
    • Duolingo
      • When it comes to education, consistency is key. The app provides its users with experience points for completing challenges and daily streaks.
  • In-app currency and points
    • Reddit
      • Another way of keeping your users engaged is to provide them in-app currency or points, which they earn as they progress. This currency has two central purposes — reflect status or allow its exchange for physical or digital goods.For instance, Reddit’s point system is an indicator of your posts’ quality and your overall contribution to the community.
  • Badges & stickers
    • Trip Advisor
      • The purpose behind badges and stickers is to indicate that a person has achieved a laudable result. They’re a great way to awaken a sense of accomplishment. That being said, it’s important to create meaningful milestones for users, in order for these awards to matter. Here’s an example of how Tripadvisor tries to reward their users for performing useful actions like reviewing hotels.
  • Leaderboards & social interactions
    • Endomondo
      • Humans are social animals. We appreciate social validation, but we also value a little competition. Incorporating social interactions in your gamification strategy is vital for increased engagement. Endomondo, a social fitness network, allows users to react to other people’s commitments and performances.
  • Progress Bar
    • GoodReads
      • People like to keep track of their progress. It’s a sign of change and improvement. Progress bars are great motivators for this reason in particular, but also because we dislike incompleteness. Having a half-filled progress bar is slightly irritating, and it often pushes us to fill it in. 

Elements we can look into

  1. Progress Bar in Practice for Chapters
  2. Leaderboard
    1. Most Active Users
    2. Most timespent in Practice
    3. Most Tests
    4. Consistent Performance
    5. Streak of Days Active
    6. Most Streaks
  3. Beneficial Activities for Users
    1. Test Feedback
    2. Number of questions/timespent in session/number of session
  4. Badges
    1. A user who always goes through all the mistakes in test feedback.
      1. Each time, the user views all the incorrect questions in test feedback.
    2. Minimum of n minutes timespent on practice session for n sessions.
      1. Consistency