What is Product Gamification?
Product Gamification is an approach that involves integrating game-like elements into non-game contexts to motivate and engage a product’s users. By leveraging principles commonly found in games, such as rewards, challenges, and progress tracking, product designers can use product gamification to enhance their users’ experiences, drive engagement, and encourage desired behaviors.
Let’s take a look at some examples of product gamification elements and approaches…
Rewards
Rewards provide product users with a sense of achievement and reinforce desired behaviors. They can be tangible, such as badges, points, gifts, or virtual currency, or intangible, such as unlocking new capabilities or accessing exclusive content. By strategically implementing rewards product designers can incentivize users to explore and interact with the product, driving engagement and increasing motivation.
Let’s consider a mobile fitness app as an example of how the strategy of rewards could be implemented:
| Product: Fitness App. Objective: Increase user engagement and motivation to use the app regularly. Strategy: Implement a rewards system to incentivize users to explore and interact with the app. Example Implementation: Daily Workout Streak: Whenever users successfully finish a workout, they accumulate points that contribute to their ongoing streak. Upon hitting designated landmarks (like 7 days or 30 days), they unlock extra rewards, like access to premium workout regimens or exclusive insights from fitness experts. Accomplishment Badges: Users collect badges upon completing specific fitness objectives, such as covering a specific distance, attaining a desired weight, or finishing a set of workouts within a month. These badges provide not only a gratifying sense of achievement but also open up new functionalities within the app, like custom-made workout schedules or nutritional guidance. Social Rewards: The app encourages users to connect with their friends and share their fitness achievements. When users receive likes or comments on their activity posts, they earn virtual currency that can be used to unlock special workout challenges or purchase fitness equipment within the app’s virtual store. Referral Program: Users are given the option to invite their friends to join the app. When their friends sign up and start using the app, both the referrer and the new user receive bonus points or virtual currency, creating a sense of community and encouraging word-of-mouth promotion. Weekly Challenges: The app hosts weekly challenges with specific fitness tasks or activities. Users who participate and complete the challenges receive rewards such as in-app currency, which can be redeemed for premium features or partner discounts on fitness gear. Implementing rewards strategically, the fitness app drives user engagement, motivates users to stay consistent with their workouts, and encourages a loyal user base that actively interacts with the app’s features. |
Progress & Milestones
Additionally, by visually representing user progress and milestones, product designers can provide users with a sense of direction and achievement. Progress tracking can take the form of progress bars, level indicators, or achievement badges. These elements can help users understand where they are in their journey, providing a sense of continuity that motivates them to continue engaging with the product.
This time let’s consider a language learning app as an example of how the strategy of visually representing user progress and milestones can be implemented:
| Product: Language Learning App. Objective: Increase user motivation to learn and continue engaging with the app. Strategy: Implement visual progress tracking to provide users with a sense of direction and achievement in their language learning journey. Example Implementation: Lesson Progress Bars: In the app’s language courses, each lesson is represented by a progress bar. As users complete lessons and exercises, the progress bar fills up, visually indicating their advancement through the course. This provides a clear sense of direction and accomplishment as users see their progress grow with each completed lesson. Level Indicators: The app assigns users to different language proficiency levels based on their performance in assessments or quizzes. Progressive Proficiency Levels: Commencing at the beginner stage, users advance through intermediate and advanced tiers as they hone their language skills. Their present level and the prerequisites for attaining the subsequent level are presented on their profile, instilling the motivation to strive for progression. Achievement Badges: Users acquire badges by reaching predetermined landmarks or mastering language-centric challenges, such as learning a specific number of new words, excelling in a series of lessons, or maintaining regular practice over a designated time frame. These badges are prominently showcased on the user’s dashboard, highlighting their accomplishments and evoking a sense of accomplishment. Weekly Progress Reports: The app sends users weekly progress reports summarizing their learning activities, such as the number of lessons completed, words learned, and overall improvement. Users can visually track their learning trends and set personal goals based on their progress, which reinforces their commitment to the learning process. Leaderboards: The app features leaderboards that show users’ rankings based on factors like daily practice time, streaks, or the number of lessons completed. Users can compare their progress with others, creating a healthy sense of competition and further motivating them to stay consistent and engaged. Visually representing user progress and milestones in these ways, provides the app’s users with a clear sense of direction, a feeling of accomplishment, and a continuous motivation to keep learning and improving their language skills. |
Social Elements
In addition to increasing a product’s stickiness, social elements can also play a significant role in gamification. By incorporating social features such as verification badges, leaderboards, achievements, and collaborative challenges, product designers can create a sense of competition, collaboration, and community. Along with the social interaction previously discussed, these types of social features can help drive and enhance engagement and motivation by tapping into users’ intrinsic desires for recognition, social connection, and competition.
Once again, let’s take a mobile fitness tracking app as an example of how social elements can be incorporated to enhance engagement and motivation through gamification:
| Product: Fitness Tracking App. Objective: Increase user engagement and motivation to maintain an active lifestyle. Strategy: Incorporate social features to create a sense of competition, collaboration, and community among users. Example Implementation: Verification Badges: Users earn verification badges when they complete specific fitness challenges or reach certain milestones. For example, they might earn a “10K Steps Champion” badge after consistently achieving 10,000 steps in a month. These badges provide a sense of accomplishment and encourage users to strive for recognition within the community. Leaderboards: The app displays leaderboards that rank users based on their daily or weekly activity levels. Users can see how they compare to others in terms of steps taken, calories burned, or workout duration. The competitive element drives users to push themselves further to climb up the leaderboard and be recognized as top performers. Achievements: Users unlock achievements for completing various fitness-related goals, such as running a certain distance, completing a set number of workouts in a week, or achieving a personal best in a specific exercise. These achievements not only provide a sense of accomplishment but also serve as milestones to track progress and set new challenges. Collaborative Challenges: The app hosts team-based challenges where users can join or create groups to work together towards a common fitness goal. For instance, a “Summer Step Challenge” encourages participants to collectively achieve a target number of steps. This creates a sense of collaboration and camaraderie, motivating users to support each other in achieving their fitness objectives. Social Sharing: The app allows users to share their fitness achievements and progress on social media platforms or within the app’s community feed. This feature encourages social interaction, where users can cheer each other on, provide encouragement, and celebrate successes together, further strengthening the sense of community. Incorporating these social elements into the fitness tracking app, product designers can tap into intrinsic desires for recognition, social connection, and competition. This creates a much more engaging and motivating experience for users, as they feel a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded individuals striving towards common fitness goals. |
Examples of Product Gamification in Popular Products
Here are 10 products that use gamification techniques:
- Nike+ – The app and sensors track runs and workouts. Users can compete, earn points, badges, and level up.
- Khan Academy – The educational site uses points, badges, energy bars, and avatars to encourage learning.
- Quicken – The finance app motivates users to track finances and reach money goals through product gamification.
- TripIt – The travel app gamifies trip planning by encouraging users to earn badges for bookings and completions.
- Habitica – The habit/productivity app lets users set goals and earn experience points and rewards for completing tasks.
- Duolingo – The language learning app uses game-like elements like points, levels, and streaks to motivate users.
Effective Product Gamification: Conclusion
Effective product gamification goes beyond simply adding game elements. It requires a thoughtful understanding of the users’ motivations, goals, and preferences. However, product designers must carefully align the gamified elements with the product’s purpose and user needs. Additionally, it is essential to strike a balance between challenge and attainability, ensuring that the gamified elements are neither too easy nor too difficult.
Gamification has been successfully applied in various domains, spanning education, fitness, productivity, and e-commerce, augmenting user experiences and promoting engagement. Through adeptly integrating game-based components while considering user preferences, product designers can create captivating and inspirational encounters that keep their users returning time and time again.
