Gamification is a user-centred approach that strives for creating responsive products and services that offer more than pure functionality. They are designed to engage human emotions and motivate users to create interactions that are both engaging and meaningful.
Since gamification is based in behavioural science, it allows designs to harness the perfect conditions for a product to be successful.
Gamification is the step of converting a product from a function-focused design into a human-focused design. You are honing for human motivation in a system rather than designing for the sole purpose of efficiency.
What is Gamification?
When UI/UX designers insert gameplay elements in non-traditional gaming settings, for enhancing user engagement with a product or service, it is known as gamification. This includes fun features like leaderboards and badges into an existing system. By doing this designers can tap into user’s intrinsic motivations and enhance their feelings of enjoyment when they use that product or service.
Why should designers use gamification in user experience?
Gamification can be a very powerful tool to drive user engagement. By injecting fun elements into applications and systems that might otherwise lack immediacy or relevance for users. Users feel incentivised to achieve goals and also helps them overcome any negative associations they may have with the tasks that the system requires them to complete. This dynamic element that designers incorporate in gamification serves as an effective tool of motivation, meaning that users engage with the product or service because they want to.
An example of this is the website Foursquare which crowns users with the title of “Mayor” of an establishment after x number of visits. They are then incentivised to compete for the top place while enjoying meals, shopping, movies etc.
To introduce UX in gamification into your product or service, apply gameplay and rules and goals to tasks that might otherwise seem serious or mundane. You can gamify systems in many ways such as countdowns to encouragement for completing x percent of a task. Users enjoy interactivity and satisfying their curiosity. Consider adding a social element such as being able to share their progress on Facebook or Instagram to increase their engagement.
Types of game mechanics in UX design
Gamification has various types of game mechanics to spice up mobile and web experiences. It allows increasing user engagement, building loyalty toward the app creator and retaining users. These are the most popular types of game mechanics.
Badges and stickers
Just like in video games, badges and stickers can be incorporated into your mobile app experience and reward users for getting a certain number of points. These badges and stickers amplify a user’s satisfaction.
Leaderboard
Users love to compete. And nothing incentivises them to complete a task faster than the allure of an opportunity to be the leader. It makes using a mobile app UX into an even more exciting and adventurous activity.
A leaderboard is a great way to add an element of gamification into your product or service
Challenge
Anything challenging is always a lot more fun than any kind of tedious or mundane activity. Applied in mobile and web UX, this gamification technique helps motivate users to try new experiences and learn more about the product.
Points
The point system can be used to demonstrate a player’s progress. Used in UI/UX design, it enables users to see how much is done and how much is left. It acts as a stimulus boosting them to proceed with completing the tasks. Gamified digital products can include points to measure a user’s success as well.This is most widely used in language learning applications, productivity apps, time-management apps, task managers and various educational apps.
Journey
This game mechanics means onboarding users step by step, turning their experience with a product into a personal journey. This practice allows people to feel like real players discovering new product features during the app’s exciting journey. It feels like a game and adventure, and it improves the user’s interaction with a product, making it smoother and more enjoyable.
Conclusion
The role of gamification UI/UX design is that it’s amazing, fun, and extremely important. Gamification turns the user’s interaction with a product into an unforgettable experience full of adventures, fun challenges, and the pleasure of the win. Different types of game mechanics allow us to create particular experiences and evoke a specific spectrum of the user’s emotions.
Gamification empowers designers to drive human emotions that automatically means a product becomes remarkable and stand-out. Think of that from the empathic UX perspective. Gamification empowers you to drive human emotions that automatically means your product has more chances to become successful because it gets the user’s reaction.