5 things I wish I knew when I got started with gamification

8 Nov

Designing gamification can be tricky! Especially if you’re just getting started with it.

So I wanted to share 5 tips that I wish I knew when I was first getting started with gamification design.

1. Start with the problem, not the solution

A common theme I see is junior designers jumping straight into designing a gamified solution before fully unpacking the problem. I know, It can be really fun coming up with ideas for game design elements, but fully unpacking the problem you’re tackling first is integral to success.

You see, gamification can be a great tool for providing engaging and playful scaffolding around a behaviour you want to promote. But if the problem you’re dealing with is not due to a lack of motivation, (e.g., it could be due to poor usability) then adding gamification may not actually help.

This is why it’s super important to dive into the problem and understand why it’s occurring in the first place before choosing to design a gamified solution.

👉 Here’s a great article that covers this in more depth

2. There’s more to games than badges, leaderboards and points

When it comes to gamification, points, badges and leaderboards are totally overrated. Yet it’s a really common design pattern for many gamified solutions. Why? Because they’re easy to implement and have worked in the past.

But just because it’s worked before, doesn’t mean it will work again. It’s easy to look at an existing successful gamification case study like Duolingo and think that copying their gamification solution will lead to success.

However, your context, audience and problem are likely to be different. Understanding these three first is important to coming up with a gamified solution.

👉 Here’s a quick article on how to start thinking beyond badges, leaderboards and points

3. Build quickly, test often

You don’t want to spend a lot of time and money designing and building a gamified solution before putting it in the hands of users and seeing it fail. This is why it’s important to quickly and cheaply build prototypes to test with people so you know if they’re going to work or not.

As a junior designer it can be easy to get attached to first ideas and difficult to get feedback on them without taking it personally. The more you practice iterative design and get feedback, the easier it gets.

👉 I have an entire presentation from Gamification Europe that talks about this in more detail…

4. Motivation is just one part of the equation

Gamification is all about behaviour change. It’s a subset of behavioural design, with the idea that it’s tapping into the motivational elements of games to make non-game activities more fun and engaging.

For example, Duolingo uses streaks, leaderboards and challenges to encourage you to turn language learning into a habit. Zombies, Run! uses narrative elements and zombies chases to encourage you to go out and run.

But there is a difference between motivation and behaviour change, we can feel motivated, but it may not result in a change in behaviour. In fact motivation is just one part of the equation, for behaviour change to occur we need to feel motivated, have the ability to perform the behaviour and be prompted or reminded to perform the behaviour.

So it’s important to primarily measure behaviour change (i.e., don’t just use surveys that measure feelings of motivation). For Duolingo this could be measuring the frequency of language lessons complete by a person (not how motivated a person might feel to learn a language).

👉 For a great model on what causes behaviour change, check out this one from BJ Fogg

5. Explore theories of motivation

Finally, it’s important to understand why games are engaging in the first place if you’re going to start using game elements to make other things more engaging.

Knowing what motivation is and why games can be so motivating will help to inform the design of effective gamification.

So two really great theories of motivation that are worth knowing more about include:

👉 You can grab a copy of my free book for a short and informative overview of each theory