All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
An overview of the role, logic, and best practices of gamification in digital product design
If you recognized the quote that gives this article its title, then you’ve surely seen one of Stanley Kubrick’s greatest masterpieces, The Shining. The phrase “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is what the protagonist, Jack, types over and over on his typewriter, consumed by the madness that has by then taken over his mind.
In this article’s title we’re playing on that same idea: dedicating our lives solely to work, “with no play,” would make it dull and would get in the way of reaching our goals, potentially driving us a little crazy.
At this point, an obvious question arises: “Is it really possible to combine play and work to make the latter more engaging?”.
Since the early 2000s, an approach that gives us the tools to achieve exactly this has been making its way into the digital world: gamification.
Gamification and game design
Let’s start by clearing up a common misconception: the term gamification is often mistakenly used to refer to game design, i.e. the specific activity of developing video games, overlooking the fact that the two terms actually refer to two quite different types of design.
The term gamification refers to the application of game dynamics, mechanics, and elements within contexts and systems that don’t normally involve a playful component in the strict sense.
The goal, as we’ll explore further below, is to boost engagement with the system in question and help users interact with it more actively, making it easier for them to reach their own goals while, at the same time, supporting business goals.
We can therefore say that gamification simply borrows design elements and mechanics used in the creation and development of games/video games and applies them in a different context, with the aim of reaching a specific goal by stimulating and engaging the user.
A boring, repetitive, or tiring activity — as work can sometimes be — becomes easier if it incorporates an element that stimulates or intrigues us.
Let’s take a practical example: jogging.
Jogging is a positive, healthy activity, but it takes both physical and mental effort, even more so if done consistently. So how do we make this activity more stimulating? With zombies, of course! 😊
Yes, really. Let’s face it, nobody wants to be devoured by a zombie, right? And that alone is a great reason to keep running if we spot one behind us.
And so “Zombies, Run” arrived on app stores, an app for tracking your progress while running that turns a simple workout into a post-apocalyptic mission, complete with desperate searches for supplies and medicine and heart-pounding escapes from hordes of the undead.
Adding in-app missions and goals to reach, along with stats and badges, are all mechanics that encourage the user to keep up their daily exercise routine in order to reach the goals set for them. In this scenario, running potentially becomes less tiring because it’s turned into a more stimulating activity that in some ways resembles a game, while still keeping the benefits of physical exercise and, ultimately, encouraging consistency.
We’re all players to some extent, some more than others, and none of us are entirely immune to the cognitive processes triggered by certain inputs and stimuli in a game.
From user to player
The waves of digital transformation of recent decades have driven saturation in virtually every market, with an extremely high density of competitors and ever-new challengers on the horizon.
Among the factors that carry the most weight in differentiating products and services, the experience the end user has while interacting with the system, and attention to their wants and needs, are becoming increasingly important.
In short, these are the dimensions Human-Centered Design (HCD) focuses on — the iterative methodology we apply every day at Enhancers — which takes the user’s needs into account at every single stage of design, evaluating the outcome based on efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction.
A gamification process doesn’t just keep the user and their needs at the center — it adds a further metric to evaluate: engagement.
Engagement — literally the user’s “engagement” with our product — represents the close bond between the two on an emotional level even before a functional one, outlining an extension of HCD: Player-Centered Design, theorized by Janaki Kumar and Mario Herger in their book Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software.
We could therefore say that:
While Human-Centered Design asks “will the product be usable by the user in an efficient, effective, and satisfying way?”, Player-Centered Design adds “will the user actually feel motivated to use the product in the first place?” — allowing the gamification process to be adapted to their needs and to generate the motivation required.
The video game industry was one of the first to understand the importance of stimulating player engagement and to perfect it; gamification simply extends the results of this process to non-game products, turning the end user into the player to be entertained — and won over.
Implementing the process
Let’s start with a fundamental concept:
Using gamification doesn’t mean turning a system into a game.
It’s more about using game mechanics and paradigms to stimulate the user’s emotional side — in the most successful cases, the user will interact with the system without perceiving it as a game; finding it, however, potentially more enjoyable and interesting, that same user will be more motivated to move toward their goal.
We can identify 5 fundamental steps for implementing gamification principles in a system:
- Identify the user/player
It’s important to identify the audience that will interact with the system, and keep them as a constant focal point throughout the process. - Identify the goals
Setting one or more reachable, measurable goals for the implementation is vital to creating an effective process. - Understand what motivates the user/player
Knowing what motivates (or could motivate) the player is necessary to define the right mechanics to engage them and guide them toward the goal. If there’s no motivation, that’s a clear sign the implementation won’t bear any fruit. - Apply game mechanics
Actually implementing game mechanics is perhaps the hardest phase, since the right degree of complexity and usability needs to be balanced against their effectiveness, in order to trigger user motivation without fully revealing their ultimate purpose. - Manage and monitor the system
Once the system is implemented, it needs to be monitored to check that it’s working correctly and adapted over time as data on users and performance is gathered.
Like any process, gamification is no magic wand for making a project succeed: engagement doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It’s necessary to carefully assess a system before deciding whether to implement this methodology, which tends to work best when there’s already some degree of motivation and engagement on the user’s part.
Ready “social” one
Speaking of engagement, we certainly can’t ignore social networks — platforms that make extensive use of gamification to keep users active and interested in their service.
Take LinkedIn as an example: this social network makes excellent use of gamification, but I’d bet you’ve never perceived it as a game, right? That’s because the techniques are woven in in a way that’s simple but incredibly effective, and, some might say, elegant.
LinkedIn uses game mechanics by leveraging user motivation, gathering as much data as possible along the way — for example, to help the user get noticed by a recruiter; this, in turn, helps boost the site’s reputation as a social network that actually works.
Win-win.
One example of gamification in action? Profile completion. Through a progress bar, the user can see how effective their profile might be at catching the interest of potential recruiters; that same bar, tied to the word “effectiveness” mentioned above, triggers the user’s need to see it fully complete, tapping into the desire to feel rewarded and see their efforts recognized.
But LinkedIn isn’t the only platform that uses, or has used, gamification.
Let’s take a look at TikTok, which for a certain period integrated a strong game component into its system: in the final months of 2019, it became possible to win various kinds of “gems” just by using the app. Once certain minimum thresholds were reached (e.g. 1 diamond = €1), these gems could then be converted into cash, transferable to your PayPal account.
Alongside the gems, actual digital missions were introduced too, ranging from opening the app n times (or for n days) to watching videos for a set amount of time, on top of the classic “invite a friend” (an action that paid out as much as €5 for every friend who signed up!).
In short, it seems TikTok decided to experiment on its app by “gamifying” several aspects of it, introducing elements designed to draw users in who, in turn, were able to earn money in a simple and fun way while continuing to use the app as usual. Game elements were therefore used to tap into user motivation, potentially encouraging them to be more active on the app and for longer, in order to build a habit of use.
Conclusions
Combining play and work certainly isn’t easy, and experience teaches us that gamification isn’t always the solution to every problem. If used correctly, though, it can bring real benefits to a business that’s ready to integrate it with the right care and attention.
Work wouldn’t be work if it had only the characteristics of a game, but if getting it done felt at least a little playful, it might become easier for us to complete our tasks and reach our goals.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what gamification can do for us.
If you need an expert guide, get in touch; don’t end up like Jack, whose story, by the end of the film, didn’t turn out so well…