Gamification 101 in context of non Gaming Applications

Late last year  Deloitte released their report predicting top 10 emerging and disruptive technologies that is expected to play a crucial role in business in 2012.  Gamification was one of them.

What is Gamification? Gamification is used as an umbrella term that covers game design thinking, concepts and techniques being applied to non gaming applications to make them more fun and engaging.  The basic goal of Gamification is to use gaming techniques to increase engagement of the users with the application.

Gamification is not a new concept.  It has been there for a long time.   Airlines have been using Gamification techniques to attract and retain their user base through frequent flyer programs.  Many retail chains have been using Gamification concepts in their loyalty programs, etc.  But with the explosion of online retail, social media and social marketing, Gamification is becoming a strong tool to attract new customers, retain the user base, and build interesting business model around it.

If Gamification is going to be big as being projected, the obvious thing to do is to get some understanding of the concepts and techniques associated with the same.   The following paragraphs is an attempt to list the most common concepts and techniques associated with Gamification and how they are being applied to a non gaming scenarios:

• Achievements Badges  -  This is a concept where the users of a system are rewarded with a badge indicating completion of a task, mission, etc.  Achievement badges can be a clear indicator of one's standing in a peer group and has a tremendous aspiration and fulfillment value for everyone who is part of the ecosystem.  If you crawl across the net, you would find that achievement badges are currently a rage.  There have  been numerous interesting applications of the same.  As an example, I am attaching the link to Foursquare badge list page to give an idea of how it is being used.

• Levels  - Levels is a motivation technique used to keep the user engaged and ramp up on the system. One of the most common implementations of the level based methodology is the ability of the user to unlock a more complex next step after successfully completing the previous level.   An interesting application of this concept is by Starbucks where they have integrated levels into their loyalty rewards program

• Leader-boards - Simply put leader-boards are scorecards where an user can track his performance relative to the other users of the system.  At a psychological level, leader-boards work on an individual desire and aspire to excel relative to others and everyone acknowledge the same.  A very interesting application of this concept (in an non game scenario), which I found very interesting is by Greenpeace which runs at  IT  Leader-board which ranks the top IT companies in the world based on their Green initiatives.

• Activity feeds -  This is a Gamification concept which kindles the competitive spirit in the users by exposing them to to the rest of the activities that are taking place in the system.  The concept essentially exposes the user to the activities of all other users there by encouraging him to take part.  A good example of leveraging activity feed are Facebook and Twitter which encourages users to contribute based on the current trending activities

• Avatars - Avatars is a Gamification concept that let users create something unique on the system that helps them to express their individuality, make them feel special thereby increasing their level of engagement with the system or application.  Avatars are becoming standards in the Gaming world and you would be in a position to create an Avatar on almost all gaming console.  In the non gaming world , there have been lot of exploration on using Avatars in fields of education and e-learning.  This links gives a glimpses into few of such initiatives.

• Virtual currency  -  This is a concept that is generally used to incentivize the user to use the system.  The virtual currency can be in form of reward points, discount coupons, etc.  I have seen many online retails stores using this mechanism to attract the initial user base by providing discount coupons.  For example a popular online apparel retail store in India called Myntra.com provides a Rs.1000 discount coupon for signing up to be a member.

Hope this article helps in simplifying some of the terms associated with Gamification.  Any comments are always welcome.