Lastly, we have gamified experiences. The aim of these experiences is to improve something about ourselves in ways that are ideally more motivating than how we perceive them in real life. For example, think of something that you find difficult to stay motivated with. This may be anything from managing your finances, learning a new language, or even exercising.
Now, if you make a deal with yourself to buy a new dress once you finished managing your finances or to go on a trip once you have learned a new language, you are turning the experience into a game. The rules are simply to finish the task, and the condition of finishing it results in a reward, either a dress or the trip. The fundamental thing to remember is that gamified experiences aim to make ordinary tasks extraordinary and enjoyable for the player.
Games, gaming, and gamified experiences can give rise to many types of opportunities for us to play or even escape reality. To finish this brief exploration into the design of games, we must realize that games are not solely about sitting in front of the TV, playing on the computer, or being glued to the seat transfixed by a digital character dodging bullets. The game mechanics to make a task more engaging and fun have been defined as Gamification. Gamification relates to the use of games to tackle issues related to real-world situations, and while the term has become popular, the concept is not entirely new. Think about loyalty cards, not just frequent flyer mile programs, but maybe even at your local butcher or café. Do you get a discount after a certain number of purchases; maybe the 10th coffee is free. For a while, various reward schemes have already been in place; even giving children a reward for completing household chores or good behavior and awarding gold stars for academic excellence constitute gamification. If you consider social activities such as Scouts, they utilize gamification as part of their procedures. Scouts learn new skills, such as cooperativeness, and by doing so gain different status, and receive badges to demonstrate levels of competency. Gamification has become a favorable approach to engaging clients with new and exciting design schemes to maintain interest and promote a more enjoyable and ideally "fun" product. The product in question does not have to be digital. Therefore, gamification can exist both in a physical realm (as mentioned before with gold stars awards) as well as in a more prominent digital sense (such as badge and point reward systems) as an effective way to motivate and engage users. Some common examples of gamification include:
Loyalty programs: Each time you engage with the company in a particular way such as buying certain products, or amount of you are rewarded. These rewards can include additional products, points towards items, discounts, and even free items.
School House points: A pastime that some of us may remember, especially for fans of Harry Potter. Each time you do the right thing such as following the school rules you get some points. Alternatively, you do the wrong thing and you lose points.
Scouts: They reward levels of competency with badges as well as ranks. The more skilled you are the more badges you collect, wear, and ultimately the faster you work your way up the hierarchy.
Rewarding in general: This will often be associated with some rules and these rules determine whether or not a reward is obtained. Eat your vegetables, you get dessert; do you math homework you get to play. Both have winning conditions.
Tests: As horrifying as it might sound they can be considered as a game. For example, we're on a quest to learn about history. Each assignment you get is like a task, preparing you for the final battle...the exam. At the end of all these assessments, you get a score or a grade that indicates to you your progress as you pass from one concept to the next. Ultimately, your final exam will determine your rank among your peers and whether or not you make it to the next level or not (that being anywhere from your year level to a university). It may be also worth noting that just like in games, you also have those trying to work the system, searching for glitches in the system that they can exploit. However, just like games, they too eventually are kicked.
DuoLingo (www.duolingo.com) is an interesting application in terms of its design. It is a simple yet powerful tool for grasping foundational concepts in a range of different languages. DuoLingo has quite a fresh color palette and it immediately grabs the attention of the user with its bold and simple graphics. If we have a look at the following screenshot, we can see that the content is contained in small chunks (for example, basic vocabulary, food) and each lesson focuses on a small section of each part. This works well because it doesn't become too overwhelming to the player.
Various screenshots displaying different parts of the DuoLingo application
DuoLingo includes a number of different game elements and of course they are used in varying ways. The following is a list of the game elements that are used as part of the DuoLingo application and how they are used:
Badges: These are used in DuoLingo as a way to identify each new concept to be learnt. Each badge is representative of a certain topic, for example, hamburger for food, conversation bubbles for phrases, and so on.
Progress Bars: These are used in a number of ways to indicate both progress as a whole as you complete lessons, and progress within the lessons themselves. As the bars fill, the retention of words is at their highest. However, the bars begin to decline if a user doesn't revise the newly learnt content for each category. The main difference between badges and progress bars is that badges represent completed tasks and progress bars are used to indicate to the player how far they have come and how far they still have to go.
Leaderboards: They are implemented for users to compete against one another.
Currency: This is used in DuoLingo with Lingots. Lingots are the virtual currency of DuoLingo, which you can obtain when you complete certain tasks within the game.
Experience points: These are used to indicate to the player how well they are doing. Each time they practice previously learnt content, they earn experience points. They can keep track of their experience points over the week by observing a graph and even progress bars within each topic.
Unlockables: These are featured in two different ways. The first way is by completing previous topics (such as adverbs, tenses, and so on) as well as parts of topics. The second is by using Lingots to obtain items that are unavailable until the user has enough to purchase the items in the store.
Countdowns: These are used in DuoLingo to test the speed of a user who has completed a module. In one way, it encourages the player to compete against themselves to not only beat the timer, but to also do better than the other previous attempts by obtaining a faster time.
Lives: In the timed mode, a player has in total three lives that allow them to answer a question incorrectly. Once they have run out of lives they must start again.
Real life can be mundane in some parts, especially when we are trying to keep on top of to-do lists, or develop better habits. However, don't worry, Habitica is one gamified application that adds a bit of drama to whatever new habit you are trying to develop (or stop). As we can see in the following image, Habitica has a dashboard as its main interface. All the information is displayed to the player at a glance, and more specific information, such as daily tasks and chats, is displayed in other, yet easily accessible, parts.
Screenshot of the rewards section of Habitica
Like DuoLingo, it uses similar elements and some new ones to achieve different things. The following is a list of game elements that are found in Habitica and how they are used as part of the gaming experience:
Levels: These are featured with the player advancing as they gain experience points and retain lives.
Progress Bars: These feature a lot throughout Habitica, representing many different parts. For example, progress bars represent the amount of experience as well as mana (to fight against various creatures).
Status: These levels differentiate the types of classes for player and the abilities that they have against creatures.
Lives: These are the number of lives that a player has remaining against creatures within the game. Each time a player does not complete a daily task or habit on time, they lose some life points.
Experience Points: They are for each player and are associated with successfully completing tasks and habits. With each successful check-in, a player gains a small amount of experience towards leveling their character up.
While we many not necessarily need an excuse to shop, because let's face it we can always buy ourselves something, AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com) has turned part of its service into a game with their mobile application. To encourage users to download, install, and use their application a number of games and exclusive offers have been designed to offer savings and some items for almost free (+ $0.01 for shipping), if you are lucky enough to grab them in time. As we can see in the following screenshot, Ali Express keeps a log of the user's interactions, for example, how successful or unsuccessful they have been with daily spins.
In addition, the user is also rewarded with feedback when good things happen, such as winning coins from spinning the wheel.
Screenshot of various elements from Ali Express that encourage the user to engage with gamified elements such as spining the Wheel and collecting daily coins.
Ali Express is slightly different from both DuoLingo and Habitica; it's an application for purchasing goods, rather than curving a spending habit or learning Italian. The following is a list of how various game elements are used to engage the user:
Points: These are used in a number of ways with AliExpress. For example, they are associated with different actions. For the most part, points indicate to the user how well they are doing overall in terms of submitting feedback to buyers and receiving feedback from sellers.
Feedback is also associated with points. Each time a user gives and receives feedback they are provided with points that are then attributed to a level.
Badges: These are usually included during special events and require that a user complete certain tasks, such as adding an item to their wishlist, to get the daily badge.
Levels: These indicate the user's interaction with the application. For example, since giving and providing feedback allows them to level up, reaching a new level provides additional rewards. For example, they may have the ability to be notified in advanced about upcoming sales and receive extra discounts.
Progress Bars: These are used to track the number of points that you have accumulated towards each level. Points that contribute to the overall progress are related to providing feedback for purchases, buying items, and daily shopping.
Virtual Currency: This is used in the way of coins. Coins allow users to buy various items (if they are quick enough!) and exchange coupons that give them discounts off their next purchases.
Mini-games: Spin the wheel and Shake is one of a few mini-games that users have the chance to engage with. The game provide users with the ability to win additional coins to buy better items with or greater discount coupons.
Chance: This provides users with a feeling of mystery, especially if they are playing mini-games. It is enticing, with each spin of the wheel or shake of the phone having the possibility to result in a large amount of coins.
Unlockables: These are used for giving access to different features such as fast refunds, fast track claims, and price cut notifications.