In recent years, the concept of gamification has risen as one of the most effective strategies in terms of educational and marketing purposes.
According to Science Direct, challenge-based gamification fosters performance improvement in students by up to an incredible 89.45% (Source: Harbinger Group, 2024) when compared with their peers who conventionally attended lectures.
This idea not only improves the overall touch of the learning experience but fosters involvement as well as engagement for instance from HitnSpin bonus campaigns which allow users to partake in active engagement with a reward.
In this blog, I will go further about how gamification works, its effects on the marketing and educational sectors and what is the need for one to combine it into their strategic thinking.
It would be best to start by defining gamification, this is the use of elements used in game design outside of games.
Its main purpose is to increase the motivation of the user and make the training or action much more interesting by providing a unique interaction.
When used in the right way, a system that sets goals and rewards can be extremely effective.
They have no use other than bragging rights, however, players use them to show how good they are at a particular thing, and they can play for hours to get an achievement.
Likewise, an online retailer could set a special achievement for the hundredth product purchased by a user.
These are, of course, simple examples, but they will give you a clear idea of what gamification is and how it works.
These techniques for increasing engagement and motivation have many elements, such as points, badges, leaderboards, and challenges, and this rewards cycle can be surprisingly effective.
Do You Know?
Duolingo, a language instruction application, captured a 34% increase in user retention with the help of gamification.
The use of gamification in the user experience can make the completion of certain tasks much more enjoyable and interactive, this in turn, increases user engagement.
The task here can be any goal assigned, and this goal does not need to be specifically requested by the user.
For example, no user registers to an online retailer to buy at least a hundred products there, they do not have such a goal or desire.
However, a retailer can guide them step by step towards this goal with gamification techniques.
Of course, if the user has a specific goal, gamified systems can also make it easier to achieve this goal.
Let’s go back to the above example once again and imagine that you want to learn a new language in three months.
In this scenario, the user already has a specific goal. Gamification helps to achieve this goal by making the learning process interactive and rewarding.
This shows how flexible this technique can be and how it can be adapted to almost any purpose.
If you are a retailer looking to increase the number of orders or a person who wants to learn something new, gamification can help you succeed by changing the user experience.
If we give some examples of the use of gamification in different industries, you will have a better idea of how it affects the user experience:
Quizzes, interactive lessons, and progress tracking are the most common examples of gamified systems used by applications such as Duolingo.
For example, Nike+ has a leaderboard that allows you to challenge your friends and uses this to encourage you to work harder & longer.
The achievements gained in this process can also be used to gain various advantages in the workplace – for example, the privilege of leaving work ten minutes earlier than everyone else one day a week.
Gamification works because we are competition-oriented creatures and it is based on the desire to be rewarded, which is also in all of us.
It helps us to complete a certain process in a fully focused state and makes it easier to achieve certain goals.
However, there are also various disadvantages, for example, it can cause users to become “addicted” to rewards.
This is called the overjustification effect and can decontextualize the learning process and/or goal focus, making users only interested in rewards.
In any case, however, it can be a very strong technique that can be used for almost any purpose and it can be helpful to everyone.
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