Gamification and Its Benefits
I enjoy going to the market and buying a new product without knowing the product’s purpose or its taste (if it’s a food product) just because I’m interested in the packaging. I repeatedly bought the product even though the contents of the product was not better than the quality of the product I used to buy, also the price offered was more expensive. I’m sure everyone has done something similar to what I did. Some people will call this guilty pleasure if done excessively, even though the title might be is not the right word.
I am always interested in the design (both visual design and design as a process) and how the results of the model can attract someone to do something that they do not even understand like the things I did above. For me, understanding how humans make choices between essential and unimportant conditions, or between primary, secondary and tertiary needs, to exciting and unattractive, is an important thing to understand in order not to get caught up again in the guilty pleasure that I usually do.
I keep questioning this, how can I design a product that can bind-users like how I am stuck with buying a product frequently just because of the packaging?
In the city where my family lived, traditional culture began to erode with the introduction of modernization. There are not many people who use local languages. Even children who have local language lessons are also not fluent with the native language. Therefore, I designed a simple digital game for kindergarten to recognize the local language as my final project for the diploma. Making games and getting kids interested to try it, is easy, but making them want to play it repeatedly is not. And I keep questioning this, how can I design a product that can bind-users like how I am stuck with buying a product frequently just because of the packaging?
Adopting ideas that make the game exciting and applying it to non-game products or platforms is still not widely understood.
I still remember how my cousin could spend his time playing the default game on the cellphone, the snake game, which was very popular at that time. Or even my dad who likes to spend his time playing Tetris. Technically making these games to be a fit in a smartphone is simple, especially now when there are many tutorials teach a lot of the logic of this game program with various programming languages. But adopting ideas that make the game exciting and applying it to non-game products or platforms is still not widely understood.
Back in my Digital Platforms: Technology & Business Components’ class two weeks ago, my lecturer invites a tech-startup CEO to be our guest talk. At that time, he discussed the failure of the platform that he had made. What’s interesting is when he mentioned his inability to implement gamification on the platform so that it could not create engagement with users. I was interested in exploring it and found that gamification could be an essential element in developing products to create good bonds.
Although on the website gamification is explained on a product, gamification can be used on other things since this term is actually diverse following by its content, such as marketing to education. I even found gamification in entrepreneurship with interesting practice. It’s also important to know, gamification in digital games is different from platforms that technically could be understood as a software application. Although gamification on games and platforms helps motivate users by making the user experience enjoyable, their design process is different. In the journal Design Thinking and Acceptance Requirements for Designing Gamified Software, we would find the difference between game and software application. The paper also explains the need to make gamification with DTA concepts in a software application and its impact, even though the author has not found an appropriate evaluation method to take into account the evolvability of user acceptance and motivation requirements with the concepts used.
However, gamification is also not a panacea that will miraculously make things better since there is no right formula in every product and when is the right time the product should apply gamification effectively as a part of the system. And at the end, in what emergence should be considered when applying this method into a platform for society.
Until now, I have not found the right answer whether gamification in digital technology is under UX design, conversely or is another persuasive technique in HCI. But Indeed, the elements of gamification must not be separated from product design because of the underlying aspects, which is motivating users to be engaged with the products made. However, gamification is also not a panacea that will miraculously make things better since there is no right formula in every product and when is the right time the product should apply gamification effectively as a part of the system. And at the end, in what emergence should be considered when applying this method into a platform for society.
Another reference :
Increasing Product Engagement Using Gamification
Gamification: Understanding The Basics
The Psychology Of Gamification: Why It Works (& How To Do It!)
How to Use Gamification for Better Business Results
