Gamification Elements in Various Industries

Routine is boring. Also, it is not a secret that almost everyone suffers from it. This is why a gamification is a vital tool for dealing with annoying monotonous everyday tasks. But what exactly gamification is, how does it work, and if it is possible to integrate it into any industry, or does it have some limitations?

What Is Gamification?

Gamification is the alternative workflow setting in which the main purpose is to increase user engagement by using various gamification elements such as competitions, ratings, rewards, badges, and achievements, or even the actual gaming as well as many other bonus programs.

Usually, gamification is not the main approach to building the whole process but a great additional tool, so it could be implemented into existing systems or services according to their specifics. Also, it is important to understand that gamification is not about software but the principles of building or changing the system.

Gamification in apps works using a gaming design experience. However, it implements this experience in the form of gamification elements that can be used in various fields without being tied to the gaming industry. So, gamification can be met in eCommerce, eLearning, financial, or healthcare spheres. Sometimes, ordinary users have no idea that some features used to increase user engagement or get more information about them are, in fact, gamification elements.

For example, the LinkedIn “All-star” profile scale could be considered one of them. The main point of this profile status scale is that the more information and interactions a user does with the site, the more features he gets. Moreover, it works as a bonus program: the last “All-star” level lets the users see more relevant feed updates and receive more profile views. So, even though the users don’t have to get this status by leaving their data, they are willing to do so because it enables handy features. For example, this approach allows ranking inside LinkedIn, motivating its users to be more active and open to the community; as a result, it increases user engagement.

Another example of great gamification is an advertising campaign that used gamification elements was, “Bandersnatch” from Netflix. They have created an interactive movie in association with the Black Mirror series, allowing the viewers to choose the movie characters, thus influencing the further course of the film events.

Gamification Elements

Gamification won’t work without bonus programs, whether real or virtual, such as status or TOP place, etc. Also, for a more satisfactory experience, it is better to understand the differences between various gamification elements and approaches to use them in the right place.

Competition and Ratings

The best way to embody competition between your audience is to enable different ratings and, for example, TOP users. The variety of competitive elements that could define a user’s place in such a hierarchy is enormous. Usually, competitions are used for gamification in eCommerce.

The most famous eCommerce gamification case that uses this specific gamification element is Teleflora. They have created a rating system on the forum with a bonus system included, so the top users get different discounts and present for their activity on the site. Despite answering the questions of others, the users get additional points for reposts on social media, blogs on specific topics, subscribing to the company’s social media accounts, etc. As a result, they have not only increased the user engagement on the website, but the company’s services get additional conditionally free advertising.

Challenges and Achievements

These gamification elements are usually used to encourage users to be more active and use the product more often than the previous ones. Nevertheless, challenges and achievements are mostly virtual bonuses. For example, completing them can be rewarded with different badges or similar cosmetic elements. For example, the Steam platform encourages gamers to use their product to buy and play games by providing various bonus programs such as discounts, community, challenges, and achievements. All of these features interact with each other creating the best user experience. Unfortunately, embodying such a complicated bonus system is expensive and difficult. Nevertheless, there are various other ways to make it possible to use challenges and achievements as full-fledged features.

For example, Monobank is a great illustration of gamification in finance. In addition to simplifying all the possible procedures to make it easy to use, they added achievements for doing various in-app actions, using the provided features, and different payments. These achievements are just in-app cosmetics that do not affect anything else. Nevertheless, it inspires the users for their actions.

Challenges and achievements, together with rewards and badges, are regularly used in various fitness and healthcare apps.

Badges

These gamification elements are regularly used in various fitness apps. Badges are not something new. For example, they are used by various rehabilitation programs. This is why badges are one of the most common elements of gamification in healthcare. Despite it, the foregoing gamification elements are used as well. Rating systems in fitness apps, various challenges, and achievements could be integrated into healthcare apps.

Summing up all the above, we can conclude that gamification is a universal tool to increase user engagement that can be used in any industry. 

Gamification Cases in Industries 

The best way to find out how can gamification upgrade various industries - is to look at gamification in apps in the context of different industries.

Gamification in eLearning

This industry is probably the best one for gamification integration, which has become a trend already. First of all, gamification in eLearning helps better concentrate on the subject. As a great addition, it is easier to learn in the form of a game.

Moreover, most of the eLearning platforms use gamified user interfaces. In this case, it is not only easier to interact with but also helps to increase the targeted audience, such as kids. Various quizzes, interactives, rating boards, and other gamification elements help to make the routine tasks more enjoyable.

Also, gamification in eLearning exists in the form of full-fledged games. For example, Triviador is a simple online game with elements of strategy, where to capture new territories, the player must answer all the questions for a mini-quiz correctly. Such an approach empowers the will to learn new facts and study better to succeed. Thus, gamification could become a great addition to adaptive learning.

Gamification in eCommerce

In addition to the already mentioned cases, gamification in eCommerce also works as a great additional tool for advertising. Many different advertising campaigns use gamification as a tool to attract attention and create a competitive component. For example, Nike once created an animated “Winter’s Angry” interactive, which allowed the visitors to play a minigame on their website. This minigame also had a scoring system, giving its top users a chance to buy limited products such as T-shirts worn by some famous athletes, etc.

Both the examples have impacted the popularity and activity on the platforms and increased user engagement by providing them options to control.

Gamification in Healthcare

Despite giving additional motivational tools such as rewards and badges for the people who quit bad habits, gamification in Healthcare helps to simpy learn very important things that can help save lives.

For example, there are various Healthcare educational games for kids. But unfortunately, most of them are not popular due to poor development. Nevertheless, creating a healthcare app to teach children how to react in various emergencies is actually in high demand.

Gamification in Healthcare is not only for children. For example, MindMaze is a game created to help people with their rehabilitation and recovery, packing the exercises in the form of a game. So, the players will keep training themselves with fun.

Gamification in Finance

Instead of using gamification in apps, the creators of the Fortune City created an actual game, which corresponds to and works based on its users’ spending. It takes the gamification in finance to a new level. Spending money and playing this game increases user engagement and uses it as an instrument to show their expenses and teach them how to decrease and deal with them. In other words, it is a more advanced financial tracker than others.

There are dozens of similar cases when the game is used as a basis for finance learning. The other example is Financial Football. It allows users to play American football, but all the decisions are made based on your answers to the quiz, which appears every time the decision has to be made. Moreover, the creators made leaderboards and lecture sessions, so the visitors will be motivated to learn about finance and access all the needed information.

To Sum Up

So, the answer to the question: “How gamification elements might upgrade various industries?” is easy. It was evident that gamification is a great tool to increase user engagement and advertise your product, no matter which specific industry it belongs to. Of course, gamification is not an essential feature, but it is a very powerful instrument if you know how to use it.

Moreover, gamification is already a tendency, and it keeps growing. Most gamification elements are easy to implement, and the impact they can make is worth trying.