Gamification won’t solve your user experience problems

game /ɡeɪm/
noun: game
an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.
“the kids were playing a game with their balloons”

Gamification may appear like it works, to begin with, but does it have the sticking power like people suggest it does?

I believe it doesn’t.

My statement may appear harsh but hear me out. There have been many apps I’ve used, and after some time, I stop using them regardless of the number of points or gems I’ve collected. The most recent app I’ve broken up with is Duolingo.

Backfiring of streaks

Duolingo and I fell out one Sunday when I found that I had lost a 45-day streak. I’d started learning Spanish for my trip to Valencia as I wanted to make a real effort to speak the language when there.

I’ll be honest my 45-day streak wasn’t even a genuine streak as Duolingo allows you to collect gems where you can buy days off so that your streak is not lost. The day I lost my 45-day streak I had a notification to do my daily knowledge check but dismissed it thinking ‘I’ll remember to do that later’ unfortunately I didn’t and then all was lost.

You might have noticed that I’d already been skipping days through the use of buying time with gems, but because it was in the platform it didn’t feel the same as having a proper break as my score remained the same, but I’d already lost the streak of days.

Seeing 45-days go to 0 was what allowed me to cut ties completely. There was no point at that time for me to continue, and this is where the problem lays in gamification that heavily focuses on points on meaningless gems. If you can quickly lose those points, then you will easily lose your user.

Points are a distraction.

So what's the deal with gamification, indeed everyone loves games, and that’s enough? Wrong. The stickiness of a product boils down to motivation. If your user doesn’t have that intrinsic motivation to do something, no matter how many points or stars they could collect won’t get them to use it for the long term.

When looking at language learning, the motivation and what keeps me coming back should be the content. It should be that I feel that I am learning Spanish and progressing my skills which currently feels secondary in Duolingo.

I am not the only one that feels this way either, author and designer Jane McGonigal said gamification and the collection of points or gems focus on extrinsic rewards —

“things that we try to reach for because they improve our status… but not because they’re things we want in and of themselves,”

And she is correct, gems or points are only relevant in the app or product we are using at the time, and their value doesn’t translate into our actual lives.

If not gamification, what else?

Like many digital products, there’s always feature bloat, and gamification falls into that area for me. It’s still best to start simple and ask yourself: Are we adding gamification in for the sake of it? Are we using gamification to cover up a bad product? But also; is there another way to keep users engaged?

I feel that a lot of the time people confuse gamification with tracking progress. Things like a checklist or progress bar are better for the user to understand how far they’ve come, rather than getting 200 points for being on a platform for 10 minutes.

Most of the time, people are trying to complete a task (think jobs to be done), e.g. I need to do my tax return; otherwise, I get fined by HMRC. That is my real motivation, and if an app is giving me points or streaks for logging my expenses daily, that isn’t going to help me in the long run. I want to know how much time logging my expenses each day would save me when its tax return time or how much money I should be putting aside for the tax bill.

We need to start focusing on motivations and human behaviour, not buzzwords and new concepts. It feels that by using gamification, you could be assuming that your product or user isn’t interested in the actual content or purpose of your product. Take, for example, a learning platform like Duolingo; if you’re focusing on points predominately, then it may mean that your content or its delivery isn’t enough to be of interest keep your users returning. The real work is making sure your product or service taps into a fundamental need of the user, the intrinsic motivation. If it doesn’t, then the novelty will wear off eventually no matter how many points you give them.

Games should be fun

A frustration I have with gamification is that situations that aren’t usually games are attempted to be turned into one. My tax return is significant; I have to do that because there is a real penalty if I don't. My tax return is not something I do for fun, and it feels like wasted effort to try and disguise it as such. Games are fun because we know that there is a level of challenge and reward, we know ultimately if we ‘lose’ nothing terrible happens. Filling in all the numbers and receipts on a tax return is not something I am doing for entertainment unless I was into life admin or an accountant. By pretending something that isn’t a game as one ultimately removes all the fun anyway.

“Games by their nature must be voluntary. When a company insists its employees play along, it stops being a game and is a form of coercion.” — Jane McGonigal

Treat users well and respect their intelligence.

The critical thing that is missing with points, stars and badges is the meaning. Without meaning, we lose interest quickly because it doesn’t connect with our intrinsic motivation.

As people, we are smart, and we know if something is boring, then no amount of gamifying will keep us interested. Tax returns are borning, and no amount of shiny stars will keep us coming back. But if there were real substantial rewards such as £100 discount if you do your return early, then the motivation or interest will likely be higher. If a user is disengaged, no amount of gamification will resolve that. Instead of piling on the stars and badges, we need to speak with the users and adequately understand their true intrinsic motivations. Creating meaningful, helpful valuable products is the only way to keep our users coming back time and time again or sharing it with their friends, family, and coworkers.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Do you agree? Do you disagree? Maybe both? That’s cool; I love to chat about differing views so please get in touch or leave a comment as I’d love to hear your point of view! Let me know! Find me over at Twitter @lizhamburger