Getting gamification to succeed through better UX

Currently, gamified apps are trendy novelties, many of which, said the research firm, will fail in the next two years.

For gamification initiatives to succeed, they need to move beyond obvious game mechanics such as point badges and leaderboards and employ more subtle game design elements, such as balancing competition and collaboration, or defining a meaningful game economy, said Brian Burke, research vice-president at Gartner.

“In many cases, organisations are simply counting points, slapping meaningless badges on activities and creating gamified applications that are simply not engaging for the target audience,” said Burke.

Where brands fall down is they think of branding and user experience on an icing-sugar level, commented Daniel Szuc, co-founder of usability experience design consultancy Apogee Asia. UX, he adds, goes beyond UI (user interface) and requires a fundamental understanding of human nature and motivations.

“There's often too much focus on selling and not enough on understanding,” he said.

Gartner's report advises brands to first and foremost think of their target audiences as people with needs and desires who will respond to stimuli. It is important to think of the people in these target audiences as "players" in gamified applications.

Apogee co-founder Josephine Wong added that when creating a brand experience, too many teams rely on single sources of data, such as focus groups and surveys. “There is a tendency to separate the science and the person, to not take the time to understand the customer on the ground level,” she said.

Wong takes things a step further and asks if the team designing the experience is itself motivated in the right way. “On a recent project, a user-experience team I worked with lacked empathy for the project and were only interested in pushing their personal agenda," she said. "Beyond technical skills they need the soft skills to design for humans.”

Much of the work Szuc and Wong are involved in now with brands in Asia revolves around creating holistic user experiences that extend beyond a prettier website or new logo—a topic that's also driving the upcoming UXHK conference they are organising next February.

“Experience extends beyond to that organisational structure and talent management,” said Wong.

“Take customer support for example,” cut in Szuc, “They are in the front line, dealing with customers, but they are trained to respond robotically, and their KPIs aren't around creating a delightful customer experience—it's to deal with a call as quickly as possible!”

Such KPIs are counterproductive for the brand and unpleasant for the customer-service agent, said Szuc.

Gamification methods can be used to engage both employees and consumers, according to Garner's report, if done right.

“Brands can leverage gamification to engage consumers to better understand their products, and become advocates for the brand to provide product endorsements, and drive customer loyalty,” said the report.

Nescafé Philippines and MRM, for example, rewarded fans who engaged with the brands with points that could be redeemed for products to revive a stagnant Facebook fanbase. The ongoing initiative attracted a following of 1.6 million and increased sales by about 9 per cent in 2011.

Companies can also use gamification to improve employee performance and enable innovation by using game mechanics to create a more engaging experience, but the key is to engage lots of players, solving problems through crowdsourcing, said Gartner.

PHD's recently launched global platform, Source, for example, enables global collaboration and rewards crowdsourced ideas with “ping points” and rankings on a leaderboard.

Before overlaying a gaming experience or new technology on any context, advised Szuc, brands must return to basics and ask themselves:

1. What does this do?
2. Who is it for?
3. What pain will this solve?
4. How can we design to satisfy the need and further delight them?
5. How does this fit within the overall channel experience to help tell the whole brand story?