Gamification

Gamification has been a hot topic for years in the software industry. 0:00 The basic idea is to make tasks more fun by turning them into some type of game, 0:05 but what does that really mean? 0:10 One way to look at gamification is through the lens of persuasive patterns. 0:12 Like other categories of patterns, there are many. 0:17 So we're just going to look at a few, but I encourage you to check out the notes for 0:21 more resources. 0:25 Let's get started. 0:27 It's difficult to define exactly what constitutes a game or gameplay. 0:28 You might say it's a set of problems to solve or a cycle of challenge and reward. 0:33 In any case, we can motivate users toward the completion of a challenge or 0:40 a goal by praising them and then providing them with a new challenge. 0:45 In this case, we'll use the example of an online school similar to Treehouse. 0:50 Let's say you've just finished a video like this one or a quiz. 0:56 What happens next? 1:00 Well, one way to motivate users to keep going is to show them 1:02 the progress they've made and give them some encouraging words. 1:06 So let's add some words, and 1:11 we'll say, you've been learning for 1:16 3 days in a row, keep it up. 1:22 And we'll make that bold and exciting and make the font bigger. 1:26 There we go. 1:34 And maybe add a check mark next to it to let them know this is a good thing. 1:35 And then we'll add a big graph here. 1:43 And then we'll add an arrow to complete the graph. 1:50 We'll remove the left arrow. 1:54 And then let's start it at the bottom, 1:59 have it end up at the top, and we'll add a little curve to this. 2:02 Here we're showing the user a graph of their progress to remind them of 2:07 their hard work. 2:12 In addition, we're telling them a small narrative about their progress that might 2:13 help motivate them to continue their learning and continue to be consistent. 2:17 However, sometimes a user might feel like their skill level has outpaced the task 2:23 at hand. 2:27 Or they might have repeated the same step so many times, 2:28 they need to break the routine. 2:32 In these cases, 2:34 you can use the persuasive pattern of challenge to re-engage the user. 2:35 Below the graph, let's add some text that encourages the user to reach for more. 2:41 So we'll add, A label here. 2:48 And we'll call this Extra Credits, and we'll put it down here. 2:54 Again, let's make this a larger font size. 3:01 And let's add maybe a star next to this. 3:07 And then let's add some paragraph text or a block of text here. 3:13 And we'll imagine that this says to go ahead and 3:22 recreate the same project, but may use a different front-end framework 3:26 than the one that's used in this course or something like that. 3:32 So these types of challenges should be used very carefully because 3:37 if users aren't being asked to do more, they might get bored. 3:41 But if they're faced with too many challenges on a regular basis, 3:46 they might start to feel overwhelmed, like they're not up to the task. 3:50 This is just a small example of gamification. 3:54 You might use points and leaderboards on a shopping website to encourage repeat 3:58 customers, or show a small graph that indicates the percentage of completion for 4:03 a user's profile page. 4:09 There's lots of ways to persuade users when the tasks are turned 4:11 into simple games. 4:15