Gamification

I’ve been researching gamification, and using what I already know about Octalysis from my time working at “Yomo”.

I plan to use gamification in my app to enhance the the feeling of progress and motivation. I also want to use it as a form of slowly building the habit of using the app by keeping goals managable.

In my research for habits I found that one of the reasons a lot of people quit is because they take on too much. For example, someone starts a diet and remove too many calories from their allowance in order to lose weight faster, making the process too difficult and it results in them quitting. This is obviously not something I want to happen when people are using my app.

The Main Gamification Loop

I’ve came up with the idea of a main gamification loop that I want the user to experience. I want to combine the idea of streaks, along with the idea of unlocking additional “habit slots” to drive investment into the app, as well as a gradual increase in usage.

Terminology

Let me explain what I mean by “streak” and “habit slot”.

Streak: The number of days in a row where all habits have been completed.

Habit Slot: The number of habits the user is allowed to track in the app.

The Loop

• User completes a month worth of streaks.
• User has invested time and value into the app.
• User unlocks a new habit slot.

• User has ability to increase usage of the app.

  • User will hopefully create new managable habit to avoid losing existing value.
  • User should be finding the previously added habit(s) easier to maintain by this point.

Other Gamification

I would like to include some other forms of gamification to the app that work to give joy. A feature I know will be required, will be cheat days. I don’t want people to lose their streaks, or feel bad about having to miss a day. Instead a cheat day feature will allow people to skip a day with “permission”. I’d like to limit the amount of cheat days given by allowing the user to earn them as a regular reward.

I’d also like to create a score system. The score would work off the streak but could also be increased by forfeiting cheat days. The score would be reset when a streak ends, which should add more value to a streak, and a good target to hit if you fail your previous streak.

I’d also like to include badges, or achievements so there is some in-app acknowledgement about common milestones.

A digital scrapbook by William Park. It contains details about my final project "Habeats" for my final project at Interaction Design Belfast.

This material is my submission for IXD501.