Driven by rapid advancements in technology, digital interactions have become easier and multidimensional. Consumers have a large selection of content to choose from. It is therefore quite a challenge to engage the audience and properly communicate the relevant messaging to them without losing their interest. Gamification is a novel approach to take this challenge head on.
Often misinterpreted to mean the process of making a game, the word gamification refers to using the concept and design of gaming for non-game purposes. It is the use of game-thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems. Before designing digital interactions, we must understand underlying rewards and translate them into interesting content for the target audience: merely digitizing the contents is insufficient. As outlined in the following paragraphs, the concept of gamification can be extended to make learning more fun, curb corruption, increase sanitation awareness and motivate people to work on personal fitness.
Finding innovative ways to present education as an easier, more fun process has been a work-in-progress for ages. The curriculum has constantly been a focal point in this global effort. Many approaches have been made towards incorporating extra-curricular activities with core education modules. Studies have shown that the formative years of a child’s development are actually the early childhood years. In order to cater to this need, a large collection of interactive apps have been developed to help babies learn. There are apps customized for the specific needs of various age groups, cultures, learning abilities/disabilities and other factors. The interactive nature of the apps makes learning fun as opposed to coercive. Elements such as leaderboards and charts, which monitor user progress and create a sense of competition, help towards achieving the goal of keeping children engaged.
Digital interactions can also be used for social purposes. ‘I Paid a Bribe’ is an Indian website that serves as a good example. It encourages people to come forward against corruption faced while availing government services by providing them a platform to categorically share their experiences and grievances. Through this website, people can publicly report instances of being forced to bribe someone in exchange of getting work done. The website gathers these data and publishes statistics and information about different states. This model is effective due to its engaging nature, transparency and facilitation of policy-making. The website encourages citizens to come forward and engage in the activity. Interested stakeholders can browse the information available online due to the transparent nature of the site. Decision-making at the government level is improved by the fact that the reports can help the government take policy measures to stop or reduce leakages in the system.
Sanitation is another social (and health) issue in developing countries that can be tackled through gamification. Encouraging objective-based hand washing habits and rewarding those who show regularity in this practice can aid in ingraining this habit. A simple means of implementing this involves a smart soap-case that can track whether a soap was used, and then automatically upload the data to a dashboard which will later be used to give the persons who washed their hands rewards.
Digital interactions may not even require an elaborate physical interface.Nike, for example, places small sensors in their training shoes, which help track a runner’s steps. The data collected through this process is automatically stored. Comparisons with fellow runners and personal statistics are readily available for the users to access. This adds layers of incentives that motivate the target audience to run without changing their preferred mode of operation. This shows how digital interactions can also be used to create healthy habits without being intrusive in terms of regular behavior.
Designing and developing effective digital interactions will require complicated processes and system development at the backend. But the user interface should always be simple to ensure intuitive user experience, especially for those with low tech-literacy. In today’s world of devices connected to each other and with the cloud, gamification is an innovative tool that can be leveraged to harness our digital interactions towards achieving greater social good and business value. Failure to unlock the full potential of this tool just might take a player out of the game!
This article was written in 2018.
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