We held a workshop on gamification: here’s how it went

A few months ago, the Mabiloft team decided to challenge itself with a new experience: a workshop to apply gamification to one of our clients’ products. The idea came from an experience we had within the web department, and we decided to extend the challenge to the entire team. After all, workshops are nothing new in our company.

In this article, we’ll explore the concepts we learned, but also how to apply them concretely to products through a workshop. Curious to know how it went? Read to the end.

What is gamification

Naively, one might think gamification means using games to achieve a goal. In reality, that’s not exactly true. Gamification is the use of mechanisms typical of games (such as leaderboards, badges, point systems, and time-limited rewards) in non-game contexts to make the experience more engaging.

It is therefore not about introducing actual games, like the sudoku section in newspapers, nor is it merely a marketing strategy, but rather a way to reinforce a desired behavior.

Let’s look at a concrete example of gamification that, one way or another, we’ve all experienced: supermarket loyalty programs. This is a fairly basic example: they encourage customers to make purchases in order to collect points and win rewards, within a limited time period during which the points have value.

Why gamification in a software house

Gamification can be found in various fields, such as:

• Learning
• Social contexts, such as at school or in the workplace
• Marketing
• Use of applications

In our case, that of a software house, gamification can be useful in encouraging users to perform certain actions, such as using the product regularly or completing their profile.

An excellent example of a gamified digital product is Duolingo. The purpose of the application is to learn a new language, but to do so it uses paths to complete, training streaks to maintain, tournaments, learning levels, and much more.

In practice, the user is encouraged to return to the app daily in order not to lose their streak of practice days, and to do more lessons or complete them with a good score in order to earn rewards they know they will receive, and perhaps other unexpected ones as well. This, of course, is an advantage both for the user, who is able to learn the desired language better and better, and for the digital product, which can boast a high number of active users.

Octalysis: a framework for gamification

To run our workshop, we started from a specific gamification framework, Octalysis. Developed by Yu-kai Chou in 2003, Octalysis guides users through 8 motivational drives that shape people’s behavior, typically arranged in an octagon.

Let’s briefly describe what each motivation (or core drive) refers to, with a practical example of how it can be applied.

Some mechanics that can be applied may fall under multiple motivational drives depending on how they are implemented. For example:

• A trophy guaranteed upon reaching a goal can satisfy the need to feel accomplished.
• If the appearance of the trophy is hidden until it is achieved, it will also spark curiosity.
• If obtaining it is limited to a specific period of time, the person will also try to avoid losing it.
• When the trophies earned by a user are visible to other users as well, it will stimulate competition.

How we structured our gamification workshop

Our goal through the workshop was to improve an already existing and widely used product. Following the guidelines established by Octalysis, we wanted to:

• Create a cohesive experience. We did not decide to use gamification “just because,” but wanted it to become an integral part of the product, without interfering with pre-existing features.
• Address all motivations. Different people are susceptible to different drives: some may be highly competitive but not very stimulated by discovering new trophies, and others the opposite. In addition, some mechanisms make the user feel good while performing the desired action, others prevent them from feeling bad when they do not perform it. The ideal product balances all motivational drives.

To carry out the workshop, we involved the entire team for a full day (and, spoiler, it was not enough!).

Preparation phase: a brief overview of data and concepts

The first phase of our workshop was intended to create initial engagement and bring the whole team up to speed on the product’s situation.

To do this, we gathered relevant data and asked the team to guess it, for example:

• How many active users does the product have?
• What percentage of users has subscribed to a plan?
• How many times do users use the product in a month?

We also provided an explanation of how the product works in detail (the subscription types and what they allow the user to do) and, consequently, established which rewards can be provided to the user.

In this way, we were able to explain which KPIs (key performance indicators) had been predefined with full awareness.

Finally, we explained what gamification is, introduced the Octalysis framework with many examples for each point, and also provided a small card with the 8 core drives to each participant, so they could always have it at hand during the following phases.

A brainstorming session on gamified mechanics

Next, we held a highly participatory brainstorming session in which everyone was able to propose new features to be added to the product, based on the different motivational factors that could be addressed.

The request, also for time-related reasons, was not to overly develop each idea, but only to indicate the rewarded action and the reward.

Afterwards, we carried out a vote for each of the proposed ideas, assigning it to the corresponding mechanic. At this point, in cases where the assignment was unclear, we asked the person who proposed it to further explain how it had been designed.

Decision-making: divide and conquer

The final step was splitting into groups: each small group was assigned one or two areas. The task was to:

• Select which ideas could be linked to other proposals that had emerged (for example, a points system for each desired action completed can be linked to earning a badge for more active users).
• Refine how each idea could be implemented (what earns points? How many points?).
• Estimate factors such as the cost of implementing the proposal (giving away a subscription is more expensive for the product than awarding points), user desirability (does the user prefer no longer seeing ads or earning points?).
• Always take into account alignment with KPIs (if the goal is to increase usage of the app by long-term users, it is preferable to focus on what affects this group rather than what impacts users in the onboarding phase).

From this process, we obtained an initial filtering, which allowed us to proceed to the next phase. After presenting the remaining proposals in detail, everyone was able to vote for those to keep, which were then proposed to the client.

The verdict: how did this workshop go?

The workshop was a success: the entire team showed enthusiasm in participating, as well as having learned new concepts that can also be used in future projects.

It was also useful to involve people not previously integrated into the product team, because it is precisely from those who have a more vague idea of how the system works that the most innovative ideas can emerge. In contrast, the group phase always included at least one person with extensive knowledge of the application, in order to assess the feasibility of the proposed ideas.

However, we also encountered some critical points, which we will certainly take into account in a future workshop, such as timing: an entire working day, even with breaks, leads to reaching the end with no mental energy left. In hindsight, it would have made sense to separate the introductory phase from the actual workshop execution.

And have you ever thought that a gamification workshop could be the turning point for your digital product? If you want further advice on how to run one, or if you are simply curious about our workshops, contact us here.