Creating a website these days doesn’t just mean putting content on a digital canvas in a well-organized way. No, in this day and age, user experience and barrier-free design are much more important. When you enter a building for the first time, you want to know immediately where the toilets or entrances and exits are, so that you don’t wander through the corridors at a loss. Users on websites must also not get the feeling that they are lost. Thus, it has become the task of web designers to present all users with an intuitive, intelligent and beautifully designed experience.
But even if all these design criteria for a user-friendly website are met, gamification can also help to significantly improve the experience on the website. Gamification is the transfer of game characteristics into non-game processes. Gamification increases motivation, for example, when users can solve small puzzles on websites, collect tokens for online stores, or actually find small programmed games on the website. Depending on the content gamification can also raise awareness and establish behavioral patterns, conveys content in an entertaining way and/or raise the learning curve for educational content.
Of course, users must not have the feeling that they have landed in a game involuntarily, rather, web designers must use gamification in a targeted and well-measured manner so as not to annoy users. Gamification works best when the users of a website have a positive attitude towards any games and, in the best case, have certain skills. This makes it all the more tricky, when people who are critical of such communication methods look uses websites where gamification was placed. Therefore, it is crucial that the elements and sequences are implemented in a balanced and effective way.
Sources
Books
- Heidt, Margareta. Gamification : Grundlagen der Implementierung spieltypischer Elemente im Wirtschaftskontext. 2012.
- Zichermann, Gabe, and Christopher Cunningham. Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps. First edition., 2011.
