Gamification & Leaderboard Axioms

Breaking ice... Let's focus in relation with software products & applications

Gamification is, applying the game design principles to non-game applications for enhancing user engagement, productivity, quick learning & user gathering, socializing.

Leaderboard is a scoreboard to show the status of players or competitors playing the game (not just the game in our context). Helps recognition of leaders (in multiple sections & areas).

The axioms mentioned below are based on my multiple experiences with quite a lot of big, medium & small products (software & digital) into B2B & B2C space.

• When starting up with a new product, gamification & leaderboards could become the most important factor for content generation (most important axiom), since it terrifically enhances user engagement, digital gathering & socializing.
• Decide on achievement levels or thresholds (game levels, badges) wisely by keeping the users, extend & importance of the use of the product. Number of achievement levels should not be too high or too low nor they should be too tough or too easy to achieve.
• In case of B2C, if the product has huge number of participating or active users; go with more number of levels (10 to 15) that don't require high efforts to climb the level ladder.
• In case of B2B, go with few number of levels (4 to 5) that require mediocre efforts to climb the level ladder.
• In case of product based on content, gamification can also help in authenticating the content & its quality (a good example could be StackOverflow).
• Growth of a player or competitor should not be dependent on a linear process, since there could be few things in the process to be achieved for level upgradation that might not be preferred by quite some users & enforcing them could result in users loosing interest around use of product. Each user & its contribution is important for product looking at all the data points it could influence.
• In case of B2C, if there is an specific area around which you need contribution from users that could potentially enhance the product; set some specific optional tasks around that thing/activity along with applicable rewards (more in case of a more boring activity but important for product) that interested users could pick.
• Leaderboards are one of the ways to reward, recognize & encourage users to compete or simply use the product & generate more & more content on/for product/business.
• In case of B2C, just having a good way of providing recognition to players, competitors & leaders could help probably because of the social impact & visibility that it creates.
• In case of Enterprise product, it becomes essential to provide not just recognition but also some good, attractive & probably materialistic rewards & awards for continual support, engagement & interest revival of user towards product & its use.
• Spread the word; provide an option for users to share their game status/progress/achievements with the world (other users/people on social mediums). Mediums could be different in case of B2C &, B2B or Enterprise space/product.

Conducting good amount of market, customer & user research is very important before deciding on key gamification & leaderboard rules for the game.

Above is one of a better examples of outlined gamification strategy I created while working over one of the products.