• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Gamification Nation logo

Gamification Nation

Gamification and game design for business results

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Solutions
    • Employee experience
    • Customer experience
    • Learner experience
    • Serious games
    • Gamification Training
    • Application Gamification
  • Speaking
  • Store
  • About us
    • About Gamification Nation
    • Awards
    • What our followers and clients say…
    • In the media
    • Contact Us
(+44) 0845 056 9828
Is gamification right for your project?

Keeping a gamification design fair for your intended audience

An Coppens | 23rd November, 2018

share:

Balancing a gamification design is no easy feat at the best of times. Keeping your end-user in mind at every given time is however essential. I actually recommend having the persona description somewhere in plain sight when you are working on the design. It will subliminally remind you of what they can and can’t do.

We are working on a gamification design aimed at a student audience for future quite technical recruitment into engineering roles. The student actually doesn’t have any technical knowledge, yet we do want to test their ability and appetite for it. It led to an interesting discussion with the client as to what we should be able to expect from someone without in-depth role knowledge.

If we forgot about the end-user, we would have come up with something amazing for the people fully skilled in the highly technical role, but a bit unfair to someone without full training. Sometimes the temptation to build something more advanced is there. It is where user testing also plays an important role. Considering it before you start prototyping means you can limit pre-working.

From a learning or recruitment gamification design perspective, knowing what you expect people to have in terms of knowledge, ability and skills before they engage with the design is part and parcel of user-research. Having a clear profile on their motivation is the first step, but assumed pre-qualification will also add the fairness factor for your design.

Making it too easy will get boring quickly, but having an early win does work to build confidence. If in doubt of the level, I would say choose slightly harder than it needs to be. My thinking here is that games such as Flappy Bird were so hard people just kept trying to beat it. Having insight into the behaviour profiles of your target audience will obviously help in setting this challenge.

When you are dealing with scientists and problem-solving professions, making a gamification design too easy, is a sure way to turn them away. They would prefer the harder puzzle or the more complex gameplay to stay engaged. For more social butterflies, easy fun is much more important and they will give up if it is too hard.

The ultimate fairness test is to observe how a group of your intended target audience engages with your design. Seeing what they figure out quickly and what they get stuck on is really quite interesting to see and you may choose to adapt your design accordingly or not.

In any gamification design, you want your player to feel that they have a chance to win and do well. Making that process fair based on their skills, ability and knowledge goes without saying but can easily be overlooked. Excitement and expectations can get the better of both the designer and the client, so ensuring you have checkpoints in place to tap back into who this is for, is important.

Inclusion by ability

Categories: gamification design

share:

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Book a Strategy Consultation

Strategy consultation

Book a strategy session now and find out what is possible for your company.

BOOK NOW

Buy your game deck

Buy your game deck

Build your own gamified experiences with our game deck

Buy Game Deck

Must Buy Book: Tapping into the Crowd by An Coppens

Must Buy Book: Tapping into the Crowd by An Coppens

Buy Book

Featured Post

Gamification trends for 2019

The time of year for predictions and resolutions is alive and well, so here are our visions for the trends in gamification for 2019. Like last year we … Read More about Gamification trends for 2019

Got questions?

Ask us your question

Related Posts

blogpost on game design and gamification design on www.gamificationnation.com

How hard is to design a game or gamified process?

How hard is it to design a game or gamified process? In our work with...

Creative playstorming

Creative playstorming

When you are used to deliver workshops and training sessions, it is often...

Choice architecture, compulsion loop and other such great things

Behavioural psychology and behavioural economics drive a lot of thinking...

Footer

Our Office

Gamification Nation Ltd,
Kemp House,
152 City Road,
London, EC1V 2NX, UK
Companies House Registration: 08145023
VAT number:
304326932
Tel: (+44) 0845 056 9828
Email: [email protected]

Navigation

  • Home
  • Our Solutions
  • Blog
  • Training
  • Speaking
  • Contact Us

Are you ready to start your project?

When you are looking for a partner to roll out your project, please get in touch! Send us an email or call us. We would be happy to work with you!

GET IN TOUCH
© Copyright 2013 – 2019 Gamification Nation. All rights reserved.
  • Anti-spam Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Linking policy
  • Terms
This site uses cookies: Find out more.