Badges in Gameful Design: How users perceive them and how are they motivational
This is a guest post by Gustavo Tondello, Gamification Research and Consultant, who was creating a new type of service for gamification professionals. He published weekly summaries of research articles in a format that helps professionals quickly understand and apply the takeaways from the research on their work.
UPDATE on April 24, 2020: After advertising this idea for a few months, I did not find enough people interested in the Patreon content. So, new Patreon subscriptions are not available anymore. But enjoy this free sample, which is still available below for download.
Badges are the most used element in educational gameful design and the third most used element in gamification in general.
They have been listed by many different gamification researchers and experts as one of the basic gameful design elements.
But do you know exactly what role badges perform on a gameful application? How do users perceive them and interact with them — do you know that there are at least nine different ways? How do badges motivate users to engage with the gameful system?
This article summarizes the latest research on how badges are perceived by users, what kind of users prefer to use them, and how they motivate users of gameful systems.
Finally, we give design guidelines to make the most effective use of badges in gameful design.
In short:
- Badges are often seen as a form of incentive or reward;
- Badges are also frequently seen as a means for goal setting and a measure of accomplishment;
- Users with social tendencies may enjoy using badges as a means for social interaction;
- Badges can be useful as a form of positive feedback and encouragement;
- But badges can get in the way if users are already motivated to engage with the task or if they do not perceive any real value in the badges.
In terms of the Octalysis Framework, badges primarily tap into Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment (as visible markers of progress), Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession (collecting and displaying them), and Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness (social comparison and bragging rights).
Do you want to know more details and the design guidelines to learn how to design badges to fulfill all these roles in your system? Download a free copy of the full article below.
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Note on Patreon Content
This article is a free sample of the kind of content Gustavo published as a Patreon content creator.
Download the file below to read the full free article: Badges in Gameful Design (PDF)
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Badge Gamification Done Right: Why 90% of Achievement Badges Fail
- What is Gamification?
- Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment
- The Points, Badges, and Leaderboards Fallacy
- Books by Yu-kai Chou