Diving into Gamification Series Part 1- Badges

There are several manifestations of gamification that make it such an effective tool: badges, quests, level progression, different types of rewards, and more. This article will dive into badges specifically – their impact, examples of how and where they are used, and the psychology of why they work.?

Gamification has revolutionized how we engage with various systems, from education to corporate environments, by incorporating game-like elements into non-game contexts. The gamification market size in 2020 had a global value of $9.1 billion and is predicted to register an impressive growth rate of 27.4%, reaching $30.7 billion by 2025 (MarketsandMarkets ). Gamification is easily adaptable and can be used for user education, onboarding, or other operations purposes. In addition, sales, product, and organization wide gamification have become increasingly popular lately as results have been overwhelmingly positive. For example, KFC Japan, with the help of gamification group Gamify, created gaming content that led to a 106% increase in store sales. After gamifying its store, floral wire service Teleflora gained a 105% increase in Facebook referrals and an impressive conversion rate of 92% (TotalRetail) . Clearly, companies have received massive benefits from utilizing and incorporating gamification elements and tools.

One of the most compelling and widespread elements of gamification that we highlight is the use of badges.

Badges are digital or physical tokens awarded to individuals for achieving specific milestones, completing tasks, or demonstrating certain skills. They serve as a visual representation of accomplishment and recognition within a gamified system. These badges are often employed in consumer apps, educational platforms, corporate training, and social communities to incentivize participation and foster a sense of achievement. These digital or physical symbols of achievement have become central to enhancing user engagement, motivating behavior, and reinforcing learning.?

The Impact

Badges have a multifaceted impact on both users and the systems they are part of:

1a. Enhanced Motivation

1b. Increased Engagement

1c. Fostering Sense of Achievement and Recognition

1d. Tracking and Feedback

1e. Promoting Competition, Community Building, and Collaboration

1f. Facilitating Learning and Skill Development

1g. Encouraging Desired Behaviors and Behavior Reinforcement

1a. Enhanced Motivation

One of the most touted benefits of badges is their ability to boost motivation. Badges serve as tangible symbols of accomplishment, providing users with a sense of progress and achievement. This is particularly effective in environments where the tasks are mundane or repetitive. For example, in educational settings, students who earn badges for completing assignments or mastering skills are often more motivated to continue learning. Similarly, in corporate training programs, employees who receive badges for completing training modules or achieving performance milestones may feel more motivated and invested in their professional development.

Badges essentially tap into users’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Intrinsically, they can foster a sense of accomplishment and pride. Extrinsically, they offer tangible rewards and recognition, encouraging users to engage more deeply with the system. We will delve deeper into the psychology of why this works so well later in this article.

1b. Increased Engagement

Similar to how badges motivate users to want to achieve or earn more badges, they also lead to overall greater user engagement. By providing clear goals and milestones, badges encourage users to participate more actively. The pursuit of badges often leads to higher levels of interaction and sustained involvement. Badges are one of the main components of gamification that makes an app sticky. Studies have found that gamification has an overwhelmingly positive effect on engagement. Specifically, one study found that employees see a 48% increase in engagement with the help of gamification. Another survey found that 30% of 500 surveyed business workers were inspired to be more engaged in the workplace.

1c. Fostering Sense of Achievement and Recognition

One of the psychological benefits of badges is the sense of achievement they provide. Earning a badge can be a source of pride and validation, as it symbolizes the effort and skill required to achieve a particular goal. This recognition can be especially meaningful in environments where traditional forms of praise or acknowledgment are sparse.?

For example, in online learning platforms, badges can offer a form of recognition for learners who might not receive immediate feedback from instructors. Similarly, in the workplace, badges can help employees feel valued and appreciated for their contributions.

1d. Tracking and Feedback

Badges provide immediate feedback on progress, helping users understand where they stand in relation to their goals. This real-time feedback is crucial for maintaining motivation and guiding improvement (and uniquely impactful for onboarding). One excellent example of this is Duolingo, an extremely popular language learning app that recognizes how vital it is to provide instantaneous feedback for their “students.” The app tells you if you got a question wrong, and allows you to correct any wrong answers after going through a lesson. Then it provides your score and tracks your missed answers to review before the next lesson. This type of feedback has helped immensely with knowledge retention and user engagement. Read more about our thoughts on Duolingo.

1e. Promoting Competition, Community Building, and Collaboration

In social and professional contexts, badges can foster a sense of community by publicly recognizing achievements. This public acknowledgment can enhance social bonds and encourage a supportive environment. The flip side, however, is that badges can also introduce elements of competition depending on how they are implemented. Leaderboards that display the number of badges earned can create a competitive environment, motivating individuals to strive for higher performance. Conversely, badges can also foster collaboration when they are tied to group achievements or team-based goals. For example, a team project that earns a badge for successful completion can enhance team cohesion and encourage cooperative efforts.

1f. Facilitating Learning and Skill Development

In educational contexts, badges can support learning and skill development by breaking down complex goals into smaller, more manageable milestones. This approach, often referred to as micro-credentialing, allows learners to track their progress and focus on mastering specific skills. For example, a student might earn badges for completing different levels of a math course, helping them stay motivated and see their progress over time. Additionally, badges can serve as a form of formative assessment, providing both learners and educators with insights into areas of strength and areas needing improvement.?

Education is not limited to the classroom, as badges can certainly help with developing certain skills in consumer platforms. For example in the video game, NBA 2k, badge levels are determined by badge usage, meaning how often they're firing off in the game. Over time, from game to game, your usage and skills with the badge are being evaluated, and your badge level will start to trend towards the level that matches your play. For example, the more you use a certain badge specific to corner three point shooting–the better your player will become and progress with respect to that specific badge for corner three point shooting.

1g. Encouraging Desired Behaviors and Behavior Reinforcement

Badges can be powerful tools for shaping behavior. By aligning badge criteria with desired outcomes, organizations can encourage specific actions or habits. For example, a fitness app might award badges for reaching daily step goals, thereby encouraging users to be more active. In a corporate setting, badges can be used to recognize and promote behaviors such as teamwork, innovation, or customer service excellence. When designed thoughtfully, badges can drive positive changes and reinforce behaviors that align with organizational objectives.

Simply put, badges can encourage and then reinforce desired behaviors by rewarding specific actions or achievements. This reinforcement helps to establish and maintain positive habits or skills which can lead to increased user engagement and motivation. This takes advantage of another psychological principle that we will take a closer look at.?

Key Examples of Successful Badge Systems?

Badges are easily applicable to many different sectors and platforms–from health and fitness to education. One key example of an app that has successfully utilized or implemented its own badge system is Fitbit.

Fitbit manufactures wireless-enabled and wearable fitness devices that measure data and personalized metrics such as the number of steps walked, quality of sleep, calories burned, and more. Although there are many competitors such as Apple Fitness with 29%, Fitbit’s fitness market share is 12% (2023). Fitbit had 128 million registered users as of 2023, 8 million more than in 2022. The company had 11 million registered users in 2014. Fitbit had 38.5 million active users in 2023, compared with 6.7 million in 2014.?

The company owes much of its success to its gamification efforts–especially the personalized badge system. Fitbit has designed over 100 badges to recognize a variety of achievements. Users can earn badges for daily steps taken, floors climbed, and weight lost. The badges have different images and themes based on their goal or achievement. Users progress through badges based on performance and commitment to improving health and fitness. For example, with daily steps badges, users can earn the Boat Shoes badge for walking 5,000 steps in a day and the Sneakers badge for 10,000 steps in a day. There are many other creative badges one can earn for daily steps culminating with the Olympian Sandals (You’ve walked 100,000 steps in one day).?

This same format or badge system is used for lifetime-distance (you’ve walked x miles since joining Fitbit), daily floors climbed, lifetime floors (you’ve climbed x floors since joining Fitbit), and weight goal/loss (tracks how many pounds of weight loss).?

Through the many creative and personalized badge options, Fitbit has employed gamification? successfully to combat an age-old problem with fitness apps–laziness and lack of motivation. Take the weight loss badges for example. They provide tracking and progress feedback for users when they lose 5 lbs. This can foster a sense of achievement and recognition, encouraging a desired behavior of exercise and reinforcing that behavior or habitualizing it. This badge system can promote learning skill development or practicing that skill so it becomes a behavioral pattern. Therefore, as a result, users experience increased engagement and motivation to achieve their goals, simultaneously earning more badges. By linking the two, Fitbit has made fitness, something that many people dread exerting energy on, into a fun activity that people look forward to.?

We’ve looked at an example in health and fitness; let us now look at education. Khan Academy, one of the world’s largest free education websites, offers courses from kindergarten to college level in over 50 languages. A total of 120 million yearly learners use Khan Academy (from 70 million in 2018). In 2023 alone, Khan Academy amassed 7.7 billion overall learning minutes. But, what has contributed to not only the user engagement, but the retention (or how many active users use the product over a specified period) as well??

Like Fitbit, Khan Academy’s badge system relies on a lot of variety and creativity. However, unlike Fitbit’s system, which essentially lets you progress with either daily achievements (steps/floors earned) or goals reached since joining the app (miles/floors/pounds of weight lost), Khan Academy’s system is structured in a way where there are 6 different categories of achievement badges–and the challenges or difficulty of the task increases as you progress from one category to the next.?

For instance, Meteorite Badges are common and easy to earn when just getting started. One can earn the “Just Getting Started” badge for achieving mastery in 3 unique skills. There are 13 other “basic” challenges within the Meteorite Badges category. The next level or category of badges to earn would be Moon Badges–uncommon and represent an investment in learning. Then there are Earth Badges (rare and require a significant amount of learning), Sun Badges (epic and a true challenge that require impressive dedication), Black Hole Badges (legendary and unknown… the rarest Khan Academy awards), and finally Challenge Patches (special awards for completing topic challenges).?

The purpose of the badges are to gamify the learning experience that students have on this educational platform–to make learning more fun. By gamifying the badge system, not only creating various badges to earn but also creating 6 “levels” of badges to earn separated by difficulty, Khan Academy has been able to successfully keep users engaged and motivated to continue coming back to their learning platform. Without this fun badge system–many students would view the education platform’s lessons and tasks as mundane or tedious.??

Now that we’ve seen examples of how successful badge systems have been utilized in education and health & fitness, let us analyze an example of an addictive badge system from an actual game, before going in depth on the psychology of why this works so well. Let us look at the popular badge system from the basketball video game franchise, NBA 2K.

In 2023, according to research conducted by OHgamblers, NBA 2K was officially the most popular video game in the United States . Several elements from 2K’s badge system are visible in Khan Academy and Fitbit’s respective systems. One is creativity and variety. NBA 2K24 offers a total of 77 different skill badges across MyTeam and MyCareer. There are many intricacies within the 2K badge system with regards to badge progression. The simplicity of their system can be summed up easily by Sports Illustrated : “Badges have been split into four tiers in NBA 2K24: S-, A-, B-, and C. A player's height determines tier assignments, and players unlock badges by meeting certain criteria. Players earn higher badge levels based on their play style. Badges with high usage reach higher levels, while badges that don't get used as often will drop. However, no badge will ever drop below a Bronze level.”?

This shares similarities with Khan Academy’s badge system, however instead of aiming to progress from Meteorite Badges to achieving Black Hole Badges, 2K users seek to progress from Bronze to Legend Badges. Performance multipliers provide benefits to all badges based on in-game performance. Different Badge perks are also available that can help or hurt badge progression. For example, the Scholar perk significantly increases badge level progression for PvP games finished with a high teammate grade. However, players will receive no badge progression for low teammate grades.?

All of these tools that influence the Badge system and progression can impact user engagement and retention. It creates a sense of achievement, reinforces behaviors and skills, and introduces an element of competition as well.?

The best MyPlayers (custom created players) usually have the highest ranked badges, which allows them to dominate other players with lower ranked badges. This proves to be enough incentive to hook users in–creating one of the stickiest video game experiences to date–generating continuous revenue and sales despite many customers complaining that the “new” game is virtually the same video game each year they roll it out.?

2K’s Badge system has been incredibly successful because it relies on psychological principles that make it extremely difficult for users to stop playing.?

The Psychology Behind the Success

As mentioned previously, much of the impact from gamification badges is tied to fundamental human behaviors and deep-rooted psychological triggers. A good badge system is able to take advantage of several key factors: recognition and achievement, goal setting and progress, feedback and improvement, social comparison and validation, competence and mastery, gamification and enjoyment. Essentially, badges tap into social and personal psychological elements that can dramatically increase user engagement as well as the probability of stickiness or sustained use over a period of time.?

Badges often come with a social element, which can influence behavior through social comparison and validation: Social Proof is the idea that seeing others with badges can create a sense of competition or a desire to achieve similar success. This can drive individuals to engage more actively in the pursuit of badges. Badges can also serve as a form of social validation. Earning a badge can be a way to showcase one's achievements and gain recognition from peers, which can be an extremely powerful motivator.

Social proof is a term often applied to situations where we look to the opinions and actions of those around us in order to answer questions or form opinions. Social proof can lead users to pursue activities if those users think that other people are also engaging in those activities or pursuing those goals. Psychologist Robert Cialdini states: “We view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.” Therefore, if an achievement badge system tells us that everyone is completing a certain side quest or activity, social proof will lead us to follow suit.

Badge systems tap into innate comparative and competitive traits, dating back to Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality ,” where he claims: “the savage (man in the state of nature) lives within himself, sociable man (man in civilized society), always outside himself, can only live in the opinion of others.” Humans are always seeking to compare themselves to another.? Leon Festinger’s social comparison theory states that we want objective information about our performance, and lacking that information (or a suitable context to evaluate it in) we will seek to compare ourselves to meaningful others. This directly applies to badges, as humans naturally want to compare their badge progress and achievements with others in society, as this is a fundamentally ingrained human trait.?

Beyond social theory, fundamental psychological principles of individual human behavior are a major proponent of why badges are so effective. One example is the anchoring effect. The anchoring effect happens when a high or low number out of the gate causes us to fixate on it and use it as a point of reference for considering how high (or low) other values are. Badges can serve as anchors for expectations of performance. If an individual sees a series of progressively harder badges, it can set a benchmark for their own achievements and drive further engagement. Essentially this can help with goal setting and picking reasonable achievement badges to strive for leading to higher user retention.?

Another concept that badges tap into is self efficacy —belief in our own efficacy or ability to do something if we try. Many educational apps like Khan Academy or Duolingo would struggle immensely without this concept, as many students would give up due to a lack of motivation or belief in themselves.?

Similar to the Self Efficacy Theory, the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) focuses on the role of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in motivation. According to SDT, badges can impact three psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Badges provide evidence of skill and accomplishment, which can enhance individuals’ feelings of competence and self-efficacy as mentioned before. They also offer a sense of choice and control over one's achievements. When individuals have the freedom to pursue badges in areas they care about, it can enhance their sense of autonomy. In social contexts, badges can foster a sense of belonging and connection with others. For example, in educational settings, students might feel more connected to peers who have similar achievements. This reinforces the idea that badges are tied to both social and psychological principles.?

One of the main components that contributes to the stickiness of a good badge system is behavior reinforcement. At its core, gamification badges leverage principles of behavioral psychology, particularly reinforcement theory . This theory, developed by B.F. Skinner, posits that behaviors followed by rewards are more likely to be repeated. Badges act as a form of positive reinforcement, acknowledging and rewarding specific behaviors or achievements. The process involves both positive reinforcement and a variety of rewards.

Receiving a badge serves as a reward, reinforcing the behavior that led to it. This makes individuals more likely to repeat the behavior continuously in the future–forming a habit or pattern. In addition, badges are awarded for various accomplishments or milestones, creating a sense of variability in rewards. This can be more engaging than a predictable reward system because the variability can stimulate the brain's reward system more intensely, similar to how slot machines work.

As touched on before, a key concept to make note of is Motivational Theory – badge systems play a key role in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: badges provide external validation and tangible rewards. They are a form of extrinsic motivation because they offer a visible and quantifiable acknowledgment of success. Over time, however, earning badges can lead to increased intrinsic motivation. For example, as users start to enjoy the challenge and personal growth associated with earning badges, they may begin to find personal satisfaction in the process itself, beyond just the external reward.

Another seminal aspect of badge systems is goal setting/progress tracking. Badges are often tied to specific goals or milestones–setting and achieving goals is a key and inherent motivator for the human brain. In addition, the design and personalization of badges can also impact their effectiveness. A well-designed badge that is visually appealing can increase its perceived value and the motivation to earn it–tapping into personal interests and preferences, enhancing its significance. Speaking of preferences and personalization, customizing badges to reflect personal achievements or milestones can increase their relevance and impact, making them more meaningful and motivating.?

Finally, badges tap into or trigger cognitive biases. One example is the Endowment Effect . Essentially, once an individual earns a badge, they may value it more highly simply because they own it. This can increase their motivation to protect and enhance their status. Successful Badge systems have done extremely well by utilizing social and psychological tools, such as understanding cognitive biases, to increase the probability that a user will be motivated and engaged enough to keep coming back to the platform’s sticky and addictive badge system.

Conclusion

Let us back up and review–what psychologically makes gamification badges so effective and impactful??

The psychology behind gamification badges is multifaceted, involving principles of reinforcement, motivation, goal setting, social comparison, and cognitive biases. Gamification badges work psychologically by tapping into fundamental human drives and cognitive processes. They leverage the principles of motivation and reward by providing immediate, tangible recognition for achievements. This aligns with the brain’s natural inclination toward goal-setting and feedback, which fosters a sense of accomplishment and progress. By offering a visible and valued marker of success, badges help sustain engagement and commitment, turning abstract goals into attainable milestones.

When used effectively, badges can significantly enhance engagement and motivation by tapping into these psychological mechanisms.

The impact of badges extends beyond motivation. They contribute to a positive feedback loop, where users are not only encouraged to continue their efforts but are also given a clear sense of how their actions contribute to broader objectives. This can enhance both individual and collective performance, foster a deeper connection to the task at hand, and promote a more engaged and proactive attitude. Ultimately, badges serve as powerful psychological tools that reinforce desired behaviors, build self-efficacy, and create a more immersive and rewarding experience in various contexts, from education to health & fitness. Fitbit, Khan Academy, and NBA 2K are three key examples that demonstrate how a successful Badge system can increase motivation and engagement, foster a sense of achievement, and facilitate learning and skill development. The results are intrinsically tied to the inherent psychological principles embedded and utilized within the badge system.